Despite the fact that Landau read virtually his entire keynote, this was fascinating stuff (and Q&A wasn't scripted and was much better). And though read, this was good, well-thought stuff.

James Cameron is a technology visionary. His splitting Terminator into two films so technology could catch up (and testing the concept first in The Abyss) shows foresight and patience.

He and Landau have created an amazing production pipeline that -- in real-time -- lets Cameron not look at actors, but at virtual characters in virtual environments.

A cool tangent for this is Landau's and Cameron's focus on "Performance Capture", rather than "Motion Capture" -- getting every performance nuance and action, rather than just motion. This is good news for this actor. Even better in the Q&A, Landau said ("no offense to anyone in this room"), "our goal is get rid of the animator, and keep the actor". He said he and Cameron look at performance capture as "21st Century prosthetics", and are improvement over the analog versions, because they can be reductive to the actor's structure, rather than just additive.

He also did a pretty passionate argument for the importance of digital projection in theaters, which is required for the new 3D (which doesn't require glasses, and has proponents like Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, and Disney behind it). It also makes a theater multi-purpose, rather than just show 35mm film.

All of this feeds into virtual worlds, asset re-use, and the separation of game participation vs movie voyeurism, and MMOs (which arguably provide both).

He encouragingly talked about how the games, rather than regurgitating the film, can show worlds, characters, and themes not presented in the film (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic anyone?). He also said the inverse could be true -- games can influence upcoming films.

He made some strong analogies between the independent film and independent games.

Other strong words about games, like films, needing to start with a story, rather than with assets, and games shouldn't be made to meet a date, because "dates don't make films; films make dates". Kinda. There are still holiday films and summer blockbusters, and games are retail products and entertainment experiences; not just the latter.

It's a new world in this "intersection of technology and culture". Cameron, Landau, Lightstorm, and Multiverse are doing an MMO. Ron Howard and Wideload Games are doing an MMO. Wow.

Really, really good time to be an hard core actor/gamer/movie professional.

And I introduced myself to Landau and told him "thank you" for his and Cameron's focus on actors. And I gave him my business card demo. 'Cause they should audition me for Avatar. The game and the movie.