Speaking recently at the Blu-Con in Los Angeles; the convention focusing on the current state of Blu-ray Disc, and the emerging technologies that will shape its future; James Cameron spoke out about the groundbreaking technologies that helped him realize his vision for Avatar, the Avatar Blu-ray releases, and how he feels about the format in general.
It may have come as a bit of a shock to Jim that the 3D aspect of Avatar (which not only broke ground in terms of its technological marvel, but went on to become the highest grossing movie of all time) is possibly the main ‘new’ technology associated with the film; as he “had already done 3D for ten years, and created the technology six years ago”, and insists that the CGI was the “big thing” for him.
Cameron states that he “spent two years in R&D [research and development] to develop the facial capture for Avatar”, and thinks it’s “funny” that 3D was the talking point in the media; as developing and rendering the CGI, is what led to every minute of Avatar footage costing $1 million to produce, and that the post-production bill was partly responsible for the recent theatrical re-release of the film.
But the immense production cost of the additional footage; which has been added into the extended versions (and will soon be available to watch on the upcoming extended edition Blu-ray release); was also done to fully utilize the potential offered by the Blu-ray format, which was given a resounding endorsement by Cameron at Blu-Con, when he uttered the following statement; “I love Blu-ray, and I wish all of my movies could be seen on Blu-ray.”
There’s no surprising reason as to why James thinks so highly of the Blu-ray format; as he praises the very things that have led to it winning the HD format war (over HD DVD), and are propelling it towards becoming the standard format to replace DVD; “it’s the image quality, and the storage density, that mean we can pack so much on to a disc.”
And being able to load so much information onto a disc, and retain such high image and sound quality, has encouraged Cameron to abandon his usual practices of releasing dozens of editions of his movies (there are countless editions of the first and second Terminator movies floating around on DVD), and stating that he “wants this [extended edition] to be definitive.
But despite the claim of the next release being the definitive one, there will be at least one further addition in the near future, with the release of the 3D version; which Cameron believes has been “mastered”, and “looks great”, and is a title that Panasonic have already announced, hold the exclusive rights to (in the U.K.), and will be bundling with several of its Full HD 3D products (including not only TV’s, but its 3D camcorder as well), after an as yet unconfirmed release date.
