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was a whole different problem. Normally you go through, you make your selects and find that great magic moment.You elimi- nate the stuff that's out of focus, you eliminate the earlier takes that aren't as interesting and pretty soon your choices are nar- rowed down, but here our choices never narrowed. So our narrowing process was our own discipline as filmmakers." "One of the first things we would do after we reviewed the footage of the capture was to put together some kind of performance edit," explains Rivkin. "These were the best of the best. The best performance takes of each actor com- bined into one scene and played back in realtime for Cameron to enter into and shoot virtual cinematography." However the computing system could not play back an entire scene in realtime, especially if there were a lot of characters in the scene. So once a performance edit was reviewed they would break it down into what were called "loads" or sections of scenes, referring to the fact that a scene file needs to be "loaded" into the available mem- ory of the computer. The determining factor of where a "load break" would occur would be the editing "cut." Rivkin, commenting on his new role as "performance editor, says, "At the load level we are trying to anticipate where 'cuts' might be." Jim will say, 'There is no question I am cutting to a close-up at this point.' Well that's a logical 'load break.' We know we have the freedom to break a load and start a new one there." "So by the time you have completed the performance edit," describes Cameron, "you are half way through a four- step process. Step one is capture, step two is the performance cut, or what I like to call the pre-cut. Step three is shoot the cameras.The actors are not even involved with that part of the process.You set up the 'loads' and I'll be out there with the virtual camera and the editor is sitting there working with me. It's the most collaborative director/editor process I've ever been involved with, because the editor is cutting right away as it feeds directly out of my camera into the Avid. He's assembling the scene behind me as I'm working my way through the coverage on the scene." The cinematography process, led by Mauro Fiore (Kingdom, Smokin' Aces), that takes place after the performance edit is quite extraordinar y. "When Cameron is shooting these 'loads' played back, he has the ability of manipulating [the actors] spatially or temporally," says Rivkin. "If someone reacts too late to a line that's said in a two-shot, he can slip them a second forwards or backwards, or he can move them closer to each other for better composition. Just like you would tell an actor, 'Could you lean in a little bit?'" So where does this leave the editor who normally, at the end of the day, has a couple of thousand feet of film to edit, yet now the director can shoot forever? James Cameron on the set of Avatar. www.postmagazine.com January 2010 • Post 19