Yesterday, was ‘Avatar Day‘. 
We’re going to do something unprecedented.
It’s a social marketing experiment.
We’re going to take over as many IMAX 3D theaters and other select 3D theaters worldwide on August 21 and we’re going to let an international global audience come see 15 minutes of Avatar for free.
It’s going to be Avatar day.
I touched upon this in an earlier post, but if you’re unfamiliar with the notion of Avatar Day, then you’re probably not too up on your Avatar knowledge either. Allow me to summarise the latter so we can get on with talking about the former.
Avatar is the new film from James Cameron, 14-odd years in the making, this $237 million epic is apparently set to change the movie making landscape forever. Not thanks to amazing story telling (although we’re hoping for something pretty good at least), or even due to the ever present trademark blue tint he likes to add to his work.
No, this film has been 12 years in the making because Cameron has been waiting and waiting for the technology to be ready to fully realise a vision he had all those years ago.
The plot itself snagged my interest some time ago (two years ago maybe?); set in the 22nd Century, the majority of the story takes place on a distant planet called Pandora, inhabited by a humanoid race with its own language and culture. Humans cannot breathe the air on Pandora so have created avatars, hybrid creatures controlled via a mental link by a human operator. Add to that that it’s an original story and one being brought to the screen by a certain Mr James Cameron, and I was hooked.
Yes, I like films. Yes, I like science-fiction films. But this film is being billed as something as revolutionary as when Hollywood first introduced sound and colour. Why? Well that’s down to the much-heralded Digital 3D.
I’ve seen 3D films before, or films with at least ‘some scenes in 3D’ – the last one being Superman Returns back at the IMAX actually. Anyway, my point is, these films/scenes that have come before – they seemed to be in 3D just for the sake of it.
“Oh this bit? We’re shooting this in 3D! So, so, so therefore we’ll throw some things out at the audience!”
But with Avatar, not so.
The 3D element here is almost organic. It’s just there, if that makes sense? You don’t watch this film (or at least the 15min trailer that I saw yesterday), you experience it.
And it… was… beautiful.
Stunning even.
Completely immersive and – at one point in particular – simply breath-taking.
There’s another post in me about the whole ‘experiment in social marketing’ thing, but I’ll save that for another day. For now at least…
Roll on December 18th 🙂