James Cameron Tells Peter Jackson He Would Rather Use CG Instead Of Building Titanic’s Set Today
By Devindra Hardawar/Dec. 22, 2009 12:50 am EST
His full quote, after the break.
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.
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.
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]
