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>.
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