“You are on Pandora.”
Hugo Guerra from Hugo’s Desk and Ian Failes from befores & afters go back to 2009 and the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, which changed the game in movie making in several ways.
This included in stereo, virtual production and performance capture. Wētā FX made leaps and bounds in CG characters and rendering, and several other VFX studios contributed to this groundbreaking film.
Read Ian’s Masters of FX for several interviews with supervisors who worked on Avatar, plus a foreword from James Cameron himself.
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Run-down
00:00:00 – start
00:00:13 – sponsors
00:01:26 – the Podcast begnis
00:02:35 – a short review of Avatar
00:06:40 – the genius of James Cameron
00:09:25 – the realism and engineering approach
00:10:36 – ecological message and Cameron in Brazil
00:12:24 – Master of FX Book from Ian Failes
00:14:21 – Tech Noir book
00:16:37 – our reaction at the time in 2009
00:19:40 – the rise and fall of 3D stereo films
00:20:17 – Cameron’s Pace Fusion rig
00:25:10 – performance capture volume
00:28:48 – the creative approch
00:43:45 – Weta Digital’s work
00:47:31 – Weta’s Pipelines
00:51:13 – lack of VFX coverage on the DVD
00:54:01 – Mari and the Render engine
01:00:05 – Water in Avatar
01:05:12 – other VFX partners
01:06:49 – wrap up
01:08:05 – Patreon and YouTube credits
01:08:15 – bloopers