James Cameron Discusses Avatar's "Uncanny Valley"
Posted 08.15.09 by BrentJS
When James Cameron introduced footage of his new 3-D sci-fi film at the San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), he said that the idea for Avatar had been in his head for more than 14 years. However, he waited a decade to begin developing the project because he had to wait until technology caught up with his imagination.
The footage shown featured many scenes of the Navi, feline-esque denizens of the planet Pandora, rendered in incredible photorealistic CGI. Cameron, tight-lipped about Avatar until SDCC, recently admitted that creating realistic characters was the "biggest challenge of the film."
No matter how much art and technology we threw at this thing, if it wasn't in the eyes of the characters — if you didn't see a soul there — it would just be a big clanking machine.
We've seen movies never quite get out of the uncanny valley. That's a reference to a negative effect that is created when something approaches human (in appearance) but isn't quite there; it creates this creepiness. Our goal right from the get-go is that we had to get over the uncanny valley. These characters have to be real, they have to be alive. And what the actors do has to come through 100%.
Cameron is offering the public a free screening of 16 minutes of Avatar on August 21 at 101 IMAX theaters in the United States and Canada. The event, dubbed "Avatar Day," will feature an introduction by Cameron and new footage not shown at SDCC.
Next Showing: Avatar opens December 18