In his first-ever documentary, Ghosts of the Abyss, Oscar-winning director James Cameron sets out on an unscripted underwater odyssey to excavate the ruins at the site of his greatest inspiration–the awe-inspiring wreck of the Titanic, which sank to the murky depths of the sea 91 years ago in the North Atlantic Ocean, taking 1,500 lives.
Cameron‘s fascination with the Titanic is well known. But he was concerned that others, equally fascinated, would not have the opportunity to engage in the immediacy of the rush that he experienced upon discovering the wreck and coming face-to-face with one of modern culture’s greatest myths.
His latest film is an attempt to bring this immediacy to his audience so he can share with them the visceral feeling of a marine exploration that uncovers a legend, and he accomplishes it amazingly thanks to a new technology and a 3D camera that he invented in partnership with Sony.
Clearly a Renaissance man, Cameron is part filmmaker, part inventor, part historian, part forensic investigator, part marine biologist. As Hollywood.com’s exclusive interview with him shows, it all adds up to an impressive, investigative, creative filmmaker who knows that his work can impact the way history is seen, recorded and–most importantly– felt.
Why are people still so riveted by the tragedy of the Titanic and its final voyage?
Cameron: The Titanic, I think, is fascinating to people because it’s the safe tragedy that’s at a distance–that we can use as a kind of simulator for our emotions…. It’s really always served that purpose, which is why it’s gone from being something real to almost being a myth…. When I went out there for the first time, what struck me was that it wasn’t a myth; it was real. It wasn’t a Greek tragedy; it was real…. Sometimes things hit you that aren’t intellectual; they’re just emotional. Titanic is a way for us to think about death and loss and grieving and mortality–but at a remove…. Thankfully, you can keep it at a distance.
You’ve said in the past that making the Titanic was a life-changing experience for you. How and why?
Cameron: In the making of the first film we did our first expedition there, in ’95, and really getting to live out a dream–or a fantasy–for that matter was life changing to do, and it could be facilitated by filmmaking. Bringing that back and giving it to an audience was a way to kind of justify my skills as a filmmaker. … When we made this film, the idea was, how can we give the audience a really enhanced experience–something that, as closely as possible given the present technology, approximates what it would be like to really go, really make the dive, really see the wreck, do all the things that I’d done back in ’95 and enjoyed so much. And different people respond [to Ghosts of the Abyss] differently…. Some people feel like they get a ride in a submersible, [like] they get to ride on an exploration and have all that pressure over their heads…it gives some the feeling they’ve gone to another world.
You seem comfortable down there.
Cameron: I’m very comfortable with the system. I had apprehension before the dive, but once that hatch closes, hey, you’re working…. It’s just such a fascinating process for me…. Nothing is rehearsed once you’re down there…you only get to do everything once…there was never an attempt to do a second take.
As a director, was it a difficult decision not to have a script?
Cameron: No. That was what was very interesting and appealing about it. Because I knew that I was in new territory as a filmmaker–really kind of starting over from scratch as a documentary filmmaker–something that I had never done before. So all of my normal methodology of writing a script, building all the props, and [doing] all the storyboarding…that just got thrown out. It was very freeing in one way, but in another sense it left everybody in this kind of process vacuum. [They said], “Now what do we do?” I said, “Well look, if something moves, ‘Shoot it. Simple.” … Sooner or later we knew we’d come up with something cool.
What was the most surprising article you found this time around?
Cameron: I think unquestionably, the decanter and water glass, [which] for some absolutely bizarre reason was just sitting there, right on that dresser we show. It seems almost impossible given the violence of the sinking and the crashing into the sea floor. You know, plates of steel just being ripped open by that impact, and here’s this perfectly preserved thing. But you know, the whole wreck is like that–a strange juxtaposition of areas that are absolutely devastated with areas that are in perfect preservation.
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The film touches on the emotional implications of 9/11…can you elaborate?
Cameron: Well, we were exploring a similar tragedy–similar in the sense that it came out of the blue and was shocking and had symbolic value…. Shocking to the civilization of its time because a great symbol had been destroyed, although obviously circumstances were much different…. We had an emotional reaction of overlaying the grieving process from the tragedy of Sept. 11 onto the Titanic, because I–we–felt kind of connected to Titanic in a way. I didn’t really know any of the people, but you can’t involve yourself in any tragedy–recent or past–and not have some kind of sense of connection to it. If nothing else, you’re just imagining what it was like for them, in the same way we can’t know, but try to imagine, what it was like for…the victims of Sept. 11.
You restaged a lot of scenes of the vessel sinking, showing musicians playing calming music for the panicked voyagers, for example. Everyone aboard is made to appear ghostlike–translucent figures super-imposed on the ship model your team constructed. How did you come up with that?
Cameron: It was an idea that I had in my mind when we went out on the expedition, but it wasn’t something that we storyboarded like, “We need this shot, that shot and this shot ’cause we’re gonna recreate it with ghosts.” But when I was down there with the wreck and we were filming, I did a few shots that I thought would be interesting to see what it was like to know what the people were doing at this exact moment…. As we started editing the film, we felt like we needed that dimension in order to be able to tell the story. Making a large format film, we couldn’t constantly keep cutting to historical photos, things like that–a lot of the normal documentary tools are not available to you or are not satisfying when you’re in the large-format 3D world. So we thought, “All right, this is an opportunity to use our 3D footage and kind of bring it to life.” So the irony is, we didn’t have the budget to build the set of Titanic, so instead, we used the real Titanic [laughs] as our set, which is kind of bizarre, but that’s what happened.
Did you use footage from the movie Titanic within this documentary? Like for the sinking of the ship?
Cameron: Yeah, anything you saw that looked really familiar from the movie, was from the movie [he chuckles]. But don’t be misled by that; when you saw the ghosts lowering the lifeboats and putting the people in…all of that was re-staged…. The sets we had built for the movie weren’t the right size.
Your fascination with the Titanic is clear in both films. Do you think that your questions have at last been answered?
Cameron: The problem with Titanic is that [he smiles] every time you answer one question, you find some more. Yeah, you could continue to analyze that wreck site for years, but I don’t intend to, personally…I think I’ve got it out of my system.
Ghosts of the Abyss opened on IMAX screens across the country April 11.
