I didn’t expect that James Cameron, the director of "Avatar: The Path of Water" (James Cameron), also has an account on Zhihu .
The first " Avatar " released in 2010 broke China's box office record that year, with a box office of 1.339 billion yuan at the premiere. The re-release in March 2021 still earned 375 million yuan at the box office, with a cumulative box office of 1.715 billion yuan. As a sequel to a classic IP, "Avatar: Water Path" has aroused heated discussions since its release and has raised the expectations of movie fans. According to previous platform data predictions, the media box office forecast before the release of " Avatar 2" was between 2.2 billion and 3.3 billion yuan, which is expected to break the box office record of imported films in the past three years. Some industry insiders predict that the box office of "Avatar 2" is expected to eventually reach 3 billion yuan.
Maoyan Professional Edition data shows that "Avatar 2" has grossed more than 450 million in box office since its release on December 16. This shows that China's film market is very important in the minds of Hollywood directors.
In response to the question "How do you evaluate the new film "Avatar: Water Path" directed by James Cameron ?", James Cameron personally interpreted his new work. The following is the full text of his answer. The first half is in English, followed by the Chinese translation.
I didn’t expect that James Cameron, the director of "Avatar: The Path of Water" (James Cameron), also has an account on Zhihu .
The first " Avatar " released in 2010 broke China's box office record that year, with a box office of 1.339 billion yuan at the premiere. The re-release in March 2021 still earned 375 million yuan at the box office, with a cumulative box office of 1.715 billion yuan. As a sequel to a classic IP, "Avatar: Water Path" has aroused heated discussions since its release and has raised the expectations of movie fans. According to previous platform data predictions, the media box office forecast before the release of " Avatar 2" was between 2.2 billion and 3.3 billion yuan, which is expected to break the box office record of imported films in the past three years. Some industry insiders predict that the box office of "Avatar 2" is expected to eventually reach 3 billion yuan.
Maoyan Professional Edition data shows that "Avatar 2" has grossed more than 450 million in box office since its release on December 16. This shows that China's film market is very important in the minds of Hollywood directors.
In response to the question "How do you evaluate the new film "Avatar: Water Path" directed by James Cameron ?", James Cameron personally interpreted his new work. The following is the full text of his answer. The first half is in English, followed by the Chinese translation.
Thanks for the invitation of Zhihu.
To facilitate more Zhihu netizens to read, I specially invited the Zhihu team to translate my answers into Chinese, and the following answers will be presented in both Chinese and English.
I think "Avatar: The Way of Water" is an adventure first and foremost it's very emotional, it's more emotional than the first film. I think it focuses more on character and relationship dynamics than the first film did, but it definitely delivers on the spectacle and my love of oceans. It’s a family story and an emotional story, a love letter to family and how family makes you stronger. It is not a film that beats you over the head with its message, but it asks you to feel for the ocean and then maybe a few people can translate that into action, containing a strong environmental message.
Compared to the first film, Jake and Neytiri fall in love in the first movie, so obviously the first one is about a love story. The natural progression of Jake and Neytiri was for them to start a family, raising children in a time of war and great turmoil. You can still find joy while teaching them (the children) skills to stay alive, questions human greed in mining or extraction projects.
The second film talks about the exploitation of the ocean. “Avatar: The Way of Water” centers on Jake Sully and Neytiri, now parents to five children, who try to protect their family from a new threat to Pandora. They seek refuge with the oceanic Menkalinan clan and learn the way of water to survive.
The oceans are very important to me. I’ve been passionate about the ocean before I ever met the ocean. I learn to scuba dive in rural Canada, and I love to what it means to us symbolically. Subconsciously we all know that the ocean is like our mother. At least by making a film, I can give something back from the standpoint of conservation and preservation of the ocean. "Avatar 2" combines two great loves of my life: the movie telling stories with pictures, and the ocean. Everything just happened naturally.
I am also very proud that we have captured the facial performance of non-human characters. These characters are similar to us, but not human beings. This effect is not achieved through makeup, but a character generated by CG. We hope that the effect of the character is 100% real, and at the same time, the emotion expressed by the actor is 100% conveyed.
People say - my work is often the most expensive and most ambitious production to date. And if the current filmmaking technology doesn’t match my vision, we have to create our own technology. When we made "Avatar" it was a quantum leap forward in performance capture photography. And now with "Avatar 2", I and our team have done it once again. This is "how we shot it", we try our 110% off what we can do. In this series, we’ve covered movies like "Titanic", "Top Gun: Maverick", and have done everything, everywhere, all at once.
We’ll be using Studio Binder shot list feature fully populate our shot spaces. I had been dreaming of "Avatar" for decades. I wrote the original treatment before making "Titanic", but the technology at the time could not match my vision. I was on a quest for the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail was to be able to reproduce full human emotion in a CG character. So, I waited, and over the next few years, I over saw the development of the tech and processes required.
In 2007, we finally cracked the code. For my sci-fi epic, three different camera systems were used for three different shooting scenarios. CG Performance Capture. Live action. And a hybrid of the two. The fist was a virtual system used for motion capture scenes. Basicmotion capture technology works like this. Actors wear suits with makers that reflect infrared light back to stationary cameras. While HD reference cameras provided animators with detailed coverage to complete the physical performance, a reported 120 stationary cameras captured the actor's positions and movements.
Once the performance capture was complete, the crew packed up and headed to New Zealand to shoot all the live-action footage with the Fusion 3D Camera. The Fusion camera rig had two Sony F950s cameras to shoot native 3D. This meant that one camera shot left eye footage and the other shot footage for the righteye. This creates a more natural 3D affect that matches our own vision.
"Avatar" saw a leap forward in technology and filmmaking. And 13 years later, I and my team did it again for the sequels. Following the first film, the sequels would be shot in 3D. But what about shooting 3D underwater? The camera options were three times larger and difficult to operate. The beauty of it, if you can solve the water, then you will never worry about it anymore. You can do everything and have freedom with it.
The key to do was - to shoot really underwater and really at the surface of the water, so people were swimming properly. you know, and they were taking their own way to get out of the water properly or diving properly and it just looks like real because the motion was real. Because these kids have to learn how to be underwater, they don't know how to be underwater, they were raised in the forest, their fear factor probably helped. Although everybody was very well trained and we used a very safe and systematic way to allow them to dive, they were all scuba trained. But we didn't use scuba, so they got used to being underwater for long periods of time and we went to Hawaii, and we got everybody on scuba we're also doing free diving training at the same time.
The more you expand you disbelieve, the more you will enjoy the fantasy. We are all join hands and skip off to Pandora together.
Thanks to Zhihu for the invitation.
In order to facilitate more Zhihu netizens to read, I specially invited the Zhihu team to translate my answers into Chinese. The following answers will be presented in Chinese and English.
I think " Avatar: Water Path " is first and foremost an adventure. It is full of emotions, even more than its predecessor. I think it focused more on character and relationship dynamics than the first film, and conveyed my love of the ocean through spectacle. This is a touching story about family, a love letter to family, showing how family can make a person stronger. This is not a movie that pumps information into your brain, but requires you to feel the ocean, and perhaps transform your emotions into actions, conveying a strong message of marine environmental protection.
In contrast, in the previous film, Jack and Neytiri fell in love, which was obviously a love story. Jake and Neytiri's relationship develops, and they start a family and raise their children during a time of war and turmoil. The process of teaching them (children) survival skills is fun while revealing the greed of humans in resource extraction projects.
The second film discusses the issue of ocean development. "Avatar: Waterpath" focuses on Jake Sully and Neytiri, parents of five children, as they try to protect their family from a new threat to the planet Pandora. They sought refuge from the oceanic Menkalinan tribe and learned the ways of survival in the water.
ocean means a lot to me. Even before I met the ocean, I had a passion for it. I learned scuba diving in a remote part of Canada and loved the symbolism it held. Subconsciously, we all think of the ocean as our mother. At least by making this film, I can give back from the perspective of marine environmental protection. Avatar 2 combines two of my lifelong loves: visual storytelling in film and the ocean. So everything happened naturally.
I'm proud that we captured the facial expressions of non-human characters. These characters are similar to us, but not human. This effect is achieved not through makeup, but through CG-generated character presentation. We wanted the effects of the characters to be 100% authentic and the emotions expressed by the actors to be 100% conveyed.
It is often said that my works are often the most expensive and most ambitious large-scale productions ever produced. If current filmmaking technology doesn't deliver the results I envision, we'll have to create our own technology. When we did the first Avatar, it was a huge technological leap forward in performance capture photography. Now with "Avatar 2", the team and I have once again created technology. That's how we shoot it, our team always gives 110%. We integrated movies such as "Titanic" and "Top Gun: Maverick" into this series, and we did it in one go.
We will use Studio Binder's Snapshot List feature to completely fill our shot space. I've been dreaming about making Avatar for decades. I wrote an initial synopsis before making Titanic, but the technology at the time couldn't realize what I imagined. I'm looking for the Holy Grail (chasing a dream). The holy grail is to recreate full human emotions in CG characters. So, I waited and watched over the next few years as the required technology developed.
In 2007, we finally cracked the code. In this sci-fi epic, three different camera systems, CG motion capture, live action, and a hybrid of the two, were used for three different shooting scenes. FIST is a virtual system for motion capture scenes. The basic working principle of motion capture technology is this: the actors wear a special costume that reflects infrared light back to the fixed camera. Meanwhile, high-definition reference cameras provided animators with detailed coverage of complete action performances, with 120 fixed cameras used to capture actors' positions and movements. After the filming of the
performance part was completed, the staff packed up and went to New Zealand to shoot all the live-action shots with Fusion 3D cameras. The Fusion Camera Rig contains two Sony F950s cameras for shooting native 3D.This means one camera captures the left eye shot and another camera captures the right eye shot. This ultimately creates a 3D image that more naturally matches what our eyes see.
"Avatar" witnessed a leap in filmmaking technology. Thirteen years later, my team and I have made another leap forward with the sequel. Continuing the predecessor, the sequel is shot in 3D. But what about shooting 3D underwater? There are three times as many camera options as a regular camera, making it difficult to operate. But the beauty of it is that if you can solve the water problem, then you never have to worry about anything else. You can photograph anything to do with water and do whatever you want.
The focus of the film is to shoot on the seabed and on the surface of the sea to show people swimming freely in the sea. That is, they need to be able to jump out of the water or dive into the water in their own way and be very realistic because it's really coming from real action. Because these (Jack and Neytiri's) children have to learn how to survive underwater, they grow up in Pandora Forest and don't know how to dive, so the fear factor of water is shown just right. We gave every actor good water training and used a very safe and systematic way for them to learn to dive. They are all scuba trained. But we did not use scuba when filming, but got them used to being underwater naturally for a long time. We went to Hawaii and had each actor scuba dive as well as do freediving training.
The more doubts you throw away, the better you can swim in your fantasy world. Let us join hands and jump into Pandora together.
James Cameron, born on August 16, 1954 in Ontario, Canada, is a Hollywood film director and screenwriter.
In 1981, he directed his first film "Piranha 2: Breeding". In 1984, he became famous for writing and directing the science fiction film "Terminator ". In 1986, he wrote and directed the movie " Alien 2". In 1991, he won the 18th Saturn Award for Best Director and Best Screenplay for the movie "Terminator 2". In 1994, he directed the movie "True Lies". In 1997, the movie "Titanic" directed by him achieved a box office of US$1.84 billion, breaking the global box office record; the film won 11 awards, including Best Picture, at the 70th Academy Awards, and James Cameron won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film.
In 2005, he was named "one of the 20 greatest directors in the world" by the British magazine "Empire". In December 2009, the science fiction film "Avatar" directed by him was released. The film's global box office total exceeded 2.7 billion US dollars, once again breaking the global box office record held by himself. In 2010, he was selected as the "Most Influential Person in the World" by " Times "; in the same year, he won the American Visual Effects Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement Award.
(picture comes from Internet search, infringement and deletion)
In order to facilitate more Zhihu netizens to read, I specially invited the Zhihu team to translate my answers into Chinese. The following answers will be presented in Chinese and English.
I think " Avatar: Water Path " is first and foremost an adventure. It is full of emotions, even more than its predecessor. I think it focused more on character and relationship dynamics than the first film, and conveyed my love of the ocean through spectacle. This is a touching story about family, a love letter to family, showing how family can make a person stronger. This is not a movie that pumps information into your brain, but requires you to feel the ocean, and perhaps transform your emotions into actions, conveying a strong message of marine environmental protection.
In contrast, in the previous film, Jack and Neytiri fell in love, which was obviously a love story. Jake and Neytiri's relationship develops, and they start a family and raise their children during a time of war and turmoil. The process of teaching them (children) survival skills is fun while revealing the greed of humans in resource extraction projects.
The second film discusses the issue of ocean development. "Avatar: Waterpath" focuses on Jake Sully and Neytiri, parents of five children, as they try to protect their family from a new threat to the planet Pandora. They sought refuge from the oceanic Menkalinan tribe and learned the ways of survival in the water.
ocean means a lot to me. Even before I met the ocean, I had a passion for it. I learned scuba diving in a remote part of Canada and loved the symbolism it held. Subconsciously, we all think of the ocean as our mother. At least by making this film, I can give back from the perspective of marine environmental protection. Avatar 2 combines two of my lifelong loves: visual storytelling in film and the ocean. So everything happened naturally.
I'm proud that we captured the facial expressions of non-human characters. These characters are similar to us, but not human. This effect is achieved not through makeup, but through CG-generated character presentation. We wanted the effects of the characters to be 100% authentic and the emotions expressed by the actors to be 100% conveyed.
It is often said that my works are often the most expensive and most ambitious large-scale productions ever produced. If current filmmaking technology doesn't deliver the results I envision, we'll have to create our own technology. When we did the first Avatar, it was a huge technological leap forward in performance capture photography. Now with "Avatar 2", the team and I have once again created technology. That's how we shoot it, our team always gives 110%. We integrated movies such as "Titanic" and "Top Gun: Maverick" into this series, and we did it in one go.
We will use Studio Binder's Snapshot List feature to completely fill our shot space. I've been dreaming about making Avatar for decades. I wrote an initial synopsis before making Titanic, but the technology at the time couldn't realize what I imagined. I'm looking for the Holy Grail (chasing a dream). The holy grail is to recreate full human emotions in CG characters. So, I waited and watched over the next few years as the required technology developed.
In 2007, we finally cracked the code. In this sci-fi epic, three different camera systems, CG motion capture, live action, and a hybrid of the two, were used for three different shooting scenes. FIST is a virtual system for motion capture scenes. The basic working principle of motion capture technology is this: the actors wear a special costume that reflects infrared light back to the fixed camera. Meanwhile, high-definition reference cameras provided animators with detailed coverage of complete action performances, with 120 fixed cameras used to capture actors' positions and movements. After the filming of the
performance part was completed, the staff packed up and went to New Zealand to shoot all the live-action shots with Fusion 3D cameras. The Fusion Camera Rig contains two Sony F950s cameras for shooting native 3D.This means one camera captures the left eye shot and another camera captures the right eye shot. This ultimately creates a 3D image that more naturally matches what our eyes see.
"Avatar" witnessed a leap in filmmaking technology. Thirteen years later, my team and I have made another leap forward with the sequel. Continuing the predecessor, the sequel is shot in 3D. But what about shooting 3D underwater? There are three times as many camera options as a regular camera, making it difficult to operate. But the beauty of it is that if you can solve the water problem, then you never have to worry about anything else. You can photograph anything to do with water and do whatever you want.
The focus of the film is to shoot on the seabed and on the surface of the sea to show people swimming freely in the sea. That is, they need to be able to jump out of the water or dive into the water in their own way and be very realistic because it's really coming from real action. Because these (Jack and Neytiri's) children have to learn how to survive underwater, they grow up in Pandora Forest and don't know how to dive, so the fear factor of water is shown just right. We gave every actor good water training and used a very safe and systematic way for them to learn to dive. They are all scuba trained. But we did not use scuba when filming, but got them used to being underwater naturally for a long time. We went to Hawaii and had each actor scuba dive as well as do freediving training.
The more doubts you throw away, the better you can swim in your fantasy world. Let us join hands and jump into Pandora together.
James Cameron, born on August 16, 1954 in Ontario, Canada, is a Hollywood film director and screenwriter.
In 1981, he directed his first film "Piranha 2: Breeding". In 1984, he became famous for writing and directing the science fiction film "Terminator ". In 1986, he wrote and directed the movie " Alien 2". In 1991, he won the 18th Saturn Award for Best Director and Best Screenplay for the movie "Terminator 2". In 1994, he directed the movie "True Lies". In 1997, the movie "Titanic" directed by him achieved a box office of US$1.84 billion, breaking the global box office record; the film won 11 awards, including Best Picture, at the 70th Academy Awards, and James Cameron won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film.
In 2005, he was named "one of the 20 greatest directors in the world" by the British magazine "Empire". In December 2009, the science fiction film "Avatar" directed by him was released. The film's global box office total exceeded 2.7 billion US dollars, once again breaking the global box office record held by himself. In 2010, he was selected as the "Most Influential Person in the World" by " Times "; in the same year, he won the American Visual Effects Guild Award for Lifetime Achievement Award.
(picture comes from Internet search, infringement and deletion)
