I thought the day would never come, but yes, James Cameron finally released the trailer for his eternal in-production movie, Avatar. For those of you who don’t know, this is the movie for which Cameron wrote the script in 1994, and scheduled the beginning of production for the end of 1997.
Well, 12 years later, I have to say, it was worth the wait. Cameron developed some new technologies for the movie, including a new motion-capture system and a new 3D camera. Though we cannot yet see how the 3D output will be, the motion capture shots in the trailer are just incredibly well done and rendered. The VFX in general are just out of this world, props to Digital Domain for that. The trailer is aesthetically flawless. But, there is a big but. Movies that spend that much time, money and effort on visual often end up having a crappy scenario. I hope Cameron proves me wrong.
Please check out this trailer in full HD on Apple’s website, it is worth every single kb you’re going to download.
At Nova Film, we’re currently working with Ubisoft in Quebec City to produce short videos about some of their upcoming projects. Of course, that led me to visit their website, on which I had not been for almost a year. Coincidentally, I visited it on the same day that they released the trailer of Assassin’s Creed 2, a soon to be released sequel to the monster hit video game.
By the time you read this, I’m not sure if my jaw will be back in place, since it dropped so low after watching that trailer.
I don’t watch video game trailers often to be honest. I’ll check some once in a while, mostly on rainy days when I have some time to kill and I want to make a rental. For me, to this day, no trailer had surpassed the quality of the WoW: Wrath of the Lich King trailer. It was well directed, had a progressive rhythm, and the quality of the CG animation was so flawless, I had to watch it several times to convince myself it was 100% CG.
Today, in my opinion, that trailer was surpassed by AC2. The first minutes are not really on the WoW level; I think the women look too CG. But when the battle sequence kicks in, you feel like suggesting actors to find another job. The movements are fluid, the lighting is perfect, as well as the textures and the costumes are splendid. And the final scene… I bet that if they were to do a live-action movie in the same place with similar lighting, you could easily put in one of those CG shots, and no one would even notice.
I learned at the same time that the trailer was produced by Ubisoft Digital Arts, which is a newly-launched production studio that is currently working on James Cameron’s Avatar. If this is a preview of the VFX quality for that movie, we’re now sure we’re in for a treat !
