Commenting Rules: Keep the conversation civil and on topic. If your comment does not add to the conversation, it will be removed. Debate intelligently. Insulting the author, /Film, or other commenters will result in comment removal and possible ban. If you want to point out a typo, correction, suggestion or criticism for /Film, please email us instead. Please use your name or nickname and not your business name (ie Discount Car Parts) as we might confuse and mark it as spam. If you would like to have your own Avatar show up with your comment, sign-up for a free Disqus account. Any Links will go into moderation before being approved. Anything we deem as spam will not be approved.

James Cameron Tells Peter Jackson He Would Rather Use CG Instead of Building Titanic’s Set Today

Posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 by Devindra Hardawar

peter-jackson-james-cameron

As part of their upcoming interview issue, Newsweek invited James Cameron and Peter Jackson to have a chat about filmmaking in the technology age. There’s the typical banter praising each others projects, as well as some fairly good insight into how they both use technology, and what it means for the future of film. Perhaps most interestingly, Cameron says in passing that he’d rather make Titanic with more CG, if he were to do it today.

His full quote, after the break.

If I did Titanic today, I’d do it very differently. There wouldn’t be a 750-foot-long set. There would be small set pieces integrated into a large CGI set. I wouldn’t have to wait seven days to get the perfect sunset for the kiss scene. We’d shoot it in front of a green screen, and we’d choose our sunset.

The quote comes amid a bigger discussion of using makeup and digital effects to alter actor’s ages. And while I’m sure that it will instantly get people readying their pitchforks, I honestly can’t blame Cameron for saying it. The Titanic shoot was a harrowing ordeal, to say the least. If he thinks that they could make the set appear just as believable without building the entire ship (and let’s face it, a project like that may never happen again), I don’t see that as necessarily being a bad thing.

Still, there’s something to be said for a physical set. One of my favorite aspects of Peter Weir’s Master and Commander is that he actually built and filmed in replicas of period ships. By doing so, he turned that movie into a $150 million art film, and it’s an experience unlikely to be recreated by CG. Weir’s film was all about very close quarters though, and the sets in no way compared to Titanic.

Knowing Cameron, he’d still build out large portions of the ship practically, and then stitch those various pieces together digitally when needed. At that point, it isn’t very different than old-school Hollywood production — except instead of cutting between locations and letting your mind fill in the blanks, the director can actually make it appear as if everything is connected.

All that being said, I completely disagree with him about the sunset remark. Filming actors in front of green screens rarely gives the same emotional and physical response as they would to a natural event. I can understand not wanting to build a massive 750-foot long set, but they can certainly spend a few mornings to realistically capture one of the greatest wonders of nature.

[Source: NewsWeek, via Gizmodo]

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Comments 

Related Posts

Tags

Drama, Tech Stuff, , ,

  • señor spielbergo
    traguen mierda bastardos, y es su pedo si no me entienden, pa que hablan en ingles y no en español
  • señor spielbergo
    coman caca pendejos
  • conchobhar
    One of my favourite things about Firefly/Serenity is that they actually built the gorram ship. Sad to hear that actually building sets seems to be going out of style.
  • payntingDigital
    conchobhar- I doubt building sets will ever go out of style. There are just certain scenarios where building a real set is cost prohibitive. Even Cameron wasn't saying he'd do an entire digital set for Titanic. He'd have built set pieces that were extended digitally. In a case like Serenity I'd think it would always be best to build a real set and more expensive to try and do it all digitally. It's such tight quarters with lots of interaction.
    It's up to a Director and/or visual FX producer/supervisor to decide what will look and work best with most efficient cost. There are alot of cases where our set builders can build great sets faster and better then we could build digitally. But they're are plenty of cases where we can build things that are just downright impossible to build physically.
  • Octoberist
    I like Peter Jackson's picture with Cameron.

    Peter is thinking "I'm a naughty boy. Yesss, I ammm!"
  • AB
    nothing else really to say but I agree, natural wonders are incredible. (e.g. planet earth)
  • shane
    James Cameron is a hack. Hasn't always been a hack, but he is now.
  • Octoberist
    thanks for being constructive to back up your opinion. And thank you for using the misused word on the internet: "hack", which is up there with "Overrated".
  • shane
    defined by Webster's as someone who does "dull, unoriginal work". I'm not misusing nothin'. AVATAR is a work of clichéd, boring, hakuna matata crap. Still, it's cool Cameron spent so many years developing the technology so people who haven't run out of talent and ideas can make some great films with it.
  • Octoberist
    I'm gonna call you out on that.

    I don't think Avatar was his best work, but to say he's a hack is just silly. Hack..like Brett Ratner? Then that applies to France Ford Copolla with The Godfather Part 3 or Jack.

    My point being is that there's a lot of unforgiving people out there, and I hope you're not one of them. I don't like George Lucas' work from the Prequels, but I'll will be grateful for the original Star Wars and even the underrated American Graffiti.

    Don't like David Fincher's Benjamin Button but I still love Fight Club.

    So yes, you're misusing the word 'hack'. Dull or original for Jim's body of work? please.
  • Neil
    the thing that really kills me when using cgi, is when it is used for blood.
    i cannot take any scene seriously where it looks like globs of computer images are pouring out of somebody.
  • KarlPilkington
    I bet good ole Peta Jecksin would have used a bunch of minitures made by Riched Tayleh's crew down at Weeta Wukshop in New Zealand.
  • slumbergod
    It wouldn't surprise me if cgi is the only way to make epic movies in the near future. The cost of building expansive sets must be tremendous.
  • OhNoItsGojira
    "... (and let’s face it, a project like that may never happen again)..."
    A project like "Titanic?" Are you kidding me? Peter Jackson made three films in 1 year.
  • adorhino
    I'm having fun just reading the flow of the discussion.
  • MonsterKilledThePilot
    The reason why Avatar appears photorealistic is because there's nothing real to compare it to. Peter Jackson had the challenge of making Gollum look real while standing in a real enviroment next to actors.
  • George Lucas called. He wants his idea back.
    While he's at it he could probably recast Leo DiCaprio, use CGI for his character and the thing will still act as flat as a board.

    You know what they say, If it ain't broke don't fix it...
    but then again this is hollywood
  • Serpico
    "Technology has definitely made things a tad easier between making large scale movies and production crews. Good stuff."

    What's being over-looked by everyone from Cameron and Jackson to the commenters on this board is the human element that CGI has all but destroyed over the past twenty years.

    Technology has made things easier-- if by easier we mean that we've effectively eliminated the jobs of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of people. When once the directors of epics (Spartacus, Cleopatra, Intolerance, Julius Caesar, Cabiria, even Braveheart) were content to build things and employ armies of extras, now merely hire an office of designers in New Zealand to create those armies and those sets.

    That is to say nothing of the electricians, construction workers, even craft service workers who have become marginalized and obsolete thanks to the "ground-breaking" work of men like Jackson and Cameron.

    Do movies look better now that Wolfgang Peterson can fill a CG horizon with CG triremes approaching Troy? I would argue they don't.

    I don't malign directors like Raimi ("Spiderman") and The Wachowski Brothers ("The Matrix") for showing us things once thought impossible. But I miss the days when epic movies were epic productions born from the sweat of generations of men who did it and loved it for a living.

    I caught Jurassic Park over the weekend and was amazed at how well a movie from 1994 had stood the test of time.

    It's because people built those dinosaurs with their hands.
  • ol
    Sorry, but I think the opposite and Jackson explain it:

    JACKSON: The vast majority of the CGI budget is labor. It's only going to go up.
  • Serpico
    If you're going to apologize it should be for misquoting the article. Peter Jackson's actual quote is this:

    "The vast majority of the CGI budget is labor."

    And he's right, it is. But that is 100% different from what I am speaking of-- manual and skilled laborers on set.
  • ol
    labor evolves, new jobs are created, some disapear
    People were builing dinosaurs with their hands, now they will build it with their brain using their computer.
    i understand that this evolution pose some problems, but overall, it's better for most, this is life.
  • Dangling
    Boo hoo. Go commiserate with the buggy whip manufacturers and the Betamax crowd.
  • flatsoda
    Aliens doesn't have a single digital effect in it and it would still give these pixel orgies of the 21st century a run for their money if it were to come out today. Cinema like Avatar is comparable to baroque art. So many technical hurdles have been over come and so many plot points have been trodden that it seems that all these directors can think to do is pile more and more stuff into their movies. A bit of constraint would go a long way in these situations.
  • Wiblerjib
    Go back and watch Aliens now. It's a terrible, terrible film. Hackneyed dialogue, boring action, ugly effects.
    Compared to Ridley Scott's claustrophobic masterpiece Alien, and David Fincher's genius work of psychological terror Alien3, Aliens is a pile of stinking Na'vi poo.
  • Solid
    CGI's been abused a bunch in movies, I think. But even so, it's like when sound was introduced, film makers went crazy with it and made all sorts of walky shit with sound, then someone started using it correctly. I think the same will happen to cgi if it hasn't already with Avatar proving you can give a soul to 1s and 0s.
  • Prickle
    The funny thing about this comment is people often cite Titantic's CGI as the flaw in using such a shortcut. The cold air breathing puffs look like ass now. If he had used more it would have looked worse in retrospect.
  • Cameron: "Yeah, I'm thinking that if I had the tech, I would've made a CG Titanic instead of actually going to all the trouble of building a boat. I mean, do you have any idea how crazy hard it is to build a 750 ft long set that's only going to be used in a few scenes?"
    Jackson: "I built Edoras."
  • Jiblet head
    BUMP!
  • Technology has definitely made things a tad easier between making large scale movies and production crews. Good stuff.
  • zoey
    too bad cameron doesnt say anything about hiring someone who can actually write a story.
  • Dan
    What i meant to say above, was that it wasn´t Titanics story, drama and love story that made me like the movie but the epic feeling of almost beeing on the Titanic itself and for the last hour when the ship started sinking. Had he shot everything against green screen it wouldn´t have been as emmersive.
  • Dan
    All I can say, I´m so glad, Cameron didn´t have the digital technology he has today. The only thing that made Titanic such a great experience for me were all the physical sets. And the sunset was one of the most beautiful in any film. If he had shot it against a green screen it wouldn´t have been half as good.
  • fanboy_d
    Great. Zemeckis MkII.
  • Matthew
    The reason Titanic or Jurassic Park's effects don't look as outdated as so many movies after them is because they used real physical sets or miniature models and used CGI to aid them rather than use CGI for every single detail.
  • paddy
    Re: "Master and Commander", Yes Peter Weir did use a real sailing ship and a full-sized replica ship in a tank, but he also used miniature ships, CGI ships, and CGI-augmented sets, plus greenscreen backgrounds in just the way that Cameron describes. I agree, though, M&C is an artistic AND technical masterpiece, on every level!
  • DrLickies
    Plus Master and Commander was a really, really boring movie.
  • Plip
    Maybe for a jerkin warf like you.
  • nonononononono
    i dont care how great their CG movies are. i dont care what these people think would be better.

    Practicle effects is what movie magic is about.

    Even in Jacksons Lord of The Rings... All those fantastic moments of being in awe of the locations and sets and towers and kingdoms... those were all real. wether they were there by nature or miniature sets, or full sets. No CG, not even AVATAR matches the emotional investment and detail put into those. You can practically see he blood, sweat, and tears on the walls.

    Theres no fooling the human eye. even if it looks photorealistic, you can still tell whether or not something is created from a computer.

    I love practical and i love CG (when done right) I just wish they wouldnt give up on practical so easily. All i hear is the advancements in CG and animation, but what about the advancements in real effects? give those guys the money they need to create new things, not animators. or Go-Motion animation. imagine if that stuff was done today, how improved it would be in todays world, computer animation could help make it better. Thats what CG should be,. To help improve and assist what the creators are working with, rather than completely build from scratch.
  • evilninjax
    I agree with much of this. Yes, the TITANIC shoot was super-difficult (as was THE ABYSS), but that's part of why in the end it was so damb cool. Watching that replica of the Titanic go vertical on the big screen was cinematic magic!

    All effects technique have their place. I'd hope that Cameron (and the ones that will pick up his standard afterwards) would choose to use the best technique for the job and not the easiest one.

    I recall Kurosawa talking about RED BEARD. He spent an inordinate amount of time and money (i think it was the most expensive Japanese movie when it was made) to construct an actual village with authentic roof tiles, etc. Many of these elements were things that would not even be shown on screen! Why did he do it then? He said that by creating an environment and atmosphere that was as close to the actual one, he would extract the best, most authentic performance from the actors as possible. IIRC, Scorsese echoed these sentiments when he spent all that money on GANGS OF NEW YORK (fwiw).
  • aspect
    The term Film maker is officially dead. This new way of making movies needs to have a new term-capturists, meta datists... 3d ist
  • There are still plenty of films in the world to warrant the term 'filmmaker'. Leave the multiplex and seek them out.
  • inteliboy
    or... gaffers, runners, dop's, ad's etc... all baloney.
  • eddymovies
    I think the difference between Lucas and Cameron is that the latter seems to try and further incorporate technologies into the story telling and his artistic vision. It just feels like Lucas was filling in some of the blanks with the prequel trilogy. I wasn't really impressed with any of the CGI in those three films, but with Avatar, I feel like the technology was meant to express the world he created. It worked fantastically.

    I'm not sure if I agree with Cameron's comment on the whole, but that's because I think his practice only works in the right hands. So, if Cameron made Titanic now, I'd be all for it. Avatar proves that he knows what he's doing, technically speaking.
  • Bilbo
    i 100% agree withu about the sunset remark. just look at the scene in KING KONG (2005) where denham is shooting the scene with anne on the boat in front of the sunshine. looks so..................digital.
    but i have to say, Avatar, PHOTOREALISTIC. the environments at least. could not tell what was cgi and what wasnt. i then watched that hulu clip of hem in the performance capture suits, and turns out it was all digital. MIND BLOWING STUFF!!!
  • moose
    LOL. Were you not able to tell that the floating mountains were CGI ?????????
  • Pretty stupid comment. The mountains are a small CGI example in a movie that is primarily all... fake.
    The opening few minutes, flying over the jungle - looks 100% real, but NONE of it is. He could just have easily shot that in Hawaii on a foggy day, and I'm not sure why he didn't - would have saved money that he could have spent elsewhere - but it was all CG.
  • existenz
    Agreed. If I can't tell that what's CGI and what's real, then it's all good.

    But if I'm watching something like the Phantom Menace or G.I Joe where it just looks like cartoon bullshit, then yeah, practical effects and real sunsets are the way to go.

    Avatar is the best I've ever seen. But most filmmakers don't have 5 years and $300 million to get it right. Cameron and Jackson live in a whole other world from most filmmakers.
  • Ramesh
    what's funny is that people will be willing to cut Cameron slack for this comment, while if Lucas said this, everyone will be ready to throw him in fire and call him a hack etc

    The thing about CGI these days is that, when used properly to assist background dressing of a shot, it can be a wonderful tool. For example, in There Will Be Blood, CGI/greenscreen methods were used to add oil rigs in background and erase modern buildings from shots.

    But when you use it for forground stuff in a shot that the audience will focus on, you run the risk of the effect/quality look outdated in few years. Just look at the Spider-Man films as an example.
  • patrick
    Lucas can't tell a decent story or direct actors to save his life. That's why no one cuts him slack. That and he made "The Force" into a chemical response.
  • sajester
    That's because Lucas *is* a hack.
blog comments powered by Disqus

gorilla nation

/Film

Copyright © 2010 /Film. Web design by Pro Blog Design. Logo Concept by: Illumination Ink

All names, trademarks and images are copyright their respective owners.