Avatar+and+the+3D+Era

media type="youtube" key="nZmpw2AFU2I?fs=1" height="385" width="640" In December of 2009, James Cameron's long-awaited arrival of Avatar was here. With a budget of $237 million and 15 years of planning and scripting, this movie was speculated to change the the cinema world forever - and it did just that. In a review from Steven James Snyder, he wrote "...because this is 3D unlike any other; 3D as legitimate artistic aesthetic. Still after almost a year, //Avatar// is doing things that Hollywood seems incapable of emulating." (Snyder 1). What makes Avatar unlike any other 3D movie, was that it was filmed and planned to be 3D from the start. James Cameron co-developed a new generation of stereoscopic cameras. In laymen's terms, these cameras capture multiple different perspectives of one scene, much like two cameras strapped together as one, copying the human eye's view of 3D.With this new camera, Cameron used 3D as it has never been seen before. Cameron also devised a new virtual camera, which was a hand-held monitor that allowed the viewer to walk through a 3D terrain. Eddie Wrenn explained it as follows, "In essence, this allowed Cameron to direct the film as if it was computer game. If he wanted to change the viewpoint, he could click a few buttons on a mouse and a computer would redraw the virtual world from the new perspective." (Wrenn 1).

When one thinks of a 3D movie, their first thought is an object flying out and appearing to almost hit them. But with Cameron's Avatar, instead of having objects come out of the screen he gives the entire screen depth, making it appear as if we are actual there and watching it through a layer of glass. Cameron gives the screen a clear foreground and background as opposed to the typical flat, moving painting.

The glasses needed to view this new 3D are even different. They are no longer the red-and-blue glasses that appear in kids' toys that cause severe headaches after using. These new glasses are polarising and untinted nor do they rely on the usual method the old glasses used, which was relying of frequent shots from the screen to make a 3D appearance. These new glasses instead have a different filter in each lens, each removing different parts of the image received by the eye. By doing so, it makes it feel like the brain is seeing this screen from two different angles, creating 3D.

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