Avatar: The Waterway was a real technological challenge for James Cameron and his teams. But if the filming was complicated, the screening of the film in certain rooms was just as complicated. Explanations.
Nearly two weeks after its release, Avatar 2 has nearly hit $1 billion in worldwide revenue. In France, the feature film directed by James Cameron has already attracted 5 million curious people.
However, in Japan, the film does not seem to have as much unanimous support as in the rest of the world. The Na’vis are thus relegated to second place in the box office, beaten by the animated film The First Slam Dunk.
According to Bloomberg, a media specializing in economics and finance, this poor performance is linked to technical problems during the screening of the film in many theaters in the country.
Thus, during the first weekend of exploitation of the work, several Japanese cinemas were forced to purely and simply cancel the sessions. Screenings even had to be interrupted, angering spectators, whose tickets were refunded.
The reason for these problems? Avatar 2 requires state-of-the-art equipment for its projection, in particular because of 3D and HFR (48 frames per second), technologies dear to James Cameron. His film was shot to be screened in fairly advanced technical conditions and some Japanese cinemas were not equipped for this.
According to Bloomberg, some theater operators in the Land of the Rising Sun do not look favorably on the renewal of equipment. They find it difficult to invest in new second-generation projectors, essential for works such as The Way of the Water.
In all likelihood, as reported a Nagoya cinema on Twitter, the HFR would be involved in these malfunctions. Indeed, James Cameron was not content to shoot Avatar 2 in 48 frames per second. The latter has improved the technology with VFR (Variable Frame Rate), which allows the frame rate to be modulated according to the sequences.
For Cameron, the human eye is too accustomed to the current standard in cinema: 24 frames per second. Thus, to improve the viewer’s visual comfort, the filmmaker varies the frame rate according to the scenes. An action sequence will therefore be in 48 frames per second, unlike a dialogue scene, which will return to 24 frames per second.
“The rule was: as soon as they’re underwater, it’s 48 frames per second. Some flight scenes and some landscape panoramas also benefit from HFR. If it’s just people sitting talking or who walk and talk, as these are images where the characters evolve relatively slowly, the HFR is not necessary”explained the filmmaker.
In order to be able to broadcast The Way of the Water without having any bugs, the cinema of Nagoya notably took the decision to project the film only in 24 images per second. Indeed, a second generation digital projector is necessary for HFR (and VFR) projection, as in Dolby theaters in France. It is therefore very likely that the VFR caused the older searchlights to crash.
As with the first Avatar in 2009, which “forced” many cinemas to invest massively in digital projectors, will La Voie de l’eau force certain theaters to invest again to improve equipment?
One thing is certain, James Cameron continues to shake up the world of the 7th art by pushing it to its limits.
ADRIEN ANTOINE, VF OF JAKE SULLY, ON THE MICRO OF VOICE OUF