Lightstorm producer Jon Landau told VFXWORLD at Sunday's (April 23, 2006) NAB Digital Cinema Summit in Las Vegas that director James Cameron will emphasize performance capture technology as part of his upcoming digital 3-D feature production plans. Although Cameron still hasn't decided whether BATTLE ANGEL or AVATAR (officially known as PROJECT 880) will go first when he begins back-to-back production at the end of the year, according to Landau, both sci-fi projects will be live action/CGI blends that will be even more "director centric" with performance capture than Robert Zemeckis' approach. "They will be more KING KONG than POLAR EXPRESS and very photographic," Landau suggested.
Lightstorm is evaluating three top performance capture vendors: Giant, Motion Analysis and Vicon.
Lightstorm is already partnering with Microsoft, AMD and Autodesk (on MotionBuilder), and will rely on "resources out there" rather than trying to build proprietary tools for vfx supervisor Rob Legato's virtual production studio and pipeline. Landau added that Lightstorm will utilize vfx studios for their extensive effects. Previs, meanwhile, which will be partially achieved with game engines, will actually play a minimal role in this digital blurring of non-traditional production methodologies, with cinematographer Vince Pace working with Sony on new digital 3-D cameras to deliver immersive, film-like capture with no compromises on Cameron's features.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
