Sanctum, where Cameron is one of the producers

After delivering the humongous hit in Avatar, James Cameron is now “adding the money and standing back”. As the producer of the upcoming 3D underwater film Sanctum, the filmmaker is bringing to celluloid “a story he believes in”.

In an email interview with t2, Cameron explains why he chose to back director Alister Grierson’s Sanctum, releasing worldwide (and that for once includes Calcutta!) on February 4, and how 3D is the only way forward.

Was the near-death experience under water of Sanctum’s writer Andrew Wight the trigger point for you to back the film?

Five years ago, Andrew Wight, my long-time collaborator [on his documentaries], brought me the idea for Sanctum, which was based on an expedition Andrew [a renowned caver] led to explore and dive into a remote cave system hidden beneath the Nullarbor Plain in Australia. During the course of his trip, a freak storm caused the cave entrance to collapse; leaving 15 people trapped deep underground. A rescue mission was mounted and, incredibly, everyone survived the harrowing ordeal. When I heard his idea and the script, I absolutely loved it.

Andrew and I had previously been on some great adventures together. We dove deep into the ocean to uncharted depths to explore and discover never-before-seen parts of the ocean floor and marine life for Aliens of the Deep. We dove the Titanic (for Ghosts of the Abyss) and the Bismarck.

Do you have a defined role as producer? How would you be involved — creatively and otherwise — in a film like Sanctum?

As a director myself I know how I like to be treated — I like to be supported and I like not to be told what to do…. So I’m like a fairy godmother sort of producer (smiles) — I just add the money and stand back. However as Andrew and I go back many years as long-time collaborators, I was involved a lot, of course, in all aspects of the film — right from the casting to shooting to the post-production but with Andrew and Alister in the driving seat.

James Cameron (centre) with Sanctum director Alister Grierson and writer Andrew Wight

Besides Titanic, of course, your fascination with the world under the water has been expressed in many documentaries and now there’s Sanctum. Do you think a film can successfully capture the underwater space?

One of the biggest challenges in making Sanctum was to recreate a truly believable underground world that few have ever seen. Crafting the screenplay brought up many visceral memories for Andrew. He could only imagine which past events would be jogged when production designer Nicholas McCallum finished his designs. Where the film is set, Papua New Guinea, is home to some of the most amazing underground environments in the world. There are long flowing rivers, waterfalls, beautiful decorations, stalactites, vast caverns underground… things you could never imagine unless you’ve been there. To replicate that on a small scale was an onerous task.

Indeed, it was the type of task that McCallum took on with much enthusiasm. He loves a challenge, as well as the chance to work with like-minded people. The biggest challenge was simply to get everything built and ready in the allocated time. He also had to be mindful of the 3D process involved and to give enough depth and height to the sets. In addition to recreating a series of underground caves that would make the audience believe they were leagues underwater, McCallum also had to build an enormous “underground” waterfall to match the specifications set forth by (John) Garvin and Wight’s script.

For director of photography Jules ’Loughlin, the biggest obstacle to overcome during the course of production was lighting the cave system. It’s not everyday that you have to light a cave. It’s a very alien environment, and one that not many people ever go into. It’s also an environment where there’s no natural light whatsoever; all the light is brought in by the characters in the film. So representing the cave and the story through this lighting was an exciting challenge.

Can you briefly take us through the actual process of shooting a 3D film?

The very fact that a real life underwater environment had to be recreated in 3D for the audiences was challenging in itself. The 3D should be transparent from the actors’ standpoint and, ideally, from the director’s standpoint. The camera team is working with a different set of tools than they might have been used to, if they’ve been used to shooting on film. To shoot 3D, you’ve got to make the transition to shooting digital or HD, or some higher format like 3K or 4K, because there are no film cameras that really can fit within a 3D rig, but Jules (’Loughlin), our DoP, made both jumps quite expeditiously. Alister and Jules came down and watched us work on Avatar for almost a week, just to see what the problems were. They went into it with their eyes wide open, about what the problems might be, and they were very careful in designing the sets, so that they could have camera access. But the handheld rig probably weighed 33 pounds, which is in the range of standard tools. The issue is that, because there are two cameras in it, they tend to be somewhat bulkier, so all of the claustrophobic stuff, where you’re pushing them into tight spaces, has to be well thought out.

Since you had already made Avatar when you started on Sanctum, is the 3D in this film visually even more effective?

Avatar had so many broad vistas that the difference between watching the movie in 2D and in 3D is not that great because the more expansive the image, the less you feel in close contact with objects and characters. It’s the intimate scenes in Avatar, where just a couple of people are talking or going through the jungle with close pass-bys of plants and things like that, that were really the most effective in 3D, and not the big, wide flying shots or the broad canvas stuff or the big battle scenes. We knew that going in.

The difference between experiencing Sanctum in 2D and 3D is actually much greater because the 3D will constantly be informing you, in the experience of watching the movie, with the sense of claustrophobia. 3D works best in small spaces. For instance, anything more than 20 or 30 feet away has very little 3D impact up on a movie screen, or in real life. We knew that the claustrophobia of the film and the medium in which we were working would work together really well to constantly give the audience that feeling. We’ve done test screenings and we’ve seen that there’s a palpable, white-knuckle sense of anxiety in watching the movie, which is exactly what we wanted to create.

Usually, when you go to a movie, your consciousness floats above the film. 3D sucks you in and makes it a visceral experience. I think 3D and this type of film go perfectly well together.

Ever since Avatar created history at the box office, 3D seems to have taken over our lives...

I believe that there are going to be certain thresholds to it. When the consumer electronics manufacturers bring to market sets that don’t require glasses, at that point, it’s going to explode like crazy. Right now, you’re seeing a steady incremental increase. The market is growing. The number of networks and terrestrial broadcast companies, cable companies and satellite companies that are investing, either tentatively or aggressively, in 3D is increasing all the time.

What we know is that sports plays very well in 3D. Obviously, cinematic theatrical features play very, very well in 3D, but that’s not going to be enough to feed the whole market. It’s going to be live broadcast, and probably initially sports and maybe even things like comedy and one-hour episodic. All that stuff is right around the corner.

The cameras are going to continue to get lighter, smaller, easier to use, more plug-and-play and there are going to continue to be more people doing it. Right now, we’re seeing an explosive, almost vertical curve in the number of people who are learning to do it and are working with it. I have a small company, partnered with Vince Pace, where we developed the Fusion cameras, and all of our rigs are out, all the time. We’re having to expand much more rapidly than we thought we were going to. We’ll literally be building hundreds of camera systems in the next year, to service the demand.

The number of screens has doubled in America, and it’s more than doubled worldwide, since Avatar came out. Think what we could have made. There have been a lot of naysayers. People love to grumble and be negative about 3D. They love to say, “Conversion has hurt it. It’s just a flash in the pan. The market is retreating.” That’s all bull. There were some dips, but they were dips in the growth curve. It’s never stopped growing. It’s continued to grow. I’m excited about the possibilities of new technology, like higher frame rates in the theatres, better camera systems and higher resolution cameras.

What about the films shot in 2D and then put through a last-minute conversion to cash in on the 3D fad?

I’m concerned about the possibilities of bad 3D being done. People get into it who don’t know what they’re doing and they’re under the gun financially, and maybe they go with the wrong camera gear, or maybe they listen to the wrong advice, or they think, “We won’t pay those high-priced experts. We’ll just figure out how to do it ourselves.” So, there’s the possibility of seeing some bad movies come to market. And, I think that these fast conversions that are done during post-production are still a problem. Some studios are still going that route, although most people have started to veer towards native 3D production.

Like Avatar, Sanctum too doesn’t have any major movie star. Do you think content and technology can do without the star system in a sustained manner?

I’m interested in stories of human beings under pressure and how they react to those circumstances. Sanctum has a very strong father-son relationship in its story, which appealed to me. The 3D element is the icing on the cake, although I do think that when audiences see this film in 3D, it will open up a whole new world that they haven’t previously experienced. We were very careful to make sure that the screenplay is fundamentally a father and son story. It’s a rite of passage about a young man learning lessons from his father, as well as the environment of the cave, before he becomes a man.

No matter how mind-blowing as all this new technology is, filmmaking is not about the equipment. It’s about ideas, images and imagination. It’s about storytelling, and I believe in this story.

The James people play

Terminator 1 & 2 (1984 & 1991)
From the very start, Cameron wanted to push the envelope. It needed a special mind to imagine a cyborg assassin in modern-day civilisation.

Aliens (1986)
Sequel to Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking 1979 film Alien, Cameron turned this into a huge box-office hit and was lauded for the very feminist theme. Thanks to this movie, he now could do anything he wanted.

True Lies (1994)
Made at the request of friend Arnie Schwarzenegger, this extended remake of the 1991 French film La Totale! was one of the most expensive films ever made but took home four times the budget.

Titanic (1997)
It not only became the biggest hit ever, the Kate Winslet-Leo DiCaprio-starrer bagged 11 Oscar trophies. Reason enough for Cameron to crow: “I am the king of the world!”

Avatar (2009)
Returning to feature filmmaking after more than a decade, Cameron gifted the world the possibilities of 3D vision in this larger-than-life futuristic adventure.