James Cameron Wants to be King of the 3D World
FILED UNDER: Interviews. Movies.
Remember when James Cameron had geek-cred? Dude made one great science fiction movie after another, from Terminator to Aliens to The Abyss, promptly hucking it all away when he made Titanic, the last movie I walked out of. Yes, I'm a Titanic hater, sue me. I think I walked out when one of the characters was running around a sinking ship firing a gun. Ugh. After the monumental success of Titanic and his ego-maniacal speech at the Oscars, James spent the next decade making little documentaries while trapped in a submersible. Finally, after what seems forever, Cameron is poised to reclaim some additional geek-credits with his forthcoming 3-D movie Avatar.
Variety has posted a lengthy interview with Cameron that focuses entirely on shooting in 3D, a technique many have tried but none have turned into box-office gold. The interview covers a lot of ground and gets pretty technical at times, but it appears obvious that Cameron is consumed with this new project, which bodes well for the final result.
From Variety:
Someone told me that "Citizen Kane" was a great example of how to shoot for 3-D: great depth of field, wide-angle lenses, etc.
I think it's a myth that you want deep focus in 3-D shots. I find the opposite is true. Selective focus, created by working at low f-stops with longer lenses, evolved as a cinematic technique to direct the audience's attention to the character of greatest narrative importance at a given moment. With 3-D, the director needs to lead the audience's eye, not let it roam around the screen to areas which are not converged. So all the usual cinematic techniques of selective focus, separation lighting, composition, etc., that one would use in a 2-D film to direct the eye to the subject of interest, still apply, and are perhaps even more important. We all see the world in 3-D. The difference between really being witness to an event vs. seeing it as a stereo image is that when you're really there, your eye can adjust its convergence as it roves over subjects at different distances.
Read the whole shebang by heading here.
Read More (Source: Variety)
