Tools and Jim

Less recognized is his seminal role in the creation of computer previsualization tools to streamline preproduction or his pioneering position in the area of electronic editing. He presides over not one but two high-tech firms: Digital Domain, the Venice-based toy box for the wild at heart; and Lightstorm Technologies, a Burbank-based R&D facility where he dreams up nifty new imaging tools that his younger brother Mike engineers to life. The five-year-old Lightstorm Technologies holds three patents, with two pending.

"Sometimes the great thing about filmmaking is you sweep people up in this passion to create," Cameron says solemnly, contemplative about a subject he clearly cares a lot about. “Then you propose problems to them that there aren't existing solutions to, and the smart people will say that just because a solution doesn't exist doesn't mean we can't make it exist. So you sort of will into existence something that wasn't there before."

He's had more than his share of firsts: dialogue recorded underwater (`The Abyss”), a computer-created being ('T2”) and a digital color-correction system for effects ("True Lies”).

"The thing that's extraordinary about Jim is that I don't think there's anyone out there – with the possible exception of Stanley Kubrick – who has such a deep understanding of the technical and effects work as well as the artistic side," says Michael Backes, a partner in the interactive-games company Rocket Science and a digital-effects pundit who consulted on 'The Abyss.”

“(George) Lucas might be pretty close too, but you can see Cameron is in rarefied company," Backes says. "He can talk about how a Panavision camera is built or how to fix a helicopter on a set. He's extraordinarily deep and wide in his knowledge of how films and effects are created, and he can write too.”

Not that this should come as a surprise. Cameron is a guy who, once he decided to pursue a film career, spent his leisure time pouring over technical dissertations on everything from lenses to lighting. Though the industry's high-tech circles can seem cliquish, with a few companies and professional groups setting trends and standards, Cameron has always fit in, his big marquee presence brightening many a SMTPE meeting.

Cameron teamed with Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic to create images hitherto undreamed, yet his ideas and vision have, over the years, taken something of a backseat to their execution. Alluding to this in his 1993 Siggraph convention keynote speech, he explained why helmsmen are effects shy. “For directors ... effects are a no-win deal,” he noted. "If the effects shots look great, they didn't do them. Somebody else may have in essence done what was best about their film."

Such considerations haven't hindered Cameron. "He is a classic example of a director who gets it," says Steve Williams, a visual-effects artist at ILM whose association with Cameron dates back to 1986's "The Abyss” and whose most recent credit is `The Mask.” “He said, `This is what I want.' Fortunately, we had the tools. But it's always the idea first, the tools second. Jim Cameron's ideas put us on the map."

Under the guidance of Dennis Muren (who would go on to spearhead the Lucas shop's efforts on 'The Abyss” and '?2”), ILM had done some rudimentary experiments with electronic film imaging on 1985's “Young Sherlock Holmes.” The result was an ambitious if unspectacular stained-glass window that sprang to life for an hallucinatory sword battle. Created with computer animation, the figure was crude – not at all photorealistic – and was married back to 35mm film using old-fashioned optical printing. Nonetheless, it popped the starting gun on a new era, creating a buzz in industry circles.

Cameron, meanwhile, had orchestrated a buzz of his own. “Aliens” copped the best visual effects Oscar in 1986, marking first time in six years that ILM didn't win or have representation among the Academy's visual-effects winners. (In fact, there are only two times in its 17-year history that ILM hasn't been thus adored. The other was in 1979, when Ridley Scott's “Alien” – with effects by H. R. Giger and Carlo Rambaldi – won.) Using traditional mechanical and modeling techniques, Cameron managed to create stunning visual excitement with "Aliens." He succeeded with the help of Stan Winston and of Bob and Dennis Skotak – old friends from his days in the effects department at Roger Corman's New World Pictures. The combination had delivered the goods on Cameron's 1984 film "The Terminator,” also using traditional techniques. The technical work on both films left vivid impressions on movie fans the world over: "Terminator” with its grinning, red-eyed endoskeleton; and aliens" with the creepy Alien Queen. Both were designed by Cameron, by all accounts an outstanding illustrator. “He and Ridley Scott are the only directors I know who can draw," says an admiring Williams, a classically trained animator. "I was very jazzed about working on this project with him, but when he showed me a piece artwork for the endoskeleton, I realized he was also a brilliant artist who understands my aspect of this business as far as the creation of fantasy characters,” adds Winston, now partnered at Digital Domain with Cameron, former ILM president Scott Ross and IBM. Winston concedes that Cameron had a challenge in topping Giger's original alien design. The filmmaker used as a departure Giger's "biomechanoid approach.” The technique of integrating organic and technological forms was an influence evident in Cameron's early work (“Battle Beyond the Stars,” "Galaxy of Terror”). He wound up with a series of detailed illustrations of creatures both insectlike and reptilian.

“The Alien Queen was Jim's design. Then the two of us fine-tuned specific parts of her body,” Winston says. The “fine-tuning” involved such advanced implements as a black foam core and plastic trash bags, which the crew used to construct a 15-foot mockup of the beastly Queen. Hung from a crane, it was operated by two internally positioned puppeteers, and Cameron practiced shooting it in the parking lot at Pinewood Studios. (Both the sketches and video tests appear in the director's cut laserdisc.)

Ultimately, a full-scale mockup and cabled miniature were shot. Using standard resources, Cameron and company managed to fashion a bit of cinema history, confirming what former boss Roger Corman still believes: The nonconformist with the big imagination can do more with nails, wire and plastic bags than those with more munificent resources.

Cameron had been well aware of ILM's work, having studied the company's progress down to the most minute technical details. “I had a view of ILM: that they had a certain way of doing things and that their work was very expensive,” he recalls. But ILM knew that Cameron was on the map, and they wanted his business, especially when they heard that his next film would be a fantasy-oriented underwater adventure. Cameron remained cautious about venturing out of familiar effects territory but was confident enough to do a little experimenting.

For `The Abyss,” released in 1989, he gave ILM a very specific assignment: the pseudopod sequence. “When I saw the stuff on 'The Abyss,' I just went crazy,” recalls Muren, an eight-time Oscar winner. "Jim has these ideas that appear to be free from the restraints of imagination. It wasn't like we were 'Hey, ready to go!' This technology has always needed to be pushed, and Cameron pushed us to do this job.”

For his part, the filmmaker thought, Fine, I'll treat these 16 shots as the beginning of a relationship, and we'll see where it goes. ILM was only one among several effects contractors, and Cameron had carefully designed the pseudopod sequence so that if it didn't work, it could easily be cut. ILM wound up doing another 12 shots on the film (a wave sequence that only appears on the FoxVideo Collector's laserdjsc).

“It's funny, because what started out as a dinky little effect wound up dominating the film and jettisoning this company into the future,” says Williams, noting that such technological advances tend to be “synergistic,” impacting the entire industry. “What happens is, an Alias Research will say, 'OK, you're doing this with our software, so we'll create this.' Then Silicon Graphics will say: `Oh, so that's how you're using the software? We're going to modify our machines so that you can do that even better, and we'll add this tool.'”

The relationship Cameron created with ILM went plenty far, plenty fast. Though the Skotak brothers' 4Ward Productions delivered excellent miniature work on `The Abyss” and effects storyboard artist John Bruno's outstanding rear-screen projection, it was the computer-generated “water snake” that garnered the attention. The film won the Academy Award for visual effects and threw off a new range of software products.

Among them, Virtus Walk-through. “It's a development out of an early video game called Colony, which we were trying to adapt to use as a previsualization tool on `The Abyss' to visualize our sets,” Cameron remembers.

"In some ways, you could say Jim Cameron is responsible for the real-time visualization of movie sets,” says Backes, who adds that Cameron was also “the first guy to use the Macintosh extensively in preproduction.” He would soon become the first director to commission “a big, film-resolution feature shot that would be created entirely on a desktop,” says Backes of the “nuclear nightmare” shot created by 4Ward and Electric Image with a Mac.

While he certainly managed to get the most out of conventional effects for his first two films, 'The Abyss” marked a turning point for Cameron. The film industry itself was also forever changed after experiencing its first real taste of "morphing” (previously only experimented with in "Willow”) with the shape-shifting water tentacle. The film also marked the beginning of Cameron's longtime association with effects artist and second-unit director Bruno, who calls 'The Abyss” "the last great optical film.” Bruno notes that out of 320 effects shots, only one was digitally composited back into the film.

Bruno remembers that part of the compromise in bringing the pseudopod to the screen was that it would have to look metallic. Computer software just wasn't advanced enough to render a natural-looking surface, "so when we sat down to do 'T2,' we said, 'Well, we know we can get chrome,'” Bruno recalls.

Cameron has said that he originally conceived the liquid-metal villain known as the T-1000 while working on the original "Terminator” but that the technology hadn't yet caught up with his vision. To realize it seven years later, new computer software was needed, and "T2" triggered such innovations as sacking (software that imitates the body's skeletal movements) and adding motion to a texture map file. With its lifelike motion and replication of the human form, the molten, morphing T-1000 of "Terminator 2” fame blew minds at the boxoffice and prompted a wave of how'd-they-do-it? media coverage unlike anything the effects community had ever seen.

Cameron could have gone the easy route and continued to dazzle with flashy images. Instead his next film, “True Lies," pioneered the area of invisible effects – shots that blend seamlessly with the live action. One of the most challenging aspects was compositing green-screen shots of a hovering Harrier jet into background plates shot not just in broad daylight but in the unforgivingly bright Florida sun.

As on "T2," about eight or 10 new pieces of computer software were written to achieve the desired illusions. Advances included breakthroughs in motion-control software and particle systems (to create smoke and heat signatures) and color control – an area in which the company has emerged a leader. Despite the toys at his disposal, Cameron continued to call upon traditional effects such as model and miniature work and green screen for the film. -If throwing a rubber chicken against a wall works, that's what he'll do." says Lightstorm president. Rae Sanchini, who notes that there's "no lack of confidence in any creative decision he makes."

Cameron's mind is often applied in reaching practical solutions for simple problems. One invention from "True Lies" – computer software called Cinegrade – stabilizes color and contrast control. "One of the big problems we have with taking something from film into digital and back to film is that in that digital realm in the middle there are an infinite number of ways to screw it up. Before there were a limited number of ways, and you could always recover the image at the other end, make it more magenta or make it brighter. But with that digital interface, if you've taken all the magenta out, it may never come back at the end," Cameron notes. The software – reportedly a cinematographer's dream come true – allows the fine-tuning of digital shots so that they can be inserted seamlessly into film.

Cameron continues to be as inventive as ever, the only difference being that now his own companies – Digital Domain and Lightstorm Technologies – will be reaping the long-term benefits of the proprietary advances. "The thing that's always struck me as a fairy tale is the brothers aren't necessarily interested in making a lot of money off this stuff,” says Steadicam operator Jimmy Muro, a longtime associate of Cameron and his brother Mike, who is vp operations at Lightstorm Technologies. "Their main goal is to advance technology and leave an impression.”

Lightstorm Tech has quietly brought three new products to market. The Helmet Integrated Display, or HID, is a heads-up display device that allows an operator to see what the camera sees without holding it up to the eye. "It's particularly useful for dynamic action scenes," says Mike Cameron, noting that Panavision has licensed the rights to market the product, which was created for "T2."

Another invention also being marketed by Panavision is the Vidstick. a director's viewfinder system manufactured specifically for -True Lies. "Jim asked for a system that would allow him to see through a viewfinder using the exact lens that he wanted to shoot the scene with," Mike says, noting that the signal is also split to a video recorder. "So he can walk through scenes with the actors and with the set elements in place, then immediately play it back and see how the scene's going to look."

The younger Cameron sees much time-saving potential in the device. "Everyone with a video monitor and receiver can see what the director is setting up, so everything falls into place much more quickly,” he notes. The third technology, a Diver Propulsion Vehicle (DPV), was created for "The Abyss” and allows much more versatile underwater filming than was available with submerged dollies and cranes. In addition, the fraternal duo have two patents pending on technologies that Mike promises "will revolutionize action photography.”

But life for James Cameron and company isn't all gear-head homework assignments. The director, who has a passion for recreational scuba diving, has found that the DPV comes in handy for underwater fun. "It goes quite fast. We can fly around sunken ships in one tenth the time it would take to swim it,” says Mike, who describes the situation as "very James Bond ... or James Cameron.”