Hi, need to submit a 2000 words paper on the topic Realism and the Cinema. We are going to delve into a critical examination of editing in James Cameron’s “Avatar” and Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” which were some of his hallmarks in editing and use of new technology. The two films show two opposite styles of editing that are employed by the two directors in the making of the films.

In James Cameron’s Avatar used computer-generated images to build the virtual world. Due to the fact that the film footage is built around 70 percent of Computer Generated Imagery (CGI). During the writing of the film, the stand-out factor was that technology to make the film had not yet been invented. This was in the year 1995. James Cameron had envisioned lush photorealism that would vividly depict the world of Pandora. Cameron shelved the project and waited ten more years to revive the project that would in the future change the face of the film industry. Cameron, in reviving the project became the director, co-producer and co-editor. The film became a constituent of performance capture technologies as well as advanced 3-D synthesis. It became a big leap forward and set the bar high for future films. One aspect that stood out in the process of making the film was its unorthodox editorial workflow. The workflow was created completely from scratch and embodied the seamless blending of live-action and photo-real performance.

Cameron’s objective in the making of the film was to make the audience believe that they were on Pandora experiencing the sites that they saw, which in essence is what the editorial work was based on. Initially, such a movie would be made by pitting actors on a small capture stage and then later building the Computer Generated (CG) characters in a conventional manner. Cameron on the other hand, envisioned a way in which performances could be captured alive, then specific readings selected from each actor to build the performance bit.