James Cameron has been talking about the filming process for his new film Avatar which is likely to grow into a trilogy...if not more! He says a couple of interesting things, in particular he talks about how much CGI and his newly created performance capture technique.

From The Hollywood Reporter through Jo Blo:

"Believe it or not, the shooting is a very small part of it," Cameron says. "It's a very, very big project where the shooting is like a month and a half -- not really very much. There's just so much CG, and the visual effects are a huge component. A lot of it is performance capture...

...With performance capture, you're capturing exactly what the actor does and translating it to the CG character without the interpretation of animators," he says. "So it's not performance by committee, it's performance by the actor. I'm an absolute stickler about this, and I wanted to make a director-centric performance capture process. We've spent literally since August of last year creating this and now we're ready to go."

You have to admire his determination and vision, and despite his continual return to sci-fi and the world of CGI, he still retains the belief and focus on the directors and actors. He also talks quite off-handedly about the top Hollywood stars, there may be some in Avatar, but then again perhaps not. I'm dying to see this movie, but I do fear that we'll be in for a long wait, especially with that much complex CGI involved.