How James Cameron Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

There are few directors who are as well known by mainstream audiences as James Cameron. After all he's directed some of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of all time. But did you know that on his journey to directing this high budget water-based epic he started by directing this, uh, water-based epic. In this episode I'll look at three movies shot at three increasing budget levels by James Cameron. Piranha 2, The Terminator and Avatar The Way of Water to uncover the similarities between them and how he built his career and style as a director. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. From websites, analytics, online stores and beyond, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that you can use to create an online presence for your business. I started working in special effects and I did a little art direction. In fact I got my first directing gig which was, you know, Piranha 2 as a result of Galaxy of Terror. I was doing second unit directing on that film and they needed a cutaway to a dismembered arm lying on the ground with worms crawling around on it. So I have them put a piece of zip cord, strip it down and lay it underneath the arm and we make it wet so that it'll conduct and there's an electrician around behind the set and the only cue I could think of was action to tell him to throw the sweat. What I didn't know was that these two producers who were looking for a director for Piranha 2 had come in behind me and they were looking over the setup and I said, all right, roll camera. They rolled and action and the electrician behind plugged in. The worms all started to move. I said, that's good. That's a cut. He unplugs. They didn't see him. Worms stopped moving. I turned and said, come with us. We'd like to talk to you about a film. As the title suggests, Piranha 2 was the sequel to Piranha, which was basically a B-movie rip-off of Jaws that replaced the shark with genetically modified flying piranhas that could somehow survive out of water. We spliced in genes from different species to create the ultimate killer organism. My god. The low budget sequel was taken on by an Italian producer, Ovidio G. Asinitis, known for making B-horror movies. James Cameron, who had built up a career as a production designer and special effects director, was initially brought onto the project to do the special effects. But after the first director on the project was quickly fired due to a creative disagreement with Asinitis, Cameron was replaced as the director of the movie. Filming the exteriors took place in Jamaica, with some interior scenes filmed in a soundstage in Rome. Due to the low budget of $600,000 and an allegedly controlling Italian producer, almost the whole crew was made up of Italians, including the cinematographer, whose name was spelled incorrectly in the credits. This quickly made communication difficult for Cameron, as apparently most of the crew could not understand English. As the story goes, Cameron was eventually fired from the shoot as director due to constant interference from and disagreements with the producer. After firing two different directors, the producer finished directing the rest of the B-movie himself. However, as Asinitis felt the movie needed an anglicised director name in order to sell, they kept Cameron's name on the credits. Cameron was also allegedly not allowed to view rushes of the footage he shot and was kept out of the editing process, although he would later buy back the footage from the distributor so that he could re-cut, re-score and release the originally intended version for home video. Although Piranha 2 will probably not go down in history as a cinematic masterpiece, the low budget horror movie still contains a few directorial stylistic threads that would continue throughout his career. One, his fascination with the ocean and setting films in or around water. Two, telling stories in a way that draws the audience into the magical world of cinema, where realism is replaced by spectacle and plausibility is replaced with a sprinkle of cinematic magic. Three, his fascination with using special effects and pushing the boundaries of whatever technology he has at his disposal. And finally, presenting larger than life stories with lots of action and set pieces which are told through the eyes of a focused cast of main characters. In the wake of the release of Piranha 2, James Cameron fell ill and had a fever dream one night about a metallic robotic torso. This sparked the idea for his next sci-fi slasher script, which he would write about a cyborg assassin sent back in time to kill someone. He called it The Terminator. First film I directed which I got fired off of was called Piranha 2 and I think it was about $600,000 and then the second film was The Terminator and that was $6 million. Although it was a substantial jump from his first low budget flick, $6 million was still considered a fairly limited budget to tell the kind of action heavy, ambitious sci-fi movie he had written. It's not really about machines from the future, it's sort of about our relationship with technology but it's really kind of about our human potential for dehumanization ourselves. You see cops as examples and then you know the other idea, not to trust technology and even not to trust the fabric of reality. Cameron employed Adam Greenberg as the cinematographer on the project who worked with a relatively small camera and lighting package, without any expensive, elaborate gear setups. Terminator was shot on Eastman 250 tungsten film stock with an Arri 35BL for dialogue scenes and an Arri Flex 35 III for MOS, action or insert shots that didn't need synchronized sound. Since the script featured lots of night scenes, Greenberg chose a set of spherical prime lenses with a fast aperture that could let in lots of light, the Zeiss Super Speeds. Also, based on the classic 80s halation that you see around the highlights, it's likely that he used a diffusion filter such as a Tiffen Lokon. Before we get into how Cameron shoots action scenes, I'd like to thank Squarespace for sponsoring this video and making it happen. Being a filmmaker means that you are your own business and every business needs a website so that clients and collaborators can get in touch with you. Squarespace is an all-in-one platform that you can use to design a stylish website using their templates. This makes it easy to control how you want your site to look. Squarespace has lots of useful tools for creators such as being able to set up your own online store or display a portfolio of your images or videos using galleries, which is a must for any filmmaker nowadays. So to set up your website, be sure to head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash indepthcine to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. When it comes to action, Cameron edits it tighter and more coherently by creating little pockets of quick cuts that group different shots of the same action or idea together, rather than just cutting back and forth between various unrelated shots. I think it's a very analytical process. I remember literally having a discussion with the editor saying okay look in this battle sequence every single time we've improved the battle we've done it by putting like with like putting the attack with the attack the retreat with the retreat and grouping things that way. The cars in the chase sequences were never allowed to drive faster than 40 miles per hour, so Greenberg helped create a faster sense of motion with light. He placed film lights with operators on moving vehicles next to the shooting vehicle. The operators could quickly pan and move the source around to create lighting and reflections that gave the illusion that the street lights were passing by quicker than they actually were. Another analytical way of creating a menacing tone for the Terminator was to often shoot him from a low angle, while the camera shot Sarah Connor at a more comfortable, familiar, neutral angle. Overall he also used a large amount of backlight, placing hard light sources behind the actors in almost every night scene, generally using softer sources for Sarah Connor and harder backlight for other characters. And don't forget about the 80s hairlight. This created a more silhouetty, shadowy look which both helped to hide some of the visual effects and created the moody noir feel that they were after. Another way of masking special effects was through a combination of clever angles and editing. Cameron's philosophy was if you supplied the audience with a shot A and a shot B, the audience will quickly fill in shot C using their own imagination. A good example of this is in the famous eye extraction scene. By showing shot A, a profile shot of the blade lifted up to an eye, and shot B, blood dripping into water, the audience fills in the gruesome shot C, the cyborg cutting out its own eye, by themselves. After the huge financial success of Avatar in 2009, a sci-fi epic which pushed the technological boundaries of motion capture and CGI, Cameron promised a series of sequels. It took over a decade of development and production to create the first in a series of follow-ups, which were all filmed simultaneously. Avatar combines live action capture as well as motion capture that is later used to create computer generated characters in computer generated environments. As I mentioned before, a trademark of Cameron's work has been how he pushes the technical limits of gear and technology. He has shown an interest in visual effects his whole career, so much so that he started his own VFX company, Digital Domain, in the 1990s. Since Avatar uses an unusual process to make the movie, let's break down the full workflow of how it was prepped, shot and then finished in post. Cameron selected his old cinematographer Russell Carpenter, who worked on Titanic, to shoot the film. The photographic process started in 2018, where Carpenter oversaw the virtual lighting of the CGI sequences using a program called Gazebo, which was developed by WetaFX Visual Effects House. He pushed for lighting with different colour nuances for different virtual spaces. The virtual lighting was also valuable as he would have to match it in the next step of the process, which was shooting live action scenes with real human characters. These scenes were filmed in 3D using a 3D rig designed by one of Cameron's companies with two Sony Venice cameras and Fujinon zoom lenses. They had to frame for two different aspect ratios during shooting. The taller 1.85 to 1 was used for 3D presentation, while the wider 2.39 to 1 ratio was used for regular 2D screenings. They also made the unusual decision to shoot at 48 frames per second instead of the more regular 24, which decreased the amount of motion blur. To compensate for the one-stop loss of light that comes from shooting at a higher frame rate, they shot using the Venice's higher ISO base of 2500. Once the live action portions were done, they turned to capturing the virtual performances using motion capture technology. Motion capture doesn't really use cameras in the traditional sense. Instead, actors are put in skintight suits that have reference markers or sensors on them. A few cameras or sensors are then placed around them that are able to capture how the actor moves in a 3D space. This data is then later used in post-production to give a digital character the same movement as the actor on set. For the underwater sequences with digital characters, Cameron played out scenes with his actors in mo-cap suits in a custom built pool in a studio. Actually shooting underwater gave a more realistic sense of motion, but came with some challenges. They had to construct underwater housings for the mo-cap cameras and shoot at a wavelength of light near ultraviolet, which would better capture motion through water. The pool was lit by rigging SkyPanel S60's over the water. They then placed little plastic beads on the water's surface. This both diffused the light and minimised capturing reflections underwater which would cause false data. After all the live action and motion capture footage had been acquired, they could then plug the footage back into the pre-designed lighting and virtual environments. From there an intensive post-production team was used to build and finish the characters, movements and environments in the film. If we circle back around to Piranha 2, it's possible to see that despite being on opposite ends of the budget spectrum, these two movies contain certain similarities in their approach. Both are set around the world of the ocean. Both use technology and special effects to push the story out of reality to create a new magical cinematic world. And both tell larger stories with lots of action and set pieces in a personalised way through the eyes of his characters. Thanks everyone for watching, liking or otherwise engaging with the video and a special thanks to all the Patrons who continue to support the channel and get these YouTube videos early and ad free. Otherwise until next time, thanks for watching and goodbye.