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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

It's Baaaack: The James Cameron / Jon Landau Discussion At Microsoft Advance 08

Jim here. It disappeared for awhile (old link was here) - but an intrepid reader of MarketSaw (thanks Mirza!) sent me the link so that we can watch the excellent conversation between James Cameron and Jon Landau at Microsoft Advance 08. They spoke there as they used Microsoft to co-develop an digital asset management system to track all of the components of their shots (blades of grass, vines, buildings, etc).

They talk mainly about AVATAR and the technology that they used for the project. It's about 50 minutes long. A few things of note:

1. They have 120 cameras surrounding their performance capture volume.
2. Actors wore a headset similar to what Madonna wears for her concerts - but rather than a mike in front of her face, it is a camera - capturing all of their facial movements.
3. Cameron used a virtual camera that he held with both hands and he was able to scan around the volume in realtime and have a crude CGI mockup display for him with the actors and backgrounds in place - buildings, mountains, jungle - you name it. Very powerful.

Here is the link. It should spawn Windows Media Player.

If that one doesn't work for whatever reason, go here and then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on "James Cameron and Producer Jon Landau of Lightstorm Entertainment".

If you have further notes that you would like to share from the video, by all means list them in the comments. I chose these as my highlights.

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Jim Dorey
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jim (at) marketsaw (dot) com

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