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Started by MacGuffin, January 21, 2006, 03:23:18 PM

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MacGuffin

Cameron's Mysterious Project 880
Is it Avatar?

Last month, a casting call was being held to procure a female lead for James Cameron's first big-budget picture since Titanic.

FEMALE LEAD: 16-mid 20s. Any ethnicity, including Caucasian. She moves and behaves with confidence and a sense of nobility. Lithe as a cat. Athletic and agile. She is a warrior. Graceful movement and an ear for languages and dialects are essential.

At the time, it was thought that Cameron was assembling the cast for Battle Angel, an adaptation of a Japanese android-themed manga series set in the 26th century. But according to a big scoop at JoBlo.com, it appears that Cameron is instead gearing up for his mysterious Project 880. What's more, they seem to think that Project 880 is the same film as Avatar, a film that Cameron has been trying to get made for years.

According to script treatments that have been floating around on the Internet, Avatar is about an interplanetary war and strange aliens who manifest themselves by possessing human bodies – their avatars in our world. Set against this background is a love story and a man trying to make his way as a miner by melding with an alien. Copies of the treatment can still be found with a little digging.

One of the leads is a woman named Zuleika, who is described thusly: A NA'VI WOMAN. She is young, and lithe as a cat, with a long, slender neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts... a statuesque vision. Let's not mince words here... she is devastatingly beautiful. For a girl with a tail. In human age she would be in her late teens.

According to JoBlo's source, Avatar will be made this spring at Fox Studios Baja. If that's the case, official announcements cannot be far off.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

polkablues

Quote from: MacGuffin on January 21, 2006, 03:23:18 PM
"One of the leads is a woman named Zuleika, who is described thusly: A NA'VI WOMAN. She is young, and lithe as a cat, with a long, slender neck, muscular shoulders, and nubile breasts... a statuesque vision. Let's not mince words here... she is devastatingly beautiful. For a girl with a tail. In human age she would be in her late teens."

That's absolutely horrible... it reads like a Bill O'Reilly novel.  Seriously, "nubile breasts"?
My house, my rules, my coffee

MacGuffin

Cameron Gives 880 Details
Online game to accompany film release.

Director James Cameron has confirmed to Business Week that the new film he is working on is indeed the mysterious Project 880. Cameron describes it only as "completely crazy, balls-out sci-fi" so far.

But he did reveal some highly unusual plans for the film. He intends for it to be a unique interactive experience, and will be preceeded by the opening of a massively multiplayer online RPG — a video game in which thousands of Internet-connected players simultaneously interact, compete, and cooperate.

In fact, it seems like a reversal of the usual movie-based-game formula. With Project 880 (or Avatar, as it might be called), players will experience the story's events and characters before seeing the film at the theater.

"So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level," explains Cameron. "We'll create a world for people, and then later present a narrative in that world."

"You are exploring the interaction of technology and the human imagination, and you play it out in a highly competitive, fast-paced interaction."

Is Cameron trying to create a revolutionary new synthesis of the game and movie genres? Or is his aim something more down-to-earth — money? After all, the online RPG's current big title, World of Warcraft, has earned its makers about $300 million in game sales and subscriptions — and that number goes up steadily every month.

Yet, as Business Week cannily notes, video games are a real hit-or-miss business. The cost of producing them approaches the cost of making movies, and a flop could end up with few or no buyers. For every EverQuest and World of Warcraft, there are many expensive failures.

It's also not clear yet whom Cameron will turn to for development of the Project 880 game. The development of a stable product and a highly-detailed online world takes years and demands the skills of the game industry's brightest programmers and artists.

Nevertheless, it's a fascinating project. Hopefully, Cameron's Project 880 won't keep us in suspense for too many more years.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

modage

Cameron Confirms Project 880 is Next
Source: Entertainment Weekly February 17, 2006

Titanic director James Cameron confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that he will first make the secretive Project 880 before moving on to Battle Angel, based on Yukito Kishiro's Japanese graphic novels.

"We've moved 'Project 880' into first position," Cameron said. "It's as classified as the Manhattan Project." Many believe it is actually a version of Avatar, the director's oft-rumored love story set against interplanetary war.

Cameron is ready to shoot "880" at 20th Century Fox - where he's also preparing Battle Angel. Neither film has been completely cast, but "880" is now slated for 2007 and "Angel" is targeted for 2009. "We couldn't do one unless we do both" says Cameron. "They use the same technology." Both projects will be shot in new High Definition 3-D.

Cameron adds that the release date years are still up in the air. "We don't want to get jammed up like on 'Titanic'... consensus has been we will serve no wine before its time."

Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

MacGuffin

More on Project 880
Casting call gives story hints.

James Cameron is moving forward with his first big-budget motion picture since Titanic. A casting call has gone out for several parts in the secretive Project 880; Movie City News has the report, which includes character and story details.

In the future, Jake, a paraplegic war veteran is brought to another planet, Pandora, which is inhabited by the Na'vi, a humanoid race with their own language and culture. Those from Earth find themselves at odds with each other and the local culture.

If the story holds true to the Avatar treatment Cameron wrote several years back, these Na'vi could be humans "possessed" by incorporeal aliens, who use them as their avatars.

A character named Jake is the star of the story — a young, angry human who has his life turned around when he visits Pandora. On that strange world, he meets Neytiri, an "exotic" young woman who becomes his teacher and lover. "She moves and behaves with confidence and a sense of nobility," reads her casting call. "Lithe as a cat. Athletic and agile, she is a warrior. Graceful movement and an ear for languages and dialects are essential."

Other characters include Norm, Jake's human pal; Tsu'tey, Neytiri's former betrothed who must reconcile his hate for Jake with his need to save his people; Quaritch, a Marine Corp general who's come to Pandora in search of a war; and Selfridge, Earth's governor for their operations on Pandora.

Project 880 is going to be shot with Cameron's digital 3-D technology, the first major film to be made in this format. Cameron has previously described his ambitious project as "completely crazy, balls-out sci-fi", and doesn't feel normal film projection methods can capture the movie he's planning to make.

Cameron is also considering a massively multiplayer online RPG (role-playing game) to tie in with the film and its universe.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

pete

go crazy, jim.  it's been 10 years.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

modage

Cameron comes back with CG extravaganza
Source: Hollywood Reporter

After nine years, during which time he has not launched a new feature film, James Cameron finally is targeting a summer 2008 release for his next project, 20th Century Fox's "Avatar," and he hopes to start shooting a cast of unknown actors on a stage in Los Angeles by February.

Cameron is plotting a high-concept comeback film for his return to mainstream features, well in the wake of his king-making helming of 1997's "Titanic." His new project, which also has gone under the cover title "Project 880," follows a paraplegic war veteran from Earth who is brought to another planet inhabited by a humanoid race at odds with Earth's citizens.

"Believe it or not, the shooting is a very small part of it," Cameron says. "It's a very, very big project where the shooting is like a month and a half -- not really very much. There's just so much CG, and the visual effects are a huge component. A lot of it is performance capture. We use different techniques (from, for example, Sony Pictures' upcoming 'Monster House'), but it's the same general idea."

Cameron takes pains to make a distinction between his use of performance capture versus the more popular motion capture techniques that often heavily modify recorded gestures in postproduction.

"With performance capture, you're capturing exactly what the actor does and translating it to the CG character without the interpretation of animators," he says. "So it's not performance by committee, it's performance by the actor. I'm an absolute stickler about this, and I wanted to make a director-centric performance capture process. We've spent literally since August of last year creating this and now we're ready to go."

Now that his next-generation production technologies have been hammered out, Cameron is focussing his attention on auditioning actors.

"We're very active right now in terms of casting," Cameron says. "We're not looking at anyone, we're looking at everyone. There are a number of characters that we can cast from that up-and-coming talent pool. They're not going to be well-known names -- until after the movie, hopefully."

Cameron says he much prefers discovering new talent than relying on the known quantities of established stars.

"It's more of a thrill to find people who are just about ready to break and recognizing what they have and then moving them to the next level," the director says. "That's more exciting, I think, than just hitching my wagon to Tom Cruise or John Travolta or whatever. They're great guys, I know them, but it's not as interesting to me."

That said, Cameron doesn't entirely shun celebrities, either.

"There are what, 10 to 15 bankable stars?" he says. "There are a lot more movies than that and there have to be other ways to make movies. We may end up with stars in 'Avatar' but it's not a requirement."

Cameron openly jokes about the digital HD 3-D digital camera rig he has been developing for six years with the help of Vince Pace.

"Vince and I have worked since 2000 developing this camera system," Cameron says. "And the irony is it was developed for me to use. And I've been going off and doing all these expeditions and doing expedition films in 3-D. We've really flogged the camera, made sure it works, upgraded it, re-engineered it, but now other people are using it, which is good, which I also like."

Four Cameron/Pace 3-D HD camera rigs are being used in production. Three are out on Eric Brevig's "Journey 3-D" for New Line Cinema in Vancouver and Giant Screen Films' is using a rig in South Africa on the Imax feature "Ocean Frenzy." But next, it will be Cameron's turn to put his own technology to use.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

matt35mm

Quote from: modage on July 07, 2006, 04:04:29 PM
Cameron openly jokes about the digital HD 3-D digital camera rig he has been developing for six years with the help of Vince Pace.

"Vince and I have worked since 2000 developing this camera system," Cameron says. "And the irony is it was developed for me to use. And I've been going off and doing all these expeditions and doing expedition films in 3-D. We've really flogged the camera, made sure it works, upgraded it, re-engineered it, but now other people are using it, which is good, which I also like."
This is not a joke, nor is it ironic that other people are using the camera as well.

Errors, errors.  All must die.

Pubrick

Quote from: matt35mm on July 08, 2006, 03:39:00 AM
Quote from: modage on July 07, 2006, 04:04:29 PM
Cameron openly jokes about the digital HD 3-D digital camera rig he has been developing for six years with the help of Vince Pace.

"Vince and I have worked since 2000 developing this camera system," Cameron says. "And the irony is it was developed for me to use. And I've been going off and doing all these expeditions and doing expedition films in 3-D. We've really flogged the camera, made sure it works, upgraded it, re-engineered it, but now other people are using it, which is good, which I also like."
This is not a joke
i guess you had to be there.

behind the bushes.

under the paving stones.

MacGuffin

Cameron's Avatar Due In '09
Source: Sci Fi Wire

Director James Cameron told the British Independent newspaper that he has pushed back the release date of his upcoming SF epic movie Avatar to the summer of 2009. "I'll spend many months completing the special effects on Avatar, and it will not be released until the summer of 2009," Cameron told the paper. "It's quite a challenge, and for that reason, I embrace it."

Cameron, who has devoted several years to filming science documentaries, is ready to tackle another big-budget science fiction film, like his Terminator series. "I felt I'd exhausted the treasury, and it was time to go back to work," Cameron said. "Avatar is a very ambitious sci-fi movie. ... It's a futuristic tale set on a planet 200 years hence. It's an old-fashioned jungle adventure with an environmental conscience. It aspires to a mythic level of storytelling."

Cameron wrote the screenplay 11 years ago, and it has been featured on Empire magazine's list of the 12 greatest unproduced scripts in Hollywood. "The film requires me to create an entirely new alien culture and language, and for that I want 'photo-real' CGI characters," Cameron said. "Sophisticated enough performance-capture animation technology is only coming on stream now. I've spent the last 14 months doing performance-capture work. The actor performs the character, and then we animate it."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Pubrick

under the paving stones.

modage

YES.

'Titanic' Director Joins Fox on $200 Million Film
By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: January 8, 2007

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 8 — James Cameron, the director whose "Titanic" set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, "Avatar," which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said today.

The film, with a budget of close to $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in3D in conventional theaters. The story pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, using live actors and digital technology to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

Earlier movies like the "The Lord of the Rings" did so on a limited basis, while those like "The Polar Express" have used live actors to drive animated images with so-called "motion capture" technology. But none has gone as far as "Avatar" will do to create an entirely photorealistic world, complete with virtual characters on that scale, Mr. Cameron said in a telephone interview.

"This film is a true hybrid — a full live-action shoot, with C.G. characters in C.G. and live environments," he said, referring computer-generated images. "Ideally at the end of the of day the audience has no idea which they're looking at."

The making of "Titanic," Mr. Cameron's last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. The film, released in 1997, went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made. But it went on to become a historic success, taking in a record-breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, and also winning 11 Oscars, including an award for best picture.

Mr. Cameron said that he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on his last gargantuan production, and that he was already four months into shooting the nonprincipal scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project today.

"I've looked long and hard at 'Titanic' and other effects-related things I've done where they've drifted budget-wise," he said. "This has been designed from the ground up to avoid those pitfalls. Will we have other pitfalls? Yes, probably."

For its aliens, "Avatar" will rely on characters that will be designed in the computer, but played by human actors, with tiny cameras on headsets recording their performances to be inserted into a virtual world.

Mr. Cameron has already devised revolutionary methods to shoot the film, which he has been quietly doing since the fall, and expects to create still more methods to bring to life the vision of a completely realistic alien world. He and computer experts have designed a camera that allows the director to observe the performance of the actors-as-aliens in the virtual environment in real time.

Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, as a paralyzed former marine who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien — 10 feet tall and blue. Zoe Saldana, another relative unknown, has been chosen as the love interest.

"We could do it with make-up, in a 'Star Trek' manner, we could put rubber on his face, but I wasn't interested in doing it that way," said Mr. Cameron. "With the new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be — beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful — evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection."

The live-action shoot with actors will begin in April, with major effects being done by Weta, the filmmaker Peter Jackson's New Zealand-based effects company, which worked on his "Lord of the Rings." The film is scheduled for release in summer 2009.

"This will launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies," said Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. "It's once again Jim is transforming the medium. Jim's not just a filmmaker; every one of his films have pushed the envelope, in its aesthetic and in technology. This is an astounding undertaking, and one only Jim could do justice to."
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

modage

Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Gold Trumpet

The bad thing: Cameron sounds like George Lucas by explaning how new and inventive technology will sell tickets for the movie (yawn). The good thing: Cameron also made Terminator 2, which while a special effects bonzana for its time, still holds up as decent action. Lucas' effort in Attack of the Clones was corny on arrival. So Cameron has better decision making skills.

modage

Quote from: The Gold Trumpet on January 14, 2007, 04:22:45 PM
The bad thing: Cameron sounds like George Lucas by explaning how new and inventive technology will sell tickets for the movie (yawn).
i'll tell you what.  i'm a huge james cameron fan, but this thought occured to me the other day.  its been so long since he's made a film, this could be The Phantom Menace if it doesnt work.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.