Cameron makes another dive into deep-sea filming
By Tim Friend
USA Today
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| A chandelier aboard the sunken Titanic, captured in 3-D IMAX for "Ghosts of the Abyss," hints at the ship's opulence.
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and Walden Media LLC photos |
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| James Cameron, left, teams up with friend and actor Bill Paxton, who narrates the film about the Titanic. |
'Ghosts of the Abyss' IMAX documentary Directed by James Cameron Rated G Opens Friday, IMAX Waikiki |
The evidence for Cameron's true ambitions is revealed in "Ghosts of the Abyss," a one-hour, 3-D, digital IMAX documentary that explores deep inside the shipwreck for the first time. It opens Friday.
Cameron's transformation has been a gradual one, but the signs were there all along.
First, the demand for scuba-diving lessons as a teenager — an odd request from a Canadian boy whose only access to water was a cold, murky river. Scuba is addictive, dangerous and can lead to harder stuff.
Not surprisingly, Cameron surfaces years later with "The Abyss" and the need to design new camera equipment and scuba gear to meet the challenges of filming underwater in a 7-million-gallon tank, which, of course, was the world's largest underwater set.
Next thing you know, Cameron has become pals with the former Soviet Union's scientific submersible team. He charters their 435-foot oceanographic vessel Akademic Keldysh with its two deep-diving Mir submarines, designs special lighting and camera equipment for filming 12,500 feet down and makes a movie in the middle of the North Atlantic, where the sunken Titanic lies.
And not just any movie. Cameron's epic "Titanic," which opened in December 1997, won 11 Academy Awards, including best picture and best director.
Recreating the unknown
For "Ghosts of the Abyss," Cameron and his team, which includes his brother Mike, had to develop remarkable new technologies to meet the challenges of filming in 3-D at bone-crushing pressures. That included building a revolutionary digital camera system and two agile, battery-powered, remotely operated robots to carry the cameras.
Dark Matter LLC, Mike Cameron's underwater engineering and design firm, developed the robots. They are tethered by a thin fiber-optic cable, which provided the mobility to explore the ship's eerie passageways, staterooms, dining halls and decks. Underwater robots normally are attached to thick cables and powered from a ship.
Unlike "Titanic" the movie, which had only snippets of real footage of the wreck, "Ghosts" takes the public along for the full breathtaking ride to the world's most famous shipwreck.
"I wanted to do something that would allow the public to have the same experience as I did on the expedition," Cameron says.
The ambassador for the 3-D journey 2 1/2 miles down is Cameron's friend, actor Bill Paxton.
"Jim said you have got to experience this for yourself. We didn't really know what this was going to become, but it was a chance to take this new technology and go and actually explore the wreck," Paxton says. "We didn't even know what we would find. There are moments in the documentary where you are seeing discoveries just as we saw them. The whole thing was unbelievable."
Not just a filmmaker
Far from the salty spray of the North Atlantic, Cameron conducts interviews from a Manhattan hotel suite. One might get the impression he is promoting a new film, but the real reason Cameron is in town is to speak at the Explorer's Club annual dinner. Three weeks ago, Cameron was inducted into the club as a fellow — the same status accorded to historic members such as Ernest Shackleton and Sir Edmund Hillary.
The Russian scientist in charge of the Mir submersibles, Anatoly Sagalavich, and Titanic explorers Ralph White and Al Giddings, who assisted Cameron with his expeditions, also are club members.
"They had been after me for years to join, but I kept thinking I'm not an explorer. I make movies," Cameron says.
But Cameron realized as he prepared for filming "Ghosts of the Abyss" that he was hooked on the hard stuff and no longer just a Hollywood filmmaker. Spoken like a true explorer, Cameron admits, "Doing the movie had become an excuse for having another expedition to the Titanic."
Over the past several years, Cameron has been developing 3-D technology and diving in the subs to the Bismarck shipwreck and to ocean floor vents.
The filmmaker, who has had a lifelong interest in outer space, has been documenting the exotic life forms of inner space because they may be similar to those that scientists believe may exist on the moons of Jupiter. This ocean-space connection will be the subject of his next 3-D documentary.
Cameron has made 38 dives to the ocean floor in the Mirs. He recently bought two small submersibles, which can be launched from his 90-foot research vessel.
If Cameron could predict how he will spend his future: "It would be divided between two-thirds features and one third documentaries. I love having something that is outside of Hollywood to keep me sane. But at same time, I love the fun and thrill of making a piece of entertainment that has a global impact."
Paxton, who met Cameron 23 years ago on the set of "Galaxy of Terror," notes that "people in Hollywood ask, 'What's he doing? Why hasn't he made new film?' But I don't think people really get him. Jim's a guy who understands what a limited engagement a lifespan on Earth really is. He's going to put hell of an effort into maximizing that time."
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