Troubleshooting Life 311, November 6 - Your technology must support your love story

James Cameron did an interview with Charlie Rose in 1997 that touches on this topic. I edited the transcript for clarity.

CHARLIE ROSE: 

Let me talk now about making the movie… How did you do it? Give me a sense of the overwhelming challenge of making a movie that tries to take you on to a boat that is sinking into the ocean.

JAMES CAMERON:

Well first of all the ship was huge. It took us a long time just to sort of get our arms around the enormity of this thing, the physical setting of the film, and how we were going to create that.

It took us months and months of engineering, and figuring out how we're going to angle the sets, and so on. Then, how we would use visual effects to complement it all.

When you’re out there on the shooting day, the logistics of it are staggering. The safety requirements, the safety protocols, are staggering.

I don't think any one of us, and we all had experience doing big pictures, really knew what it was going to take to make this film.

CHARLIE ROSE:

What was the toughest challenge for you?

JAMES CAMERON:

Artistically, the toughest challenge was the chemistry of the love story because all that other stuff doesn't count.

From a production standpoint, I think the toughest challenge was was safety, at all times you know we had thousands of amps of electricity going into the set which is in salt water, with hundreds of people around it and on it, and keeping it electrically safe.

Keeping it safe in in water I mean you know I love to dive I've been a scuba diver since I was 16.

CHARLIE ROSE:

Speaking of that, you went down three times -

JAMES CAMERON:

12 times.

I love the Jack and Rose love story of James Cameron’s Titanic.

But I also find the filmmaker’s love of diving, and tragic shipwrecks, also interesting.

The script put Jack and Rose on the ship to make us, the audience, care about the real life tragedy of Titanic even more.

And believe me, we did care about those characters very much.

The technology of the ship, the stories of the studio budget ballooning, that is all secondary to Jack and Rose in the story.

Jack and Rose, THAT is what we really care about.

The characters that the actors bring to life off the page.

James Cameron said it best: months of engineering and visual effects for a giant boat does not count without a good love story.

ACTION POINT: Your technology must support your love story