Charlotte Knibbs

Avatar Trailer

Wow! The trailer for this movie looks awesome, the first film to be made entirely 3D… rather than just having a few objects swoop out at you form the cinema screen, this one will be like looking through a window into another world.

I have to say I have seen a number of films at the cinema in 3D… but I just think it’s sad that it is only THAT amazing for the few weeks it is shown in the cinema, and then after that when it’s available on DVD it will just be another “flat” movie.

The technology just doesn’t exist yet to full appreciate a film of this cost.

The $237m budget of Avatar signals a leap in technology – indeed, David Cameron, the film director who pushed technical effects to the limit with the blockbuster Titanic in 1997, and ushered in the dawn of action films with ’80s classics such as Terminator and Aliens, waited 15 years before starting filming as technology had not advanced enough to portray his vision.

I don’t know how I would begin to explain the technology behind making this movie to the level of 3 dimension that David Cameron is after… but after a little googling… it goes a bit like this:

If you’ve had previous experience of 3D, your impression will probably be one of a flattish image with the occasional object ‘flying’ at you’.

But these advances are different – the entire screen has depth, taking on the appearance of a window through which the viewer is watching a ‘world’ on the screen, with a distinct foreground and background, rather than a flat, moving painting

In effect, the cinema screen becomes a theatre stage.

There’s still at least one throw-back to the ‘early days’ of 3D – viewers will need to wear glasses to get the illusion.

However these are not the red and green cardboard cut-outs you used to get free with Sugar Puffs before Comic Relief.

These are polarising glasses, untinted, which do not cause the headaches experienced in the past, or more importantly rely on frequent ‘pans’ of the camera to make the image appear in 3D.

Each lens has a different filter , which removes different part of the image as it enters each eye. This gives the brain the illusion it is seeing the picture from two different angles, creating the 3D effect.