All language subtitles for MasterClass - James Cameron Teaches Filmmaking 04.The Terminator Club Scene Breakdown Eng

[DANCE MUSIC]

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

JAMES CAMERON: In
this scene, what you

have is the convergence of
three separate plotlines.

So that was a structural motif
that was used for that film.

We follow in a third-person
omniscient way,

jumping back and forth,
between three storylines--

Sarah, introducing her
and getting to know her

and presumably like
her to some extent.

And then we see the Terminator
arrive through time.

We don't know it's through
time, but we sort of know

he's come from somewhere,
and see him start

hunting down and killing--

brutally killing
people with her name.

So even though they haven't met,
and the two storylines haven't

converged yet, there's
already an interrelationship

between those two storylines.

Kyle Reese comes
through time same way.

Although his arrival is much
messier and rougher on him

than it is on the
Terminator, we can

make the assumption he has
come from the same place.

He is from whatever
that world is.

So there's already a connection
between the two of them.

And we don't know if he's a
good guy or another bad guy.

He certainly acts
very, very sinister.

But I think we innately
sense that he's probably

a protagonist.

And he goes through getting
weapons, getting clothes,

doing the same things
the Terminator does, just

in a different way.

He's more furtive.

He doesn't hurt anybody.

The Terminator just
bulldozes through whatever

to get his objectives.

So they're contrasted
to each other.

So even though they're
clearly both soldiers,

they're both sinister,
the Terminator

is the more is the more
disturbing of the two.

And they're both stalking Sarah.

Terminator's is moving toward
her in this relentless fashion,

Reese is following her.

So is he-- we don't know
if he's a protector,

or if he's a good guy,
if he's a bad guy.

But we feel a relentless sense
that the three storylines

are converging.

[DANCE MUSIC]

The music is pounding.

So she sits down.

She's nervous.

[DANCE MUSIC]

And--

[DANCE MUSIC]

--Terminator walks in.

[DANCE MUSIC]

The music tells me,
I'm in the same club.

I'm at the door of the club.

He's there.

He's in the room with her.

The killer that
we've seen brutally

kill two other people
in his hunt for her

and kill the gun shop owner
to get the weapons to do so

is now in the room.

So it's going to happen.

It's going to go down.

So we've just started the
clock on our chess move.

We've just started the clock.

And the audience knows it.

And they know that this is the
beginning of a thing, a set

piece, if you will, a scene.

It just started.

The second you put them
both in the same room,

or in the same
space, you've just

said to the audience,
all right, guys, it's on.

Right?

Now what's going to happen?

So the jeopardy just shot up.

The jeopardy's been
slowly building.

It just shot up to a new level.

[DANCE MUSIC]

Terminator moves in his very
machine-like like fashion

searching.

Right?

The clerk tells the
bouncer to stop him.

He just crushes the guy's hand.

He doesn't even look at him.

He just glances at him
and then moves away.

Now he's in scan mode.

The hunter, killer, machine
scanning like a surveillance

camera.

[DANCE MUSIC]

His eyes scan,
then his head turns

to give him more compliance.

Then his eyes scan
the other way.

Then he has to move his head.

It's unnatural.

It's not human.

It's machine-like.

It's like a surveillance
camera scanning.

So that's something that
we worked out together

in rehearsal.

Now here's Sarah.

You cut back to the victim,
the innocent victim, Bambi.

You know?

Here comes the hunter
tromping through the woods.

Here's Bambi.

It's intercutting.

The intercutting intensifies
the sense of expectation

and builds suspense.

Something is going to happen.

It is inevitable.

He will find her.

He's very thorough.

So we've established
him searching

in a very machine-like
and thorough fashion.

And we've established her
sitting there and essentially

helpless and worried.

Back to him scanning some more.

Same principle.

Back to her.

Rising tension by intercutting.

Right?

[DANCE MUSIC]

Here comes the big move.

She knocks the water
bottle off her table.

And we go into slow motion.

We're telling the
audience something.

The Terminator walks into the
frame scanning relentlessly,

doesn't see her,
misses her completely.

The timing was-- we had to
do this shot a few times,

obviously, to get
the timing perfectly.

The way he appears
through the dancers.

The waitresses cross.

It's very stacked.

This is using a long lens.

If I had done this on a
short lens, a wide lens,

I'd have seen too
much background.

I wouldn't have been
selective enough.

My waitress crossing
in the foreground

would have been the
size of the Hindenburg.

Sarah would have been a big.

Terminator would
have been little.

The farther I move back, the
longer the focal length I use.

The more I stack
the shot, the more

I compress the space,
the bigger he is.

And the more I'm able to look
through a number of dancing

bodies and sort of
graphic forms that

are out of focus to see him.

He's the plant of focus.

She's not.

She's not.

Right?

So this is selective.

This is being highly selective,
leading the audience's eye

in a selective fashion, by using
composition, lighting, focus.

He misses her.

She comes back up.

She didn't see him--

not that she even knows
what he looks like.

Innocent victim, again.

We're just reminding
the audience who

our protagonist is,
and the fact that she

doesn't know what's coming.

And it just missed her.

But we have another escalation.

In her eyes, in that
moment, and it's

aided and abetted by a little
flush of light from the dance

floor as two dancers part.

In slow motion,
she sees something.

Now I haven't seen
what she sees yet.

She could be seeing
the Terminator.

But why would she be
alarmed at the Terminator?

She's never seen the Terminator.

She sees something, and
we see it in her face.

And this is a beautiful piece
of editing by Mark Goldblatt.

He holds on it just
enough frames for you

to see her see something.

And we don't know what it is.

And these are magical shots
when you're able to get them.

When the character--
she's not doing anything.

It'd be very hard to
express it in a storyboard.

It's something changes.

And what she sees is Reese,
the person that she knows,

that she's seen stalking her.

Now she is afraid of this guy.

She doesn't even know
about the other guy yet.

Reese's eyes come up.

[DISTORTED DANCE MUSIC]

And he sees something.

He sees her.

Their eyes meet in a mirror.

It's a love story.

Their eyes meet
across a crowded room.

It's a love story with shotguns.

Another long lens shot that
this suggests-- and to this day,

I don't remember if this is
supposed to be Sarah's hair

or not.

But I'm shooting over her,
and it's a stacked shot.

Or there's just some
random foreground.

I think it's a bit
of random foreground.

But it's a long lens shot.

So it suggests
that her brain has

excluded the entire environment
in between her and him

and gone--

[BIG WHOOSH] --like that into--

and this is how lens
choices are very subjective.

If I were to duplicate
my experience right now,

my subjective
experience right now,

my vision stretches out
to where my hands are.

Way out here.

And way down here
and way up here.

If I were to duplicate
that with a lens,

I'd need to be on like a 10
or 12 millimeter fisheye lens.

It would look ridiculous.

It would look highly distorted.

But I'm seeing all this.

But it's not what my
brain is focused on.

And it's not what
I would remember.

So lens choice is
about the memory you

would have if you were there.

So if I saw something
really interesting,

my focus, my
attention, would go--

[SMALLER WHOOSH] --just to
that thing, a very tiny amount

of my visual field.

If I walk into a new room, a
place I'd never seen before,

my attention gets much wider.

I want to take in
the whole space.

I want to feel where I am.

I want to feel the
environment around me.

Right?

That's how we perceive.

That's how we go
through life perceiving.

And you look at
the whole picture,

and then you see
something interesting.

Maybe you walk into a
big room that's a party.

And maybe across
the room you see

somebody you recognize
in your attention goes--

[QUICK EXHALE] You just went
from an 18 millimeter lens

to a 175 millimeter lens.

You just did it in your head.

And it's not that we have
such a mechanism, but we do.

It's in our visual
cortex, in our processing.

And if you remember that
moment six months later,

you would remember it that way.

I walked in, I saw
the whole place, boom.

I saw Bob.

And I focused on him,
and I crossed the room.

Now I'm in a tracking shot
going over to Bob, or whoever.

So the point is that
cinematic language maps

to human perception.

But if you want to really
resonate with an audience,

you resonate based on how a
million years of evolution

have programmed our brains
and our visual cortexes--

cortexes?

--to be the way they are.

So we're now in Sarah's
reality, looking across the room

and zooming in-- not literally
zooming in-- but switching to--

I think this was shot
on 135 millimeter lens.

And she's looking at him.

And then she doesn't want him
to see her, so she looks away.

Meanwhile, Terminator
has completed his scan.

This is intercutting.

It's all done in slow motion.

She's moving in slow motion.

The dancers are
dancing in slow motion.

It's taken on a
dream-like aspect.

On the Terminator's
turn, the source music,

the pounding '80s
synth dance music

starts to fade away
and get very echoey.

And the score, which
is saying the--

which is saying the narrative,
the driving force, comes up.

[DANCE MUSIC]

Club music's jamming.

[DANCE MUSIC]

A low beat starts to come in
here, a threatening energy

on his eyes.

[DISTORTED DANCE MUSIC]

And there's that
heartbeat underneath.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

And by the time the Terminator
turns, the Terminator's motif,

if you will--

the clanging, metallic rhythmic,
relentless sound comes in.

The source music in the
club is almost gone.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

So I'll pot that out so
you guys can hear me.

And he starts his move.

He's seen the target.

He starts his move.

Now we see what he sees.

Now, at the time I shot this,
I thought, well, maybe I'll

even go into what we called
"Termovision," Terminator

vision.

I'll go fully subjective.

I'll have him analyzing
the whole scene.

We tried it.

I didn't like it.

Because it broke the flow.

But we still know
we're in his vision.

And we're pulling
back in front of him.

And we're seeing her revealed.

It's all in slow motion.

So we're stretching time.

We're stretching
time, because we've

put you in a state of dread.

We've done it with crosscutting.

We've done it by converging
the three storylines.

We've done it with music.

And now we want to
stretch that moment.

We want you to continue
to feel that grit

as long as we can stretch it
out in a nightmarish fashion.

In real life,
something like this

might have happened in
two or three seconds.

We want to stretch it
out as long as we can.

Because once you've gotten
the audience to a place

that they're enjoying, because
perversely people actually

enjoy being scared,
they enjoy being tense,

they enjoy having an
emotional reaction.

They also enjoy laughing.

They enjoy crying.

They enjoy the warmth of a
great relationship moment.

All those things.

But they're here to enjoy
all of it in all its colors,

in all its dynamics.

Once they're enjoying
something, you'll

let them stay there
as long as you can.

You sustain the state.

So the slow motion
is used to continue

to build tension by
sustaining and crosscutting,

building the tension.

Something's going
to happen right now.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

And her eyes see the Terminator.

Reese sees the Terminator.

He's the first one
to take action.

It's in slow motion.

It's all happening
in a dream state.

It's horrifying.

Can he get these idiots
out of the way in time

before the Terminator
puts the laser dot on her?

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

Yes.

Barely.

And it's split-second.

And I just want to
compliment Mark Goldblatt

for doing a remarkable job
on the cutting of this scene

and refining it down to
one split-second shot.

I think Kyle Reese is probably
on screen in the pivotal moment

of this scene--

we can find out right now--

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7--

[MOUSE CLICKING]

10 frames.

After all these long
slow-motion shots,

it all pivots on 10 frames.

And now watch what happens
next, here in real-time.

She falls out the way.

He starts shooting.

We pop back and forth.

These are 10 frame, 16
frame, 18 frame shots.

It all happens like lightning.

It even seems faster
because of the fact--

the juxtaposition that you're
coming off of slow motion

into action.

[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]

So just to see it again.

We're building.

We're building in slow,
nightmarish, dream-like moment

to Reese pulls the trigger.

Everything pivots on that.

And then it's just boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Shot.

Shot.

Shot.

Shot.

Shot.

Shot.

Cut.

It's 18 frames per cut.

And it doesn't stop again
until we find out what

happened to the Terminator.

And he's on the ground not dead.

Is he dead?

And he's completely still.

So what the shot is
saying is, he's dead.

Or is he?

No he's not.

I could have gone straight
to him opening his eyes.

But it was more
interesting to do the hand.

So now the whole thing just
escalated to a new level.

We cut to Sarah to show that
she saw the result of him

taking six 12-gauge
rounds at close range

and falling to the ground.

She saw that he's getting up.

Because it's important
later that she saw it.

[GUNFIRE, SCREAMING]

This is a case
where a low angle--

a low wide-angle lens,
an 18 millimeter lens

right on the floor,
makes him seem huge.

Because now you want
to give him the power.

Power has shifted.

Reese had the power for a
moment, but it was ineffective.

Now the Terminator has ascended.

He's that which must be feared.

He's that which is implacable
that can't be stopped.

So you want to make him big
and powerful at this point.

Here's a shot
that's, you know, I

could have done this on a
different choice of lenses.

This is actually a
relatively short lens

very close to the weapon.

And I found this out
when I was storyboarding,

when I was photographing
my friend Bill Wisher

and having him stick shotguns
out of my car in the--

out in the-- out
at the city dump,

that if I got a long
lens, I saw a small gun

in the actor's hand relative
to the size of their face.

If I moved in on a wider
lens, I saw a big gun

that was right in front of me.

It was scarier.

So the instrument of
death became as important

as the Terminator.

And he sort of
becomes one with it.

And it's because the wide
lenses seem to enhance

the power of the shot.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]

Everything you do, every
decision you make, every lens

choice you make, everything
that you ask an actor to do all

adds up to a total
effect of a film.

[OMINOUS MUSIC]