The money for Avatar.

A few months ago, 20th Century Fox proudly announced that the production cost of Avatar, which they invested and released, was well controlled, with only 237 million US dollars spent, which was lower than Pirates of the Caribbean 3 (300 million) and harry potter and the half-blood prince (250 million), ranking fourth among the most expensive movies ever. Fox's move is easy to understand. The most expensive movie is not as spectacular as the one with the highest box office, but it is often an ominous sign. Always accompanied by words like losing money. For example, in 2007, False God 2 spent 65.438+75 billion yuan, which was the most expensive comedy in the history of automatic coronation, but the global box office was only 65.438+73 billion yuan, which made the executives of Universal Pictures miserable.

However, it didn't take long for Fox to have high confidence in the profitability of Avatar, and he voluntarily revealed that the production and marketing expenses of Avatar would cost 500 million dollars. How much did James Cameron burn? Is Avatar the most expensive movie ever? Cameron has always been famous for spending money like water in Hollywood. His previous work Titanic was the first film with a production cost of 200 million US dollars, which was from 65438 to 0997 in the 20th century. And as we all know, the budget of the film is actually $654.38 billion, and the result is $654.38 billion. Cameron even put a knife in the editing room that time, and the note next to it said: Only for personal use after the film was smashed.

300 million dollars, and they are all cheap actors.

According to the estimation of Fox's competitors, the production cost of Avatar is at least $300 million, which is the same as Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and ranks as the most expensive movie in the history of movies. Considering that Avatar has no well-paid stars, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 has three well-paid stars, Johnny Depp, earning $20 million, Orlando Brom, earning170,000 and keira knightley, earning $5 million, then Avatar is absolutely amazing.

As for the figure of $237 million, it is not that Fox deliberately lied. Cameron's filming Avatar is no longer as stubborn as he was filming Titanic. He spent millions of dollars to customize a set of luxury tableware for a shot, and worked overtime to achieve the perfect effect, driving hundreds of people in the crew to almost have a nervous breakdown. In the words of Wired magazine, "55-year-old Cameron doesn't need to build half an ocean liner on a Mexican beach". Please note, however, that Avatar, which has a production cycle of four years, was originally scheduled to be released on May 22, 2009, and it should cost 237 million yuan when it is completed as scheduled. But Cameron proposed to increase the post-production time for half a year, so the extra 60 million yuan should be used for this.

The next problem is that "King Kong" and "20 12", which use a lot of computer special effects and have CG shots in more than half of the pictures, only cost $207 million and $200 million respectively. Why does Cameron want to specialize and spend more 1 billion?

To put it simply, King Kong is the only money-burning king in King Kong who is generated by computer and performed by real people, while Avatar is full of such guys, and human beings are only supporting roles. After all, the story of "20 12" happened on the earth, and many scenes can be filmed in real life, while "Avatar" created a brand-new world-Pandora planet out of thin air. It takes six days for an omnipotent god to create the world, but it certainly takes more time and money for Cameron, a demigod, to create Pandora and its magnificent life.

They said, if we really start studying this, we are finished.

The cost of science fiction movies is often directly proportional to originality. In fact, as early as 1977, Cameron had the original idea of Avatar. 1993 became the co-founder of digital domain of computer special effects company. At that time, what he wanted most was Avatar, not Titanic.

He came to the digital domain to tell his partners about the creativity and concept of Avatar, saying that his protagonist is a blue-skinned alien with a height of 10 feet (about 3 meters). They have thin waists and extremely strong limbs. Cameron wants these people to be completely computer-generated, but they should look as natural and vivid as real people. As a result, the other party told him that it was impossible. Because it would cost countless time and money, and the computer hardware at that time was not enough to support such special effects. A visual artist told him bluntly, "If we really start working on it, we are finished." . Because we can't do it, there is no such advanced technology. "

Cameron started to go it alone. In order to finish Titanic, he gave up the director's salary. When the film brought Fox a lot of money, they didn't forget him and gave him 75 million dollars in shares. In this way, he has his own funds to develop new technologies.

In the summer of 2000, Cameron had a new idea. He will make Avatar into a 3D movie. He invited Vincent Pease, a photographer who had filmed Abyss and Titanic with him, to his yacht in the Pacific Ocean, nominally to take photos of the deep sea and detect warships that sank to the bottom of the sea during World War II. In fact, Cameron wants to develop a high-definition 3D camera with him. 3D movies are not new, but the old-fashioned 3D movie technology is very unreliable, which often gives the audience a headache.

After they put forward the initial idea, they persuaded Sony to develop a portable high-definition 3D camera. The traditional camera weighs 450 pounds (about 200 kilograms), while the new 3D camera only weighs 50 pounds (about 22 kilograms). More importantly, someone must use this photography and projection system. Cameron persuaded young director robert rodriguez to use this technology in the filming of Spy Prodigy 3, which was a great success, with a global box office of more than 200 million dollars.

In 2002, "Avatar" came back to life, because the New Zealand fat man and his ambitious Vita studio used motion capture technology, which was completely computer-generated, and created Gollum, a bald monster who likes to mumble. Later, Vita Studio and george lucas's Industrial Light Magic became Cameron's partners.

Next, Cameron traveled around the world to persuade the projectionist to install a 3D screen. His rhetoric is that movies are about to enter a new era, but before 2005, there were only more than 80 3D screens in the United States. For Cameron, he still needs more 3D screens, because 3D movies will definitely be more expensive than the regular version.

Someone is imitating God and creating everything.

By 2005, Cameron's 3D film shooting technology had been improved day by day. He developed the performance capture system, an upgraded version of stereoscopic reproduction photography technology and motion capture technology synchronized with human vision. The key point of this system is that hundreds of extremely tiny cameras are installed on people's heads and whole bodies. These cameras can capture people's facial expressions and body movements, and input the information into the computer, with a conversion rate as high as 95%. On the basis of these performances, special effects personnel made Pandora planet.

With the help of this system, the boundary between real-life performances and computer-generated characters has disappeared, but there is no doubt that Avatar, as an early adopter, will spend a lot of money to develop a lot of software and hardware. As for live shooting, Los Angeles took 365,438+0 days, plus New Zealand for one month, a little over two months. However, the workload of post-production is extremely huge, almost every shot needs special effects processing by computer, and the effect of the whole post-production takes more than two years, which is more than twice that of ordinary super special effects movies. It is not difficult to understand that the additional investment alone exceeds $60 million.

Cameron also invited Paul Framo, a symbologist from the University of Southern California, to create a set of nanolanguages for him. Framo started work in August 2005. I discussed a lot with Cameron, who is the kind of director who knows everything. He created the basic grammatical structure of nanometer, invented many terms belonging to nanometer, and changed his pronunciation and intonation.

Framo spent 13 months writing a pamphlet called How to Speak Nami, and then taught the actors to use this new language. This means that although the actors only spent two months actually shooting, the crew had to spend more time studying Nami and rehearsing. Framo's work does not stop there. Together with Cameron, he will name all the animals, plants and place names on Pandora, and each one must have three names: English, Latin and Nami. Finally, several writers compiled these into a 350-page Pandora encyclopedia.

In the spring of 2005, Cameron thought that the time was ripe for filming Avatar, so he approached the top management of Fox Company and asked them to provide funds for his filming. In order to reassure them to shoot $654.38+95 billion, he found a safe way, that is, he suggested that Fox pay millions of dollars to shoot a 30-second experimental short film of Avatar for him to show that all the new technologies he used are completely available. With the help of Vita Studio and Industrial Light Magic, the experimental short film Avatar touched the top management of Fox, and they happily wrote a check for Cameron. An experimental short film costs 5 million dollars, which only Cameron can do.