Avatar broke the mould for filmmaking in so many ways, and has had the biggest effect on the visual effects industry of any film for many years. Combining live action with full CGI, Avatar was truly monumental achievement by the visionary director James Cameron. Already with Alien, Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Titanic under his belt - three movies which also featured incredible visual effects but not quite enough to appear on this list - Cameron really upped the ante with Avatar. Cameron worked for two years with a team of designers simply to create the look of the Na'vi, before signing up Weta Digital to help create the world of Pandora. Avatar was filmed in both 2D and 3D with Cameron's own Fusion Camera System, which used two high-definition digital lenses in a single camera. This allowed images to be recorded with enhanced depth, allowing for even greater creation of depth when viewed by audiences. The process which the actors went through to portray the characters was entirely new, too. It involved motion capture, similar to that of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, but also included a small camera that was specifically recording facial expressions. This advance in performance capture allowed for an unprecedented level of realism in the CGI. The performance capture stage was also much larger than any other previously, allowing Cameron to add a real-time camera to direct the computer-generated scenes in the same way as live-action scenes. The actors appeared in their CGI forms, already in Pandora: an innovative and unique approach to digital filmmaking. Avatar revolutionised not only the filmmaking and visual effects industry, but the cinema industry too: its release in 2009 was delayed for almost 9 months as cinemas around the world had to have 3D systems installed to show the movie. Most major movies are now shown in 3D and IMAX, and Avatar must be at least partly responsible for generating interest in these alternative formats.
