Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Bio and Style of Director, James Cameron (Jeff Good's Final Project)


One of the most successful and influential directors of our generation has a name that is all too familiar.  His epic movies have broken box-office records on multiple occasions and have quickly become modern classics.  Behind the guns, robots, aliens and sinking ships lies a success story of a director whose brilliant style has propelled him to the top of the movie-making industry.  Director, James Cameron and his unique film-making style has shaped today’s popular culture, the way we watch movies, and the science fiction genre itself.
James Francis Cameron was born in 1954 in Ontario, Canada.  He moved to the United States and majored in physics at California State University.  After graduation, Cameron began his professional career as a professional truck driver.  His luck changed when the truck driver realized that his imagination and ideas rivaled some of his favorite movies like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and George Lucas’ Star Wars: A New Hope (1977).  Quickly changing his career path and using his creative imagination as his primary tool, Cameron landed a job as a Hollywood art director and miniature set builder.  With this new career foundation, his big ideas and inspiring imagination allowed him to scramble to the top of the food chain.
After creating some of the art designs for Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), Cameron claims to have gotten his big break when some big time producers noticed his skill for directing.  Cameron was directing pick up shots for Bruce Clark’s Galaxy of Terror (1981) as a 2nd unit director.  He was assigned to shoot a scene showing maggots feasting on the flesh of a dismembered arm.  Using his ingenuity, Cameron rigged the prop to an AC power cord and electrocuted the maggots to make them writhe in a disgusting manner.  Seeing his strict, demanding, perfectionist directing style, larger project movie producers quickly talked with him about doing larger scale productions.  That same year, Cameron directed his first movie, Piranha Part II:  The Spawning (1981).  The movie may have been a flop, but it was the first step to becoming one of the most famous directors in all of Hollywood. 
In 1984, Cameron wrote and directed his magnum opus film that would engrave his name in movie history.  The Terminator, starring Michael Biehn, Linda Hamilton, and of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger, grossed $78 million world-wide.  The Terminator was an example of how artistic directing and genius imagination could rattle audiences with a sense of fictitious truth.  His imaginative, captivating style allowed for his reputation, audience and success to grow.  His success lead to the science fiction classics that we know today such as Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).  Eventually, in 1990, with all of his accumulated success, Cameron formed his very own production company:  Lightstorm Entertainment.
James Cameron is now one of the most sought-after directors in all of Hollywood and continues to captivate audiences with his imagination.  His “190 million dollar chick flick,” extravaganza, Avatar in 2009 with $297 million   Always looking to spice up the screen, Cameron has made substantial investments into 3D technology, and has become, what Ronald Glover calls “The 3D Entrepreneur.”

James Cameron’s style of film-making and directing usually focuses around powerful imagination, captivating plot, and beautiful imagery.  Cameron specializes in the science fiction and genre but has experimented with comedy (True Lies (1994)) and drama (Titanic). His movies usually consist of strong female characters like Sarah Connor from T-2: Judgment Day and Ripley from Aliens.  Cameron favors actor and actresses and usually tends to put them into his movies more than once.  These actors and actresses include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, and Sigourney Weaver.  As every individual has their own personality, Cameron’s movies have a distinct feel and flow usually associating it to his directing style. Cameron loves to shoot scenes in a deep blue hue, but loves close-ups even more.  His movies contain close-ups of wheels or feet crushing objects, close-ups of fights to make the audience feel claustrophobic and as one of the fighters, and close-ups of people during chases.
 On-set, James Cameron is known as “Iron Jim” because of his tough and demanding style, which includes a hot temper.  Off-set he is said to be very kind but still a perfectionist.  Cameron does not think of himself as a perfectionist, but instead a “rightest”, not settling anything for less than his best.  As a director, many patterns are consistent in his movies and include the video monitor perspective, where characters are seen through a camera and shown to another on a monitor.  In every film, a character screams “GO, GO, GO!”, and when he needs to intensify a scene, he loves to use slow motion.  When asked how he felt about his machine related themes in his movies, Cameron replied “I see our potential destruction and the potential salvation as human beings coming from technology and how we use it and how we master, and how we prevent it from mastering us.” The use of advanced machines, and the fight against them, has been a common theme in most of his movies.  Cameron, being a grease monkey, loves to work with a variety of machines.  His hobby has inspired many memorable scenes like The Terminator fight scenes, submersible battles, an AMP suit fight, and the stance against a queen alien in a power loader. 


Watch for these characteristics in the following montage of video clips from James Cameron movies


Cameron has been inspired by many directors including Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, George Lucas, and Stanley Kubrick.  Cameron also has a deep love for the ocean, and exploration.  Just last month, Cameron made the deepest dive to the marinas trench in a submersible. This deep sea realm has been the subject of many of his documentaries, like Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) and Aliens of the Deep (2005) to raise money for his bigger projects and share his passion for the ocean with his audiences.

James Cameron, through hard work and skill, clawed his way to the top of Hollywood.  Many of his movies have become modern classics and are loved by millions.  Most influential of all is Cameron’s unique and wonderful imagination, whisking audiences to planets beyond our solar system, or just below our oceans.  It is this power of imagination, and his style in which he presents it, that has made him one of the most successful and influential directors in history. 


“Film making is not about film; not about sprockets.  It’s about ideas.  It’s about images, it’s about imagination.  It’s about story telling.”
- James Cameron

Works Cited
Hansson, A. (2012).  James Cameron.  IMDB.   <www.imdb.com/name/nm0000116/bio>.
Glover, Ronald. (2012). “James Cameron: Hollywood’s 3D Entrepreneur” Reuters.  2 April, 2012. < http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/cameronidUSL2E8F200T20120402>.
James Cameron. (2012).  IMDB. < http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000116/>.
James Cameron. (2012).  Wikipedia.  < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cameron>.

No comments:

Post a Comment