Report on Avatar Movie free essay sample

- Contents INTRODUCTION3 ?CAST OF THE MOVIE:4 ?FILIMING:5 ?VISUAL EFFECTS:5 ?ACCOLADES:6 ?CRITICAL RECEPTION:6 SUMMARY7 REFERENCES8 INTRODUCTION Avatar  is a 2009 American epic  science fiction  film written and directed by  James Cameron, and starring  Sam Worthington,  Zoe Saldana,  Stephen Lang,  Michelle Rodriguez,  Joel David Moore,  Giovanni Ribisi  and  Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in  2154, when humans are mining a precious mineral called  unobtanium  on  Pandora, a lush  moon of a  gas giant  in the  Alpha Centauri  star system. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of  Navi—a  humanoid  species indigenous to Pandora. The films title refers to the  genetically engineered Navi-human hybrid bodies used by a team of researchers to interact with the natives of Pandora. Development on  Avatar  began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page  scriptment  for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Camerons 1997 film  Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,  but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to achieve his vision of the film. Work on  the language  for the films  extraterrestrial beings  began in summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the screenplay and  fictional universe  in early 2006. Avatar  was officially budgeted at $237  million. Other estimates put the cost between $280  million and $310  million for production and at $150  million for promotion. The film was released for traditional 2-D viewing,  3-D  viewing (using the  RealD3D,  Dolby 3D,  XpanD 3D, and  IMAX 3Dformats), and 4-D† viewing. The stereoscopic  filmmaking was touted as a breakthrough in inematic technology. Avatar  premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was internationally released on December 16 and in the United States and Canada on December 18, to critical acclaim  and commercial success. The film broke several box office records during its release and became the  highest-grossing film  of all time  in the U. S. and Canada  and also worldwide, surpassing  Titanic, which had held the records for the previous 12 years. It also became the first film to gross more than $2 billion. Avatar  was nominated for nine  Academy Awards, including  Best Picture  and  Best Director,  and won three, for  Best Cinematography,  Best Visual Effects, and  Best Art Direction. The films home release went on to break opening sales records and became the top-selling  Blu-ray  of all time. Following the films success, Cameron signed with  20th Century Fox  to produce two sequels, making  Avatar  the first of a planned  trilogy. * CAST OF THE MOVIE: * Sam Worthington as Corporal Jake Sully. Sully is a disabled  former Marine and the films main protagonist. He becomes part of the Avatar Program after his twin brother is killed. His military background helps the Navi warriors relate to him. Cameron cast the Australian actor after a worldwide search for promising young actors, preferring relative unknowns to keep the budget down * Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. Quaritch is the head of the mining operations security detail and the films main antagonist. Fiercely loyal to his military code, he has a profound disregard for Pandoras inhabitants that is evident in both his actions and his language. Lang had unsuccessfully auditioned for a role in Camerons  Aliens  (1986), but the director remembered Lang and sought him for  Avatar. Sigourney Weaver  as Dr. Grace Augustine. Augustine is an  exbiologist  and head of the Avatar Program. She mentors Sully and is an advocate of peaceful relations with the Navi, having set up a school to teach them English. * Michelle Rodriguez  as Trudy Chacon. Chacon is a combat pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program who is sympathetic to the Navi. Cameron had wanted to work with Rodriguez since seeing her in  Girl fight. * Giovanni Ribisi  as Parker Selfridge. Selfridge is the corporate administrator for the RDA mining operation. While he is at first willing to destroy Naavi civilization to preserve the companys  bottom ine, he is reluctant to authorize the attacks on the Navi, doing so only after Quaritch persuades him that it is necessary, and the attacks will be humane. * Joel David Moore  as Dr. Norm Spellman. Spellman is a xenoanthropologist  who studies plant and animal life as part of the Avatar Program. He arrives on Pandora at the same time as Sully and operates an avatar. Although he is expected to lead the diplomatic contact with the Navi, it turns out that Jake has the personality better suited to win the natives respect. * Zoe Saldana  as Neytiri, the daughter of the leader of the Omaticaya, the Navi clan central to the story. She is attracted to Jake because of his bravery, though frustrated with him for what she sees as his naivete and stupidity. She serves as both the films main Navi protagonist and Jakes love interest. The character, like all the Navi, was created using performance capture, and its visual aspect is entirely computer generated. Saldana has also signed on for potential sequels. * FILIMING: Principal photography  for  Avatar  began in April 2007 in  Los Angeles  and  Wellington,  New Zealand. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which theyre looking at, Cameron said. The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film. The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D  Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron and Vince Pace. In January 200 7, Fox had announced that  3-D  filming for  Avatar  would be done at 24 frames per second despite Camerons strong opinion that a 3-D film requires higher  frame rate  to make  strobing  less noticeable. According to Cameron, the film is composed of 60% computer-generated elements and 40% live action, as well as traditional  miniatures. * VISUAL EFFECTS: A number of innovative  visual effects  techniques were used in the production of  Avatar. According to Cameron, work on the film had been delayed since the 1990s to allow the techniques to reach the necessary degree of advancement to adequately portray his vision of the film. The director planned to make use of photorealistic computer-generated characters, created using new  motion-capture  animation technologies he had been developing in the 14 months leading up to December 2006. Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandoras jungle, a  motion-capture stage  or volume six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full  performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore individually made  skull caps  fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the actors faces; the information collected about their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers. According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors physical performances to their digital counterparts. Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance. A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light between them. * ACCOLADES: NAME OF THE AWARD WON| AWARD WINNING CATEGORIES| ACADEMY AWARD| Art Direction, Cinematography, Visual effects. 67th GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS| Best Motion Picture Drama, Best Director, Production Design and Visual effects. | BRITISH ACADEMY OF FILM ARTS| Production Design and Special visual effects| * CRITICAL RECEPTION: 1. Armond White  of the  New York Press  wrote that Cameron used villainous American characters to misrepresent facets of  militarism,  capitalism, and  imperialism  Evo Morales,  Bolivias first indigenous president, praised the film for its profound show of resistance to capitalism and the struggle for the defence of nature†. . Adam Cohen  of  The New York Times  was more positive about the film, calling its  anti-imperialist  message a 22nd-century version of the  American colonists vs. the British,  India  vs. the Raj, or  Latin America  vs. United Fruit. 3. Ross Douthat  of  The New York Times opined that the film is Camerons long  apologia  for  pantheism   Hollywoods religion of choice for a generation now†, while Saritha Prabhu of  The Tennessean  called the film a misportrayal of pantheism and  Eastern spirituality  in general. . Annalee Newitz  of  io9  concluded that  Avatar  is another film that has the recurring fantasy about race whereby some white guy becomes the most awesome member of a non-white culture. SUMMARY Every coin has two faces . The same way, Avatar has also got some positive and negative points in it. But if we see the hard work that has be en put into the movie by the director of the movie James Cameron is tremendous he tried to make this movie a big hit compared to his other movie Titanic. The work that is done behind the screen can be seen on the screen also mainly in some scenes of the movie like the floating mountains, waterfalls and different creatures  may be they are all part of visual effects but still it takes lot of effort to put into it. Apart from many struggles the crew has undergone during the making of the movie, their hard work was fruitful that’s why they won so many awards. Avatar is a complete entertainer according to me that’s why it became part of my work. REFERENCES 1. Google 2. www. rottentomatoes. com 3. Wikipedia on Avatar