Now that all productions can access special effects, and that hundreds of millions of dollars can be invested in a blockbuster, that “artistic talent” is what makes the difference, he considers the king of the box office.
“Anyone can buy a brush. But not everyone can paint a work,” says the filmmaker, interviewed in Paris on the occasion of the premiere of “Avatar 2, the sense of water,” starting December 16 in Latin America and Spain.
The production of this film, which comes thirteen years after the first installment, required enormous technical resources, such as several underwater filming sessions, in apnea. “I am a kind of central filter for everything, but I have several artists who work for me, they draw the characters, the architecture, the world, the plants, the costumes…”, he sums up.
“I like to think that (the production of the film) is like a big hippie community with a lot of great artists,” he adds. “Technology does not create art. It is artists who create art.”
A film like “Avatar”, which is shot against a blue background before sets, textures and props are added by computer, owes everything to the acting of the actors, Cameron believes, even if they are hardly recognizable after digital processing.
“The heart, the emotion, the creativity… all that comes first,” during the shooting of “real” scenes, the first stage of the film’s construction, even before the camera angles and shots are defined. “Only after that does the technical work start,” he explains.
As for Artificial Intelligence, used to process the images, Cameron assures that he does not use it to “replace the actors, but to be even more faithful to their interpretation.”