Friday, January 15, 2010

Blast from the past


Jia Cheng, most recent BTD intern, showed me the book she ordered from the library. This movie tie-in, Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora, exhibits the almost-obligatory metaphor of crumpled paper and photos attached to pages with paper clips. Paper clips after the earth has been destroyed? Would so many old-fashioned photos have come through Armageddon? How did masking tape also survive the destruction? Why masking tape? Were all computers destroyed? Why do books that are reports based on shows or movies imitate other books? (Guilty! cf The Shield book we worked on together). All cranky comments aside, the illustrations of the flora and fauna in the book are great evocations of all that great stuff in the movie.

Here's a tiny bit more on Papyrus: shallow studies show that Cameron's crew sort of customized Papyrus—i.e. changed the letterforms as opposed to just adding 3-D, glows etc. Although I'm ashamed to admit that for me the movie is not about the type, it is odd that with all the bucks spent on the movie, the title gets the knockoff treatment.

No comments: