But are they better stories? Arguably not. It has made them much better in terms of the finished product than they were when I was a kid. You can certainly run a set that way… but I don’t find it satisfying anymore.įrom a storytelling perspective, has that advancement in technology resulted in better movies? I think that when you go into filmmaking, you think of it as very hierarchical. I’m not assuming that just because I’m the director of a movie, everyone must respect me and do exactly what I say.
#All my movies movie#
I think that’s made me a better filmmaker because of how collaborative it is. You need a big crew to make a movie and you need a lot of new technology. I’ve lead the team, I’ve worked on the technology, I’ve piloted the vehicle… I’ve done my part of it, and I’ve earned the team’s respect in return. Sometimes the most satisfying thing about a deep-sea expedition is that by the end of it, I’ve done my job as part of the team. Well, I think working as an explorer in the real world has given me a great deal of respect for the team and the crew. Would you say your experiences as an explorer have made you a better filmmaker? “It’s important to not get too absorbed in the tech and to remember to actually tell a good story.” I’m not just there to bring back a film, although I do think it’s important. It’s about actually operating under the discipline of doing good science. It’s important that we actually have a goal that is greater than just the making of that film, that we shine a light into the unknown and bring back the data. I absolutely make Hollywood movies to pay for exploration. And the funny thing is, I’m actually paying for everything by making a film about that expedition. It almost becomes your own science fiction movie.Įxactly. So, when you start doing things like deep-sea expeditions-building new equipment to go there, new equipment to light it and new equipment to film it so you can bring back pictures-that comes naturally. In my mind, those two things go hand in hand. I love the engineering and I love the storytelling. It involves complex equipment, and there’s a mastery of a technical side of it that you have to have in order to express your emotions and your feelings. I’ve always felt that cinema is not a pure art form it is a technical art form. My father was an engineer, very rational and logical, while my mother was an artist. I always feel like I’m a blend of my mother and my father, as we all are - but in a very literal sense. It’s very fulfilling when everything comes together like that. Is it perhaps the most fulfilling thing when those two worlds, filmmaking and exploration, meet?
I love solving hard problems I love making machines to go into extreme environments and having them work, having them do what they’re supposed to do and not fail. When I’m on an expedition and I’m driving a robot through the water exploring the Titanic, or I’m in a sub that’s going to the deepest places on the planet - whether I go personally or whether I’m sending a robotic vehicle there as my surrogate eyes - either way, it’s a technical challenge, and I love the technical challenge. Would you agree that you're living that boy’s dream as an adult?įor sure, I’m still that little science geek kid! My love of filmmaking came along later in life, and while I find it deeply satisfying, my heart is as an explorer. ( Laughs) “My love of filmmaking came along later in life, and while I find it deeply satisfying, my heart is as an explorer.”ĭecades later, each and every project of yours still has that fascination with technology and robotics at its core. It never flew, of course, but we did hang it from a tree! I was always fascinated by technology, robotics, optics, all of those sorts of things, so you know, in high school I wasn’t on the football team but I became the president of the science club - even though the science club really only consisted of me, a girl from Czechoslovakia who didn’t speak English, and some lab rats. We found a bunch of plywood in a field and I got the kids in the neighborhood to help me saw it up and we built an airplane. When I was 10, I wanted to build an airplane. Of course, I used to build robots out of cardboard boxes. I have always wanted to create new things, new hardware. Those are the projects that I love: figuring out what might just be possible but hasn't been done yet. I think it comes from my desire as a kid to do something artistic that would amaze people, you know? I would go to movies that would amaze me, whether that was a Ray Harryhausen film or Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wanted to do nothing less than that. Cameron, what drives you to constantly push the limits of innovation in film?