Naming the Plants of Pandora
O to be a professor in California who movie companies might tap for consulting purposes. Such was the delightful situation Dr. Jodie Holt, chair of the botany and plant sciences department over at UC Riverside found herself in when James Cameron’s people came calling for advice on plant life in the world’s most successful movie.
Dr. Holt advised Sigourney Weaver how a botanist would act in such situations as portrayed in the film. Also, she named the digital creations seen in the rich onscreen scenery, using standard taxonomies. She made up reasonable-sounding Latin names for the plant life, which is included in the official Avatar Pandorapedia and video game. A treatise she wrote, “The Avatar Survival Guide,” also was included in the Pandorapedia. It proffered an explanation for plant development based on environmental details provided to her by Cameron.
Alas, she has not spent much time with the video game. Here’s the relevant statement:
This project was very challenging but also a lot of fun. What botanist would not want to “discover” new plants and name them herself?
I understand that some of these Pandorapedia entries are also contained in the games that were released. However, my husband and I have not yet achieved much proficiency at the video game, so we have not been able to explore Pandora and learn about the plants that way. Hopefully, we can get my young nephew to help us.
Read the full interview here.
References:
Kozlowski, L. (2010, January 2). Inventing the plants of ‘Avatar.’ [Online.] Retrieved January 30, 2010 from http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sci-avatar-q-and-a2-2010jan02,0,5033714.story
Tags: Avatar, James Cameron, Jodie Holt, LA Times, Pandorapedia, UC Riverside
Game Discussion, Virtual Reality | John Rice | 
January 30, 2010 12:27 pm
2 Comments
Other Links to this Post
-
Educational Games Research » NSF Avatar Grant Expected to Revolutionize Virtual Representations — October 5, 2010 @ 5:48 pm
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By Andrew Gamer, January 31, 2010 @ 4:39 pm
This is a great post! Yes I know, sounds a bit s.p.a.m… but it isn’t.
A movie house worth its salt would have to do the research and employ experts in the field to do so. Good to know some thought was taken in this account.