Avatar - 20% live action - 80 % CGI?

Variety have a piece on Avatar discussing the budget and CGI process. The interesting bit is the 20% live action shots on location with 80 % live action mixed with CG elements. I'm itching to see some footage of this film. I think James Cameron may just be onto a sci-fi Titanic (not in the bad hit by an ice-berg way of curse!). Here's what Variety have to say (the article also mentions Benjamin Button and Where the Wild Things Are).

The director, working with VFX whiz Rob Legato, showed the studio advance pre-viz footage demonstrating how high-def video cameras could track actors moving inside a virtual CG set. Initially budgeted at $200 million, the sci-fi epic was pushed back from May to December 2009 to give the director more time to combine in the computer all necessary elements: 3-D motion-capture data of the actors on bare sets, CG environments, and final animation of the human avatars (Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver) and alien characters (Teresa Saldana, CCH Pounder). The photo-real digital film is 20% live-action with humans shot on location and 80% live-action mixed with CG elements. "It's a CG film with live-action in it," Legato says.

Sources close to the studio admit there was a time when it was terrified that Cameron's process wouldn't work. Execs relaxed a tad when they got to see finished footage. Giving Cameron and Weta Digital in New Zealand (where substantial rebates make everything cheaper) extra post-production time made sense.
HOME / FORUM.