Avatar 卡梅隆演讲——《阿凡达》之前的好奇小男孩

I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction. In high school I took a bus to

school

an

hour

each

way

every

day.

And

I

always

absorbed

in

a

book,

science fiction book, which took my mind to other worlds, and satisfied,

in a narrative form, this insatiable sense of curiosity that I had. And you

know

that

curiosity

also

manifested

itself

in

the

fact

that

whenever

I

wasn

’

t

in

school

I

was

out

in

the

woods,

hiking

and

taking

“

”

frogs and snakes and bugs and pond water, and bring it back, looking at it

under the microscope. You know, I was a real science geek. But it was all

about trying to understand the world, understand the limits of possibility.

And my love of science fiction actually seemed to mirrored in the world

around

me,

because

what

was

happening,

this

was

in

the

late

’

60s,

we

were

going

to

the

moon,

we

were

exploring

the

deep

oceans.

Jacques

Cousteau

was

coming

into

our

living

rooms

with

his

amazing

specials

that showed us animals and places and a wondrous world that we could

never really have previously imagined. So, that seemed to resonate with

the whole science fiction part of it. And I was an artist. I could draw. I

could paint. And I found that because there weren

’

t video games and this

saturation of CG movies and all of this imagery in the media landscape, I

had

to

create

these

images

in

my

head.

You

know,

we

all

did,

as

kids

having to read a book, and through the author

’

s description put something

on

the

movie

screen

in

our

heads.

And

so,

my

response

to

this

was

to

paint,

to

draw

alien

creatures,

alien

worlds,

robots,

spaceships,

all

that

1

stuff.

I

was

endlessly

getting

busted

in

math

class

doodling

behind

the

textbook. That was, the creativity had to find its outlet somehow. And an

interesting thing happened, the Jacques Cousteau shows actually got me

very

excited

about

the

fact

that

there

was

an

alien

world

right

here

on

earth.

I

might

not

really

go

to

an

alien

world

on

a

spaceship

someday.

That seemed pretty darn unlikely. But that was a world I could really go

to, right here on Earth, that was as rich and exotic as anything that I had

imagined from reading these books. So, I decided I was going to become

a scuba diver at the age of 15. And the only problem with that was that I

lived in a little village in Canada, 600 miles from the nearest ocean. But I

didn

’

t

let

that

daunt

me.

I

pestered

my

father

until

he

finally

found

a

scuba class in Buffalo, New York, right across the border from where we

live.

And

I

actually

got

certified

in

a

pool

in

a

YMCA

in

the

dead

of

winter in Buffalo, New York. And I didn

’

t see the ocean, a real ocean, for

another

two

years,

until

we

moved

to

California.

Since

then,

in

the

intervening 40 years, I

’

ve spent about 3,000 hours underwater, And 500

hours of that were in submersibles. And I

’

ve learned that that deep ocean

environment, and even the shallow oceans, are so rich with amazing life

that

really

is

beyond

our

imagination.

Nature

’

s

imagination

is

so

boundless compared to our own meager human imagination. I still, to this

day, stand in absolute awe of what I see when I make these dives. And my

love affair

with the ocean is ongoing, and just as strong as it ever was.

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But,

when

I

chose

a

career,

as

an

adult,

it

was

film

making.

And

that

seemed to be the best way to reconcile this urge I had to tell stories, with

my urges to create images. And I was, as a kid, constantly drawing comic

books, and so on. So, film making was the way to put pictures and stories

together. And that made sense. And of course the stories that I chose to

tell

were

science

fiction

stories:

“

Terminator

,”

“

Aliens

,”

and

“

The

Abyss

.”

And

with

“

The

Abyss,

”

I

was

putting

together

my

love

of

underwater and diving, with film making. So, you know, merging the two

passions. Something interesting came out of

“

The Abyss

,”

which was that

to solve a specific narrative problem on that film, which was to create this

kind of liquid water creature, we actually embraced computer generated

animation,

CG

.

And

this

resulted

in

the

first

soft-surface

character,

CG

animation

that

was

ever

in

a

movie.

And

even

though

the

film

didn

’

t

make any money, barely broke even, I should say, I witnessed something

amazing,

which

is

that

the

audience,

the

global

audience,

was

mesmerized

by

this

apparent

magic.

You

know,

it

’

s

Arthur

Clark

’

s

law

that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

They were seeing something magical. And so that got me very excited.

And I thought,

“

wow, this is something that needs to be embraced into the

cinematic art.

”

So, with

“< /p>

Terminator2,

”

which was next film, we took that

much farther. Working with ILM, we created the liquid metal dude in that

film. The success hung in the balance on whether that effect would work.

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And it did. And we created magic again. And we had the same result with

an audience. Although we did make a little more money on that one. So,

drawing

a

line

through

those

two

dots

of

experience,

came

to,

this

is

going to be a whole new world, this was a whole new world of creativity

for

film

artists.

So,

I

started

a

company

with

Stan

Winston,

my

good

friend S W, who is the premier make-up and creature designer at that time,

and it was called Digital Domain. And the concept of the company was

that we would leap-frog past the analog processes of optical printers and

so on, and we would go right to digital production. And we actually did

that

and

it

gave

us

a

competitive

advantage

for

a

while.

But

we

found

ourselves lagging in the mid

’

90s in the creature and character design stuff

that we had actually founded the

company to do. So, I wrote this piece

called

“< /p>

Avatar,

”

which

was

meant

to

absolutely

push

the

envelop

of

visual

effects,

of

CG

effects,

beyond,

with

realistic

human

emotive

characters generated in CG

. And the main characters would all be in CG

.

And the world would be in CG

. And the envelope pushed back. And I was

told by the folks at my company that we weren

’

t going to be able to do

this for a while. So, I shelved it, and I made this other movie about a big

ship that sinks. You know, I went and pitched it to the studio as

“

Romeo

and Juliet

’

on a ship.

”

It

’

s going to be this epic romance, passionate film.

Secretly, what I wanted to do was I wanted to dive to the real wreck of

“

Titanic.

And that

’

s why I made the move. And that

’

s the truth. Now, the

4

studio

didn

’

t

know

that.

But

I

convinced

them.

I

said,

“

We

’

re

going

to

dive to the wreck. We

’

re going to film it for real. We

’

ll be using it in the

opening

of

the

film.

It

will

be

really

important.

It

will

be

a

great

marketing hook.

”

And I talked them into funding an expedition. Sounds

crazy. But this goes back to that theme about your imagination creating a

reality. Because we actually created a reality where six months later I find

myself in a Russian submersible two and a half miles down in the north

Atlantic, looking at the real Titanic through a view port, not a movie, not

HD, for real. Now, that blew my mind. And it tool a lot of preparation, we

had to build cameras and lights and all kinds of things. But, it struck me

know

much

this

dive,

these

deep

dives

was

like

a

space

mission.

You

know, where it was highly technical, and it required enormous planning.

You

get

in

this

capsule,

you

go

down

to

this

dark

hostile

environment

where there is no hope of rescue if you can

’

t get back by yourself. And I

thought like,

“

Wow.

I am like living in a science fiction movie. This is

really

cool.

”

And

so,

I

really

got

bitten

by

the

bug

of

deep

ocean

exploration. Of course, the curiosity, the science component of it. It was

everything. It was adventure. It was curiosity. It was imagination. And it

was an experience that Hollywood couldn

’

t give me. Because, you know,

I could imagine a creature and we could create a visual effect for it. But I

couldn

’

t imagine what I was seeing out that window. As we did some of

our subsequent expeditions I was seeing creatures at hydrothermal vents

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