The debate rages over whether AVATAR's performance capture is true performance for the Oscars and other awards. Cameron's actors had to work hard to make AVATAR's action look real, but it wasn't enough to impress the Screen Actors Guild, which didn't even nominate AVATAR actors this year. Maybe SAG is just worried that the increasing use of CGI will put human actors out of work, but to be fair, the most-threatened jobs may in fact be makeup artists and costumers.
if you look closely at the pix, you'll see that only about 50% of the facial movements actually translate to the cgi character. while this is great, it does dampen the performance. The other body movements translate more accurately, i think, but there are so many subtleties to the face as it expresses emotions, that I thing the technology isn't quite there...I wondered, for example why the forehead wrinkling didn't translate well, nor the spaces between the eyes, that part was just too dead. i did love Neytiri's veracity and intensity, but compared to the subtleties that makes up an award winning performance, I don't think the acting as displayed on the cgi characters was that great. i also wondered why Cameron did not use more prominent actors in the film...
