Word: film
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Future of 3-D Cameron's Avatar, due in December, could be the thing that forces theaters to convert to digital. Spielberg predicts it will be the biggest 3-D live-action film ever. More than a thousand people have worked on it, at a cost in excess of $200 million, and it represents digital filmmaking's bleeding edge. Cameron wrote the treatment for it in 1995 as a way to push his digital-production company to its limits. ("We can't do this," he recalled his crew saying. "We'll die.") He worked for years to build the tools...
...birth of high-definition, digital filmmaking changed all that. Cameron and an associate, Vince Pace, developed the 3-D-capable Fusion camera system, which is cheaper, smaller--13 lb. each--and way more versatile than the old film rigs. "Every movie I made, up until Tintin, I always kept one eye closed when I've been framing a shot," Spielberg told me. That's because he wanted to see the movie in 2-D, the way moviegoers would. "On Tintin, I have both of my eyes open...
Even if you're willing to grant him the glasses, there's still one problem. For digital 3-D to work, the movie theater must first convert from analog to digital--that is, from reels of film to data feeds. Theaters have been slow to do it, citing the expense and security. Disney chairman Dick Cook is credited with breaking the initial logjam with Chicken Little in 2005. About 75 theaters converted to digital to show the film, and a surprising thing happened: 3-D theaters reported three to four times the box-office gross as those that showed...
Avatar is filmed in the old "Spruce Goose" hangar, the 16,000-sq.-ft. space where Howard Hughes built his wooden airplane. The film is set in the future, and most of the action takes place on a mythical planet, Pandora. The actors work in an empty studio; Pandora's lush jungle-aquatic environment is computer-generated in New Zealand by Jackson's special-effects company, Weta Digital, and added later...
...original version of this story misstated the cost of the film Avatar as being in excess of $300 million. The correct figure is in excess of $200 million...