James Cameron is definitely a pioneer for blockbuster special effects in the film industry. For the original 1984 Terminator, Cameron’s original draft has 2 Terminators, one with flesh covering the metallic frame (T-800), the other is made of metal and indestructible to conventional weaponry (T-1000), but because of the limitation of technology and the budget issue, he shelved the T-1000 prototype for the sequel. Cameron made extensive use of stop motion special effects, a skill he learned when he was a special effect assistant for Roger Corman Studio. The T-800 is basically a metallic puppet shot with stop-motion technology, its movement was modeled after Arnold’s T-800 being injured and limping away after a fight with Kyle Reese, this way audience can know Arnold is playing an exact version of the T-800. For Terminator’s facial scars and exposed cybernetics, make-ups and realistic-looking prosthetic brought the T-800 to life, they even made the red laser sight eye using a prosthetic to make it more menacing.
In Aliens, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s successful first film, James Cameron hired his old friend Stan Winston, who collaborated with Cameron in nearly all of his work, as the special effect director. Cameron and Winston utilized numerous miniatures and mirror shots to make the film look bigger than it actually was. Cameron and Winston used hydraulic to move the significantly larger Xenomorph queen, which is 14 feet in height, and with puppet-engineers under the huge puppet to move the queen.
In The Abyss, James Cameron paired up with George Lucas’s ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) to create the first malleable CGI moving/flowing water character, the film called it a “pseudopod” or “water snake.” This water snake is highly sophisticated as the 75 seconds scene took more than 6 months to create, and it can mimic the actors’ movements.
The water creature was morphed into the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which set a new benchmark for CGI in film. Special effects molds of Robert Patrick’s head exploding from a grenade, and various type of puppets are made, and CGI is used to combine them together.
In Titanic, James Cameron built enormous sets of the real Titanic to maximized realism, he used miniature model and CGI to add people into some scenes. The flowing water door scene was accomplished using miniaturized models of the ship’s corridor. The majority of the underwater shot of the Titanic by James Cameron, when he used underwater technology to capture real image of the Titanic wreck, and blended them together with special effects.
For Avatar, James Cameron used motion-capture technology and accomplished another special effect milestone, motion capture technology is widely used in the present day for highly realistic videogame cinematics and superhero films. The environment in Avatar was conceptualized during James Cameron’s record-setting solo dive into the Mariana Trench. Avatar 2 seem to have sophisticated underwater filming sequences, something that’s no doubt borrowed from Cameron’s own underwater adventure.
Image from Stan Winston School of Character Arts and Google.
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