” Well there was a lot of live action in Mary Poppins, Song of the South, and Who Killed Roger Rabbit.”

True … and I certainly wouldn’t call Mary Poppins an animated film, would you? … nor Who FRAMED Roger Rabbit.

Song of the South, maybe. I haven’t seen it since I was a child, so I don’t remember the live-to-animated ratio.

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http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/avatar/cnn-interview-james-cameron

3:50
“The thing people need to understand is that is not – it’s an animation process, but it’s about taking 100% of what the actors did and preserving that into the final performance of the computer generated character. So this an actor driven process.”

4:25
“The animators have to be very good observers of human behavior. I mean, our system is semi- automated. you know, we put this rig on the actor’s face that records what they’re doing, records it very accurately. But still it takes the human in the loop, the animator, to see when somehow the technology is failing us in capturing that.”

You guys seem to take offense every time he says “this is not an animated film”. It strikes me as incredibly over sensitive way. You’re also putting words in his mouth, that he never said. He just doesn’t share the opinion that this is an animated film. I don’t see what is wrong with that.

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“Yes I may not be able to touch what’s on the screen but if the objects in it exist somewhere in the real world then cinema is tangible.”

You are undermining your AVATAR as animation argument right there. The idea of any prop, regardless of its actual physical being, is to create the illusion of tangibility – that’s what you claim to be experiencing. The chain mail on the LOTR cast may look like metal, but its just rubber rings cut out and threaded then painted metallic, correct? My whole point is that CGI NaVi function exactly the same way – they are meant to look and act like real creatures, regardless of whether it is a success. The world of Pandora is meant to be an extension of this “tangible” cinematic reality – and it did a damn fine job of it too. It is one of the most consistently “realistic” looking virtual worlds, on par with the “tangible” world you consider in LOTR. The process and work that went into it doesn’t define the final cinematic product, which is all that matters. At the end of the day, the live action humans in Avatar feel as much a part of the digital set as the virtual actors. By your logic, is a cheap crappy prop that looks fake actually actually more “real” on screen than a CG prop perfectly integrated because it was made by hand? This is not an argument that real props physically existed – simply that you’re arguing because of that fact the cinematic reality is more “tangible.” No idea why you brought actors like Johnny Depp into a discussion of props.

This is not to undermine the amount of animation in the film, its simply that this is nothing more than another live action film with lots and lots of visual effects. Cameron’s dog and pony show shouldn’t overshadow that fact.

As for WALL-E – you’re right that the MOMENT live actors and animated characters are on screen together there is an uncanny valley effect. While the integration of live action was perhaps not successful for everyone, there’s no arguing they attempted to justify the transition the idea of our society evolving into the blobs living in space with that single shot of the captains’ portraits – it was a brilliant idea to bridge realities despite its level of success with the audience. I don’t think anyone would say WALL-E isn’t an animated film because of the USE of the live action in it, not the amount. Same goes back to AVATAR – the use of CG animation is why it cannot be defined solely as an animated film.

“…you can’t say that an animated film isn’t constrained to some form of reality, unless it is a purely abstract film, which you can still do with live action. If in the Princess and the Frog the characters suddenly turn into weird masses of ooze and color people would just be confused and hate it because the way the characters are designed we expect them to be confined to some form of reality.”

I never SAID that animated films aren’t constrained to reality – rather that they receive the benefit of audience IMMEDIATELY entering whatever reality the film defines, even if its people with ridiculously large heads and frail bodies, or blobs of color with black outlines in hyper exaggerated backgrounds. There isn’t the jockeying for audiences to buy into the world that, say, CABINET OF DR. CAGLIARI (or most Tim Burton films) have with its exaggerated sets. I think there’s a level of abstraction in animation that audience immediately accept – that’s one of the medium’s greatest strengths (and something I think Cameron went to great lengths to work around). Even completely abstract live-action films are defined by our idea of reality – in most cases our “tangible” reality – and generally play off of it. THE MATRIX, VIDEODROME and ALTERED STATES may break the laws of reality as we know it, but most of those still justify those breaks of logic with narrative points (drug use in one, a hallicinatory signal in next, and a virtual world with malleable physics in next). In animation, there really isn’t any comparison with our tangible reality to overcome (though the more realistic the animation the more we admire its simulation of real movement while embracing its exaggeration). While you’re right that PRINCESS characters becoming blobs of color would be as weird in an animated film as live action without proper justification in story, is it really that much more of a leap of faith off the bat than a character just becoming a frog in PRINCESS? The audience goes along with that just fine.

“Yes I may not be able to touch what’s on the screen but if the objects in it exist somewhere in the real world then cinema is tangible. And if there are more tangible things in the film it is live action. If there are less to none it is animation.”

I think you’re wrong on all counts, but hey, everyone’s got an opinion. If you are convinced that the world on screen is tangible in the sense of OUR REALITY, that’s the goal and end product of a “live-action” feature regardless of its post-production process. Everything in FANTASTIC MR FOX felt PHYSICALLY tangible, but I never thought I’d be able to exist in that world, unlike most of the cinematic reality of AVATAR or LORD OF THE RINGS. ROGER RABBIT presents a cinematic world I believe people could actually live in alongside animated characters who also inhabit it realistically, that’s why it really isn’t an animated film. Neither is AVATAR.

Besides, “Less to none” is totally vague – are you saying 49% cgi? 10%? 5%? Leaving things open to interpretation while trying to set defined parameters to measure them is exactly the problem in the case of AVATAR.

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But people forget that most of the flora and fauna of avatar was moved about by hand rather than algorithms and motion capture. Not necessarily a lot, but more than your typical video game.

But if Avatar is animated, so is Star Wars.

What you are seeing is an uncanny valley of categorization; the academy not knowing what to do, as long as a film may or might not get a chance at Oscar.

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But I found this quote from animatedfilms.suite101:
“However, Zemeckis denies that the format even compares to traditional, hand-drawn animation or even CGI.

“To call performance capture animation is a disservice to the great animators,” he said at the International Broadcasting Convention last September. However, despite Zemeckis’ statement, Paramount will still submit the film for consideration.”"

Ultimately I agree with several of the latest posters that these works are more of a hybrid than anything else.

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