Way back in 1982, futurist John Naisbitt authored the fascinating book Megatrends.  I especially recall my reaction to one of the trends – High tech, high touch – and the need to balance between technology and human interaction.  I recently caught a small segment on television about the making of Avatar.  (There’s lots of interesting clips of this stuff on YouTube.)  A couple of things really struck me.

Cameron Invented Some Cool New Tech!

The breadth and depth of new technologies invented (or, in come cases, refined) by James Cameron and his team is truly astounding.  Not just the “performance capture” technologies and related techniques, but also the technology to integrate the video streams from dozens (in some cases, hundreds) of video cameras and computer generated graphics in real time to a single ‘virtual camera‘ device that Cameron could look through as the filming was being done, and let him select the best angles and perspectives to capture the moment.  According to Wikipedia, the virtual camera system:

…displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor’s virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron, “It’s like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale.”

Other technical innovations included a system for lighting very large areas, a massive motion-capture stage and the technology and methods for full performance capture, including facial expressions.  He also reduced the weight of notoriously heavy and unwieldy 3-D cameras to something that could just about be hand-held and up to the dynamics he envisioned for Avata.

But, Cameron Also Paid Attention t0 the Hi Touch!

But what most intrigued me, and took me back to Naisbitt and Megatrends, was the attention Cameron paid to the “hi touch” to make such a hi tech movie work.  This included taking the actors to rain forests in Hawaii to spend time getting the feel of such a landscape – and some of the most similar terrain he could find to his imaginary Pandora.  He wanted the actors to hike around the forest – to be able to recapture the feeling of a lush forest when they were on the concrete sound stage.  He wanted the actors to really look as though they were in control of the flying creatures, so he build a gimbal rig to let the actors get the feel of the movements (which had been previously worked out with wire frame models and their possible flight paths).

Hi Tech, Hi Touch

How are you balancing the high technology you are deploying with the high touch techniques that will help them integrate into the human world in which they must operate?

Image Courtesy of Collider.com

imgimgWay back in 1982, futurist John Naisbitt authored the fascinating book Megatrends.  I especially recall my reaction to one of the trends – High tech, high touch – and the need to balance between technology and human interaction.  I recently caught a small segment on television about the making of Avatar.  (There’s lots of interesting clips of this stuff on YouTube.)  A couple of things really struck me.

Cameron Invented Some Cool New Tech!

The breadth and depth of new technologies invented (or, in come cases, refined) by James Cameron and his team is truly astounding.  Not just the “performance capture” technologies and related techniques, but also the technology to integrate the video streams from dozens (in some cases, hundreds) of video cameras and computer generated graphics in real time to a single ‘virtual camera‘ device that Cameron could look through as the filming was being done, and let him select the best angles and perspectives to capture the moment.  According to Wikipedia, the virtual camera system:

…displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor’s virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action. According to Cameron, “It’s like a big, powerful game engine. If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale.”

Other technical innovations included a system for lighting very large areas, a massive motion-capture stage and the technology and methods for full performance capture, including facial expressions.  He also reduced the weight of notoriously heavy and unwieldy 3-D cameras to something that could just about be hand-held and up to the dynamics he envisioned for Avata.

But, Cameron Also Paid Attention t0 the Hi Touch!

But what most intrigued me, and took me back to Naisbitt and Megatrends, was the attention Cameron paid to the “hi touch” to make such a hi tech movie work.  This included taking the actors to rain forests in Hawaii to spend time getting the feel of such a landscape – and some of the most similar terrain he could find to his imaginary Pandora.  He wanted the actors to hike around the forest – to be able to recapture the feeling of a lush forest when they were on the concrete sound stage.  He wanted the actors to really look as though they were in control of the flying creatures, so he build a gimbal rig to let the actors get the feel of the movements (which had been previously worked out with wire frame models and their possible flight paths).

Hi Tech, Hi Touch

How are you balancing the high technology you are deploying with the high touch techniques that will help them integrate into the human world in which they must operate?

Image Courtesy of Collider.com

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