Billie Eilish and James Cameron Interview: Titanic, Hit Me Hard and Soft, and Her Directing Future

I learned so much about the show and your perception of it and how you interact with the audience, which the audience is the other character. So it's Billie and her fans, and there's a psychological flow of energy between them, and we wanted to honor that. First of all, I cannot wait to see the rest of the film. The footage looks spectacular, especially in 3D. Billie, I'm very curious if after working with this master of cinema, if you are now more inspired than ever to direct a movie. Oh, my God. I feel like maybe more inspired than ever that I'm not actually as prepared as I would have thought. I'm not prepared at all to direct a movie, and I think working with someone as incredible and gifted and experienced as Jim, I'm like, wow, that took your whole life to be as incredible as he is. I think so, and I was out of my depth. And also your talent. I was out of my depth on this one, right? Because I had never, I mean, my company had done concert films, but I hadn't done. Yeah, I think all it showed me was I'm not at all even close to being at all, it seems so hard and ridiculous. You know what you're doing. You can actually see it in the film. We're figuring out camera placement together, and Billie was visualizing a high angle that would cover this moment and that moment, and we just pulled what we knew. And you've directed how many videos? Six, seven? Yeah, she's a storyteller. It's just a question of time. Exactly, that's why I asked. And now you'll be acting, right? Is that public knowledge that you're doing this movie? Okay, all right, so you'll be acting, so you'll see that part of it. When you put all those pieces together, you're gonna be able to direct no problem, if you choose. That's sweet. I have confidence. I am so curious, I have so many questions. I'm so curious, do you have a favorite James Cameron movie, and do you have a favorite Billie Eilish song? I'll go first, because it's shorter. Okay, sure. All right, no, no, go ahead. Go ahead, you looked like you were ready to learn. No, I just, I mean, obviously, Titanic is like a life-changing experience to watch, and I think I was about 12, and I remember it was like, all of my friends got together, and we all had a slumber party. We stayed up all night, and we watched Titanic, and then we watched it again. We were just like watching it all night, and screaming, and everything. It was like a true life-changing experience, as I think it is for everyone when they, there's like life before you've watched Titanic, and life after, and it's just the most iconic, most incredible thing in the world, and then, secondly, Avatar 3, Fire Nation, I just love so much. I just was completely blown away by it. It's just the most beautiful thing, and just so, I don't know, I don't know. It's just very, you're impressive, Jen. You gave me your highest compliment on that film, Fire. You bet I have. Yeah. Which had a kind of double meaning. It's true, yeah. Sure. And Ash, you know. Do you have a favorite song? Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think I relate to it, you know, through the show, because I'm not as versed on the earlier albums. You know, look, Ocean Eyes is beautiful, but I know that's ancient history. The greatest is your performance of the greatest is spectacular. It's a beautiful song in and of itself. The way we shot Wildflower and your performance combined is a beautiful piece of cinema, because we're moving around her and looking up at thousands of people with their lights lit up, you know, so it's almost like this kind of sacred space is pretty amazing. For Pure Energy, oh my God, bad guy, diner, you know. I have to just pause. How crazy is it that he's quoting your songs to you? Just like, it's James Cameron talking about your music. I know. It does seem a bit dissonant, but I actually do. No, you do, and also in the end, one that really surprised me was when you were complimenting Over Now, which is the ending of the war, which is like a very kind of bitchy, upbeat kind of dance song, and he was so sweet about it, and I was so surprised. But you do this thing with the auto mic. That auto tune mic's amazing. The force field that you put out vocally in that song, I mean, yeah, we did a pretty good job shooting it, and it's very upbeat, there's a lot of lasers and stuff, and so it's very pacey, but man, there are shots that we just hold. Even though it's a very pacey song, you normally sort of cut on the beat, cut on the rhythm. That's kind of standard procedure. We didn't do that at all. We just held, because it's just so spectacular. So I'm almost out of time, but I wanna ask about two important things to me. Number one, I'm fascinated by the editing process, because it's where it all comes together. Can you sort of both talk about how the film changed in the editing room in ways you didn't expect, and the other thing I really wanna know is, I'm fascinated by the way you just revolutionized technology when you're making movies, and the cameras that you specifically invented for this film, especially the Collider audience is gonna wanna know that stuff, if you don't mind indulging me in talking about it. We could do an hour on each one of those questions. No, but why don't you haul off on the editing side of it, because I think that surprised both of us. Yeah, well, I'll try to be quick, so you can, because I wanna hear something, I wanna hear an answer to that question. Well, the editing process was, I think the part that we were the most, doing the most together on, and because it's true, like the editing process is kind of the main part. It's kind of the same with making music. It's like, you write the song, and then you record it, but the real thing is like working on the song once you've kind of gotten there, and I think that that is how we worked, and we spent hours, and hours, and hours, and days, and days, and days. Five hour sessions, six hour sessions. Yeah, and we were both very receptive to the other, and both had very strong opinions, and both had, you know, we both advocated for ourselves, I thought, very beautifully, and learned a lot. I learned so much from him, and you know, I don't wanna speak for you, but I just feel like it was like, we learned a lot from each other in that. I learned so much about the show, and your perception of it, and how you interact with the audience, which the audience is the other character, so it's Billie and her fans, and there's a psychological flow of energy between them, and we wanted to honor that, and I learned a lot about that, and I learned a lot about cutting music. You know, I cut it like an action movie. I know how to cut movement, you know, and then Billie would be like, no, that's lame. We're not, we're missing an important moment here, and even some of your action notes were cool. When you said, okay, now, scrub forward, scrub forward, so when my hands get to there, cut on that frame, I'm like, all right, let's try it. Oh, ----, that's pretty good. Yeah, we were a really good team in the edit. Like I said, she's gonna direct. Oh, absolutely, no question. On the tools, we had to build some special stuff, because 3D is about closeness and about intimacy. People think it's about spectacle, but it's most valuable when you're close to the subject. The cameras that were shooting you in closeup were 150 feet away, really up in the way in the back of the auditorium, and we couldn't really change that. There were no camera positions. There were camera positions very close to the stage on these robot systems called AGITOs, which were gold. We used them a lot. But to get the beautiful closeups, we had to invent something new, which was a long baseline system with 800 millimeter lenses, where we knew going in that we would have to use AI and recomposite the background, because when you triangulate on somebody from that far out with that title lens, the background goes like that, and you go cross-eyed trying to fuse it, you can't fuse it. But we wanted to have the fullness and the sense of presence in her, and the way the mic, because otherwise it all flattens out, right? So we figured out how to do that, brand new tool. The other brand new tool was a little camera this big that went on a gimbal. It was a quarter of the movie. That was amazing. Was shot on this camera. I couldn't believe that one. And Billie allowed us on stage with her, and so sometimes that camera's just looking over your shoulder, how you're engaging with the fans, and we see them all singing back in perfect synchronization. It's kind of astonishing. And other times he's able, the operator, very gifted, was able to maneuver around and get in front of her and get these gorgeous close-ups and precede you while you're walking along and singing and getting everybody singing. You really feel like you're on that stage with her, and there's nobody else up there. The thing about the show that's amazing is that Billie up there by herself, except for the acoustic set. But no dancers, no guys with giant slags or whatever the ****, I don't know. It's like, you know, 40 people acting out some, I don't know what. It was just you. And her fans who know the music so well.