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James Cameron, the focus and the fury

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Los Angeles Times film reporter Rachel Abramowitz is back again on the Hero Complex, today it’s a piece on her encounters with Jim Cameron...

I first met James Cameron on the set of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and what I remember most is the screaming.

It was a rainy night and Cameron’s crew was set up at one of those glass mansions in Malibu, which, for the purposes of the film, was the home of Skynet scientist Miles Dyson, portrayed by Joe Morton. The script pages for the evening were an ambush scene -- Sarah Connor, played by Linda Hamilton, had invaded the home to assassinate Dyson -- but Hamilton was the one who seemed under attack. My very vivid recollection of the night was watching Cameron berate the actress. It was only later that I found out that the two were dating; that left me feeling like I had been in Malibu watching a foreign film without the benefit of subtitles.

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Cameron is, of course, the T-800 of all directors -- a fierce taskmaster, with almost superhuman drive and very little patience for human fallibility. On the ‘T2’ set, someone had T-shirts printed up with the filmmaker’s (supposedly) favorite saying:”If I wanted your opinion, I would have given it to you.” When he’s not working, however, I’ve found that Cameron can be erudite and charming, and an infectiously enthusiastic evangelist. That’s the Cameron who’s been working the Oscar campaign trail recently. Many of the nominees seem exhausted by the endless rounds of Q&A’s, screenings, awards – some have a reason to look haggard after plugging their films and performances for almost a year, since Sundance 2009. By contrast, Cameron just started his pilgrimage after “Avatar” came out at the end of December, and his cyborg stamina hasn’t flagged yet.

It was the ‘good’ Cameron who got on the phone recently to talk about the role of actors in his revolutionary “performance capture” technology and why he feels that the “Avatar” stars haven’t gotten their due from the Hollywood community. He was disappointed that neither Zoe Saldana nor Sam Worthington were nominated for Oscars or any other significant acting award. Yet he was not totally surprised, because the performance capture technology is so new, and many people in the film industry still are unfamiliar with how the process is done. Many – particularly actors -- are apprehensive about the process, and their role in it.

‘Actors have to be taught more about it, that it empowers them and doesn’t replace them, “ says Cameron. “What we’re replacing is the complicated application of prosthetic makeup.”

Even Saldana and Worthington needed reassurances at one point. “I had to look into their eyes and be able to say to them, ‘What we do today is what you’ll see when you go to the premiere,’ “ Cameron says he told them, as they embarked on the production of the film. “Otherwise, why would they commit to doing a great performance if you think the performance is going to be mediated and modulated down the line?”

The performance-capture filming takes place on a specialized stage called “the volume.” Actors wear special skintight suits with reflective markers so their every move can be tracked by more than 100 cameras. To avoid the “dead-eye” look of earlier motion capture films like “Polar Express,” Cameron also developed a special head-rigged camera to record the actors faces and capture the “liquidity of the eyes.” The camera’s data are fed into computers that render a high-quality 3-D replica of the actors and, in a startling change to the filmmaking process, Cameron was able to add all of his camera moves in post-production.

Early on, when they were doing preliminary tests of the technology, Cameron and his crew realized that the on-screen avatars needed to closely resemble the live-action actors. They had shot prototype footage with Yunjin Kim from “Lost” as Neytiri. The results were not good.

“Her eyes and her expressions, the way her mouth formed speech, just didn’t translate that well, “ Cameron said. “We had no way of knowing whether it was an accurate performance, and it struck us as important for the character to physically resemble the actor as closely as possible, especially the mouth. I cast people I wanted the characters to look like, and then we did laser scans of them, cyber scans, physical busts, plaster molds of their faces. Everything was done in the way you develop physical makeup, and then given to the CG guys to scan and bring to life. “

Cameron also dispelled the popular image of “performance capture” filming as somehow being onerous for the actors. The experience is actually close to performing theater. It’s filmmaking with all the boring parts cut out – no waiting for camera moves, no coverage, no endless waiting around in trailers for lighting, makeup….

“The beauty of it is that it’s uninterrupted. When they do get a performance that’s great, all the coverage comes from that performance. I don’t have to say ‘Do that again for your close-up.’ That’s a much more artificial thing to ask an actor to do.”

-- Rachel Abramowitz

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PHOTOS: Top, James Cameron on the set of ‘Avatar.’ (Fox) Bottom, James Cameron at the Golden Globes (Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times)

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