JAMES CAMERON GETS DEEP ON UNDERSEA LIFE, ITS CONNECTION TO OUTER SPACE AND THE FUTURE OF FILMMAKING.Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer The phrase ``going down with the ship'' will forever have a more unique connotation for director James Cameron
James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is an Academy Award winning Canadian director, producer and screenwriter. than for everyday folks, and not simply because he directed the movie ``Titanic'' and has taken several exploratory dives to visit the legendary cruise ship's wreckage. The same explorer's itch that sent Cameron back to the Titanic for his 3-D IMAX IMAX Noun a film projection process that produces an image ten times larger than standard documentary ``Ghosts of the Abyss'' (2003) drove him 11,000 feet down to the ocean floor for a different kind of documentary, ``Aliens of the Deep'' (which recently opened on a handful of Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, IMAX theaters, including the Loews Cineplex IMAX at Universal CityWalk Universal CityWalk is a part of Universal Studios Hollywood, Universal Orlando Resort and Universal Studios Japan originating from Universal's first park, Universal Studios Hollywood. , the Edwards Valencia IMAX and the Bridge at Los Angeles' Howard Hughes Center). Only this time, instead of looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. luxury liner artifacts artifacts see specimen artifacts. , Cameron and a team of marine biologists and astrobiologists investigated deep-water creatures and their possible connections to life forms on other planets. ``We had a lot more ground to cover conceptually (than with 'Ghosts'), and we're telling a more complex story,'' says Cameron. ``We wanted people to come out of this with publishable science, and we've succeeded with that.'' Of course, it's one thing for a person to be a stargazer stargazer, common name for any of several species of marine fishes of the family Uranoscopidae, found in southern waters, and having the mouth, nostrils, and eyes set high in the head. Stargazers lie buried in the sand, waiting for their prey of small crustaceans. and quite another to gain scientific acceptance. ``At first they think you're just ... the best description I heard was someone who said, 'I just thought you were a Hollywood puke Puke Slang for selling off a losing position even if the loss is substantial. Notes: The point at which an investor decides to sell regardless of price has been dubbed "the puke point. . Turns out you're an explorer,' '' recalls Cameron. ``I thought, 'Yeah, that's saying out loud what everyone else is thinking.' '' And for those ``Terminator'' and ``Aliens'' mavens who despair at the notion of Cameron laying aside his camera for a career in a research laboratory, don't get too worried. Cameron expects to make a fictional film again - his sci-fi/action picture ``Battle Angel'' is tentatively scheduled to go before the cameras in 2006 for a 2007 release - but he wants the multiplexes to catch up to the filmmaking technology he now favors. Digital projectors figure to be fast replacing 35mm equipment, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Cameron, followed soon thereafter by upgrading to digital stereo cinema. Cameron and other filmmakers eyeing this technology (including Robert Rodriguez, George Lucas and Peter Jackson) expect some 1,000 screens nationwide to have the digital stereo capability by 2007. ``This can't be done just by me,'' says Cameron. ``I can't get people to put in these stereo projector systems and only have one film to play.'' So expect more enormous IMAX-size screens and 3-D glasses or headsets for ``Battle Angel,'' the first in a potential series of films based on the adventures of a female cyborg samurai first developed in Japanese graphic novels by Yukito Kishiro. While it's one thing for a ``Shark Boy and Lava Girl'' or an IMAX documentary like ``Aliens of the Deep'' to arrive with a 3-D component, doesn't a filmmaker potentially risk sacrificing a portion of his audience? Why even take the risk? ``Because I want to,'' returns Cameron with a laugh. ``It's the kind of film that is a world, and you're going to want to inhabit that world, and there's something about the stereo experience that draws you in and wraps it around you so you're much more aware of the environment,'' continues Cameron. `` 'Battle Angel' is in line for a PG-13 rating as opposed to an R audience, and I don't want kids to be denied getting to see the first big 3-D movie.'' While the future of moviemaking mov·ie·mak·er n. One that makes movies, especially professionally. mov  ie·mak continues to evolve, Cameron isn't sitting still. As ``Aliens of the Deep'' demonstrates, it's not like the Ontario, Canada-born writer-director can't come up with other exotic places to explore. Joined by researchers from NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. , the Jet Propulsion Laboratory “JPL” redirects here. For other uses, see JPL (disambiguation). Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a NASA research center located in the cities of Pasadena and La Cañada Flintridge, near Los Angeles, California, USA. and a group of carefully selected scientists at academic institutions, Cameron and his team chronicled a series of dives in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. For follow-up research, Cameron - who is on the NASA Advisory Council - would like to voyage skyward sky·ward adv. & adj. At or toward the sky. sky wards adv. , provided the the time is right to do so. ``I went through cosmonaut cosmonaut: see astronaut. training, and I was going to take my 3-D camera system and shoot at the space station, but the climate is not right for that now,'' says Cameron. ``I'm going to revisit that issue in the future. For me, it's not just going into space, 'Gee, wow, I'm in space.' It would be to go with a very specific task as a filmmaker to tell the story of human adaptation to long durations in space flight.'' ``I can't wait to get back in a sub again and see something new,'' he adds. ``There's always something that you haven't seen before, there's always something that people are not expecting to see.'' Things don't get much more unexpected than Humboldt squid, the 300-foot Lost City rock formations, blind shrimp and tubeworms discovered by Cameron's team. Dijanna Figueroa, a marine biology doctoral candidate from UC Santa Barbara, particularly liked a species of mussels, although she admits, ``they don't do much.'' ``Other people think the tubeworms are really pretty. and we did find deep-sea jellyfish jellyfish, common name for the free-swimming stage (see polyp and medusa), of certain invertebrate animals of the phylum Cnidaria (the coelenterates). The body of a jellyfish is shaped like a bell or umbrella, with a clear, jellylike material filling most of the that are pretty spectacular,'' says Figueroa, who is featured in the film. ``In many ways, the images you see are better than what you'd see looking out the window of a submarine.'' Credit Cameron's camera system for that. With his brother, Mike, the director developed the lightweight Reality Camera System, allowing him to shoot for hours at a time in places where large-format camera systems have been unable to go. The remote operated vehicles - or ``bots'' - used in ``Ghosts of the Abyss'' are back to steer the cameras into inaccessible places. ``Since I was a kid, I've dreamed of being an explorer,'' says Cameron, ``and now I actually get to do it, and I get to do it with some degree of legitimacy.'' Evan Henerson, (818) 713-3651 evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) ``I can't wait to get back in a sub again and see something new,'' says ``Aliens of the Deep'' director James Cameron. ``There's always something that you haven't seen before, there's always something that people are not expecting to see.'' John McCoy/Staff Photographer |
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