Avatar (2009 film) themselves to change into a Na'vi. "Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora", a 224-page book in the form of a field guide to the film's fictional setting of the planet of Pandora, was released by Harper Entertainment on , 2009. It is presented as a compilation of data collected by the humans about Pandora and the life on it, written by Maria Wilhelm and Dirk Mathison. HarperFestival also released Wilhelm's 48-page "James Cameron's Avatar: The Reusable Scrapbook" for children. "The Art of Avatar" was released on , 2009, by Abrams Books. The book features
Avatar (2009 film) said he had been "surprised at how much it did look like ". Principal photography for "Avatar" began in in Los Angeles and Wellington, New Zealand. Cameron described the film as a hybrid with a full live-action shoot in combination with computer-generated characters and live environments. "Ideally at the end of the day the audience has no idea which they're looking at," Cameron said. The director indicated that he had already worked four months on nonprincipal scenes for the film. The live action was shot with a modified version of the proprietary digital 3-D Fusion Camera System, developed by Cameron