Why, if effects-driven movies like Avatar are the lifeblood of Hollywood these days, are VFX shops struggling—so many laying people off, shutting down, scraping by with thin profit margins? That question nagged at me, so I tackled it for this TIME Magazine story called “Hollywood’s VFX Sweatshops.” I’ve heard from LOTS of VFXers since the piece came out, many relieved to have issues like outsourcing, change orders and the possibility of a VFX guild discussed out in the open.
A chunk of my book covers Cameron’s role in founding the effects company Digital Domain, with Scott Ross and Stan Winston, in 1993. This is from a section of The Futurist about Cameron’s “Digital Manifesto,” a passionately argued 13-page document he wrote in 1992, laying out where he expected filmmaking to go in the coming years. Remember, it’s 1992—Bill Clinton just took over the White House, Jay Leno just took over The Tonight Show, T2 won the Oscar for visual effects and the VFX world is atwitter about something called morphing. Cameron, as usual, is looking ahead, describing a process almost identical to the one he would employ 13 years later to shoot Avatar:
In his manifesto, the director described something called “performance capture,” in which an actor would don a “data suit,” sending a stream of information about the actor’s physical movements to a workstation, where they would be inserted into a “synthetic environment.” Artists would then use software to turn the actor’s digitized performance into a fantastical character. “Jack Nicholson could create not just the voice but the total body performance of a
demon, while puppeteers nearby cause his tail to lash and his pointed ears to furl and twitch,” Cameron wrote. “The actor can truly ‘become’ his animated character.”
In my latest VanityFair.com piece about the Oscars’ Best Editing category, I explain the crazy complex way Avatar was cut. I’m pretty sure you need an extra lobe in your brain to pull it off:
Unlike for most films, Avatar’s editing process began the moment Cameron called action. An Avid editing suite sat stage-side at the spare Los Angeles warehouse where Cameron shot the performance-capture portions of the movie. Instead of dailies, the director watched minutelies: he reviewed every single shot in the moment. Cameron had almost limitless options editorially because of the manner in which he was shooting. In a traditional live-action film, when multiple actors are in a scene, the editor is limited to the performances in a particular take. But Avatar’s editors could combine different takes. In one scene, they might choose Sam Worthington’s Take-Six, for instance, and Sigourney Weaver’s Take-Two. While this provided tremendous flexibility, it was also hugely complicating. And it was just the first of many edit steps.
Next came the camera moves. Cameron was working from a virtual toybox that allowed him to shoot in his C.G. world using the performances he had already filmed. The actors were long gone from the soundstage as the director decided how close to make his close-up and where to pan. Day after day, as Cameron shot and reshot and reshot the scenes—this process did nothing but indulge his usual perfectionism—Avatar’s three-man editing team stitched the narrative together….
READ MORE at VANITYFAIR.COM
In this Los Angeles Times piece running in Sunday’s Calendar section and posted early on Geoff Boucher’s Hero Complex blog, I write about the Academy’s tendency to shun sci fi , and why it may be different this year….
Slasher films, pot comedies, anything starring The Rock — there are some movies that no one expects to win Academy Awards. And traditionally, Oscar’s no-fly list has included science fiction. Academy Award-winning films are supposed to be serious, weighty, historical — if your movie takes place in a galaxy far, far away, well, you can leave your tuxedo in the closet until it’s time to accept a somewhat less prestigious prize shaped like a rocket ship.
This year, however, is looking like a breakthrough year for sci-fi, as the alien vehicles “Avatar,” “District 9″ and “Star Trek” have earned critical praise and accolades from the industry groups that tend to foreshadow Oscar nominations. Thanks to a convergence of factors, including the expansion of the best picture category from five movies to 10, the ascendance of the post-”Star Wars” generation in Hollywood and the imposing box office success of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” this Rodney Dangerfield of movie genres looks like it may finally win some respect come Oscar time.
“The academy has always thought of sci-fi as a secondary type of exploitation film,” says Roger Corman, who was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Oscar in November, in large part for his role in producing the low-budget sci-fi films that gave directors like Cameron their start. “They’re only beginning to realize that there is seriousness and depth within the genre.”
READ MORE at LATIMES.COM
My latest Vanity Fair dispatch is about Cameron’s award season speeches, and how they get him into trouble…
There is one event, more than any other, that sealed the public image of James Cameron, and that is the last five seconds of his 1997 Best Director Oscar acceptance speech for Titanic. In the second of three speeches he would deliver that night, Cameron quoted Leonardo DiCaprio’s line from his film, “I’m the king of the world! Wahooooooo!” and lifted his trophy triumphantly. “The funniest moment of the whole thing, in retrospect, was the quizzical expression on Warren Beatty’s face after he gave me the Oscar,” Cameron recalled, when I asked him about the speech for my book, The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron. “His expression was like ‘what the fuck were you thinking?’” What Cameron had intended as a heartfelt display of his exuberance had come across instead as self-congratulatory, especially to a room that had already seen Titanic collect most of the awards and box office receipts they hoped would go to their own films.
The delicate art of delivering an acceptance speech comes easily to some—Meryl Streep’s flustered gratitude and Robert Downey Jr.’s laconic wit could be how-to tutorials for the 30-second medium. But Cameron, for all his industry stature, has never seemed entirely at home behind a Hollywood awards podium.
READ MORE at VANITYFAIR.COM
In this Vanity Fair piece, I tackle the issue of Oscar-worthy CG performances….
When John Hurt played the title character in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man in 1980, it took a gifted makeup artist seven hours each day to sculpt Hurt’s bulbous forehead and twisted mouth. The actor was utterly unrecognizable under the heavy, Quasimodo-like prosthetics, but he managed to communicate sadness, grace and humanity in the role, and garner an Oscar nomination for his performance.
Thirty years later, computer-generated special effects are replacing the dying art of prosthetics, but an actor has yet to earn a nod from the Academy for a purely virtual performance. One who could break the digital barrier this year is Zoe Saldana, for her work as Avatar’s alien heroine, Neytiri. To win a nomination for best actress, Saldana would have to overcome Hollywood’s skepticism about the motion-capture process director James Cameron used to make Avatar, a technique that relies on animators to enhance an actor’s work.
READ MORE AT VANITYFAIR.COM
Why, if effects-driven movies like Avatar are the lifeblood of Hollywood these days, are VFX shops struggling—so many laying people off, shutting down, scraping by with thin profit margins? That question nagged at me, so I tackled it for this TIME Magazine story called “Hollywood’s VFX Sweatshops.” I’ve heard from LOTS of VFXers since the piece came out, many relieved to have issues like outsourcing, change orders and the possibility of a VFX guild discussed out in the open.