Avi Arad Quotes

Every film that comes out that incorporates CGI or performance capture is a little bit ahead of the last film that came out. You're on the cutting edge for a certain amount of time, and then the new technology comes out.

Polar Express is not an attempt to do animation. It is a technology-based film.

Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies.

3D is quite a lot more advanced in animated movies; for live-action movies we're just taking baby steps, we're just in the beginning.

I've always been into visual effects. It was something I took keen interest in before films happened. Ironically, I am a part of 'Raaz 3,' a film that is shot entirely on 3D. It has encouraged me to pursue my dream. Hopefully, if time permits, I will travel to the United States and attend a crash course in visual graphics and animation.

One thing I was thinking about the other day was you can't even conceive of the kinds of things you can do in movies today. The idea that you could draw, in a computer, dinosaurs and have them running around was totally impossible.

If people want to watch a CG movie, there's plenty out there.

If you need to do a movie where you have an army of 10,000 soldiers, that's a very difficult thing to shoot for real. It's very expensive, but as computer graphics techniques make that cheaper, it'll be more possible to make pictures on an epic scale, which we haven't really seen since the '50s and '60s.

I came in during the era of models, motion control, and optical printers. ILM had just started its own computer graphics division, after the Lucasfilm computer division had been sold off and became Pixar.

The nature of motion capture is only going to work for certain films. It's not going to put any other type of movies out of business.

Clearly, if we'd had the kind of computer graphics capability then that we have now, the Star Gate sequence would be much more complex than flat planes of light and color.

By the way, it was his simulations that helped out in Jurassic Park - without them, there would have been only a few dinosaurs. Based on his techniques, Industrial Light and Magic could make whole herds of dinosaurs race across the screen.

The technology actually seemed to come at just the right time to make the Hulk - Mark Ruffalo was really able to play both characters.

When you take something that's inert, and through motion, give it life, make it appear to be alive, living, breathing thinking and having emotions, that's animation. But when you take something that's live-action, and move a part of it, that's a special effect.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a way to make movies without actors, George Lucas would do it.

The thing with computer-generated imagery is that it's an incredibly powerful tool for making better visual effects. But I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography.

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

When I first read 'Lord of the Rings,' I wanted to see a film of it. But at that time, the technology wasn't there; there was no such thing as CGI.

In '83, not only was there no such thing as performance motion capture technology, there was no such thing as digital animation. This was the analog era.

I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with 'Avatar' because 70 percent of that film is animated.

I did what we call dry for wet effects, some of the miniatures work and two animation sequences.

I've done some effects shots. I've done some compositing. And in 'Just Like Heaven' did a lot of, like, motion control and things like that. But never done, like, computer-generated imagery in action.

I could take my grandma and put her in a cape, and they'll put her on a green screen, and they'll have stunt doubles come in and do all the action. Anybody can do it. They're relying on stunt doubles and green screen and $200 million budgets - it's all CGI created. To me, it's not authentic.

I don't have anything against CGI.

Special effects are becoming more and more affordable and looking more and more like the real thing.