All language subtitles for MasterClass - James Cameron Teaches Filmmaking 08.The Terminator Arm And Eye Repair Breakdown Eng

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JAMES CAMERON: Arnold
Schwarzenegger sucked up

a whole bunch of our budget.

What we had left to make
the movie wasn't a lot.

It was around-- around, as
I said, around $4 million

for a-- for a pretty ambitious
film of a lot of big action

sequences.

And, as anybody knows,
night street photography

can be expensive, big action
sequences are expensive,

big stunts are expensive.

Visual effects, creating a
future world is expensive,

and doing prosthetic
makeup can be expensive.

But, you know, I
also knew that it

could be done on a
shoestring because I'd

worked for Roger
Corman for a few years

and we'd done all that stuff.

So, once again, the
key was preparation.

So clearly these
storyboards were

drawn in that-- in
that six-month interval

after I knew I had Arnold
and I had time to plan.

So this is clearly--

Arnold has been-- his
likeness has been incorporated

into the storyboards.

So he enters the room.

He's a shadowy figure.

He turns on the light.

We see the effect of
Reese's firing back at him

and the car chase and
the crash and everything.

His eye has been smashed,
it's swollen shut.

We're starting to realize that
he's partially biological,

that he's a cyborg.

And-- but we don't know exactly
why he's-- we don't know yet

why he's bulletproof.

We don't know he has this--

we don't know that he has
this endoskeleton inside him.

We just know that he seems
to be kind of bulletproof,

but we don't know why.

And we're being led
to believe that he's

a biological organism.

He's bleeding, he's
swollen, and so on.

So it's-- in a funny way,
it's kind of a misdirect.

So he sits down,
he looks at a place

where his arm was hit by
Reese's 12-gauge shotgun.

And he's prepared
himself in advance

in case he needs repairs.

He reaches over, picks
up an X-Acto knife,

and it begins to
cut his wrist open.

And then I even took the liberty
of working with my friend

Stan Winston to figure out
how we were going to do it,

because we wanted to see
his hand moving, we wanted

to see the actuators, the
hydraulic actuators moving

in his forearm.

And so we came up with
the idea that he would--

he would hide his real arm.

He would have a false
arm, and there'd

be a puppeteer underneath
the table coming up

through a hole in the desk.

His hand was inside a sort of
glove that continued this way.

It was actually quite
a clever solution.

I incorporated that
into the storyboards.

That's how Stan and I decided
that we were going to do it.

So he cuts his
wrist, and then he--

you know, we see him--
we see him working.

We don't see what he's doing,
we don't see the surgery step

by step.

He puts down the X-Acto knife.

A little bit of blood on it.

And then we see
the result of it.

Now I had elected that he
basically kind of flayed open

all of the skin of his
forearm and we all--

we see the mechanism underneath.

And this was meant
to be the big reveal.

He's a cyborg.

He's a machine with some
kind of fleshy outer coating.

When we actually
did the scene, we

wound up with it being a
more contained surgical site,

and I don't remember
the reason for that.

Maybe they just decided
it was easier to do

or maybe we were
a little concerned

about our-- the graphicness
of that for the rating.

So now let's take a
quick look at the scene.

Let's see where the
storyboard led us.

So I'll go back to the
beginning storyboard here.

All right.

So we've got the character
coming in a window.

The character appears, throwing
their shadow on a window.

For a lighting effect, we
went with a Venetian blind

so that we could get that kind
of German expressionistic kind

of feeling with the shadows
thrown by a Venetian blind.

There's a fire escape ladder
here, fire escape ladder here.

Different orientation, but
it's the same visual cue.

We're in a higher
level of the building.

He's coming in the
back way, so we

didn't have to go through the
lobby and up the elevator.

He's come up the fire escape.

There's some kind of
neon sign outside.

It sort of tells us
we're still urban

and we're in some flophouse
that's on-- on an upper level.

We can tell it's
kind of a flophouse

because it's-- it's decorated
in a very crude way.

He walks in as a silhouette.

We don't see much.

And he puts on the light,
and we go to the close-up.

Light bulb is in frame.

This is tracking very
closely to the storyboard.

Here's the storyboard.

Light bulb's in frame.

Naked light.

And we see his injuries.

And that's very
much what we shot.

So we had a very clear
intention with the scene.

We knew beat by beat
what we were doing.

So stylistically we're
right in the zone,

we knew what we were doing
because we drew it up.

It starts with the art.

And so these-- these drawings
are not only storyboards,

but they're also, in a sense,
design drawings or style guide.

So go to the next-- next series.

He reveals the injury and
he starts to do the surgery.

And that's literally
the next cut.

So here, he sits down, and the
reason we decided to do this

was to show the audience
that there wasn't a hole here

with a puppeteer underneath--
to implant subconsciously

in the audience's mind that
it is just a normal table.

He puts his hand on the table.

He reveals the wound.

And then he reaches
for the X-Acto knife.

And I knew that that
was a critical cutting

piece that we needed.

That's this shot.

So this was just a, you
know, 100-millimeter macro

shot that we did deep
in post-production.

I probably-- I probably
did this shot for 20 bucks.

Shot it myself, you know?

I didn't waste
time on my inserts

when I was shooting with
Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I picked my battles.

And I knew that I could
pick up all kinds of stuff

later down and
dirty on the cheap

just by renting a camera
and a couple of lights,

and I think we--

I think we shot this on
my desk at my apartment.

But, knowing that you
have that cut, now

in the next shot we see, geez,
it looks the same, right?

Except it's not.

We've gone to this other setup.

We've gone to this setup.

And now you could
use and blend it.

He could put his
hand down and then

you could literally blend to
the-- the other practical gag

and it would be seamless.

But who cares?

It worked.

So he starts to
cut that same arm

that you think is Arnold's
arm that he just set down.

Now he's-- now he's
hogging into it.

We cut to Arnold.

There's a known cutaway
that was known ahead

of time, planned ahead of time.

He sets the knife down.

That's this shot.

There's Arnold working,
there's the knife going down,

and then we're going to reveal
what it is he's been doing.

And he reaches in with
a pair of forceps.

Again, using inserts to create
tension and a sense of detail.

And he's opened
up his arm and we

see the actuators
moving inside the arm

and we actually
even punch in on it.

But the key to it was to hold
in this tilt down where we're

coming off his face
down, down his arm.

We have no reason to think
it's not Arnold's arm,

and we see it moving,
and through the hole,

we can glimpse the actuator.

So how'd they do that?

I mean, you've got to
remember, this is 1984.

So I think anybody that studies
a sequence can kind of see

how it's done now,
but the point is,

that with a little planning,
a little ingenuity,

working with the right
people and Stan Winston--

he was just coming
up at the time,

he became one of the top
world-class prosthetics

and makeup effects
designers, you figure it out.

You figure it out ahead
of time, you draw it up,

and if it works in a drawing,
it's going to work on film.

Because film is also
about image replacement

and image retention.

So seeing Arnold put his arm
down and then cutting back

to a very similar angle where
it's not his arm, it's now--

it's now your effects gag,
creates the impression that

it's still his arm, and when
you cut it open, you're--

Arnold's cutting his arm open.

So once again, the emphasis
here is on-- is on planning.

When we go to the next
sequence where he operates

on his eye, very similar thing.

The payoff is the moment where
he sticks the exact knife

into his eye.

Well clearly we're not having
Arnold Schwarzenegger stick

an X-Acto knife into his eye.

So this is what we came up with.

That we'd have a
puppet head that

was actuated by a puppeteer's
hand inside the head.

And there'd be one
person who was pretending

to be Arnold's right arm and
a completely other person

was pretending to be
Arnold's left arm.

And as memory serves, I
think Arnold was actually

one of the people.

So we actually got his real
hand on-- on one of them.

And so once again,
the frame is--

it's what's outside of the
frame you're not processing--

you're not able to process.

You're only given what's
inside that frame.

So here he is cutting
into his eyeball,

and this is the puppet head.

And here's-- here's one person's
hand and here's the other

person's hand.

And you can see that they--

they map very well to
each other in terms of--

of how the shot was done.

And you're led to
believe that it's Arnold,

or at least you're not quite
sure of how it's being done.

And then here, he's
just faking it.

If you look very carefully, if
I were to stop it on a frame--

and this is just kind of
looking behind the scene,

there's no blade in
that X-Acto knife.

We're not going to
have Arnold screw

around with an X-Acto
knife up next to his eye.

Safety was more important
than us being seen.

And there was no digital way
to put the blade in back then.

Now, you could have
him poke himself

in the face with a-- with
a bladeless X-Acto knife

and put the blade
in later and even

see it come out of
his skin or whatever,

it'd be very easy to do.

In those days I
just took the chance

that people wouldn't see it.

And they don't see it.

Because they see
what they expect

to see, up to a certain
point, unless you really

play fast and loose.

There's even one shot earlier
in the sequence that's even more

blatant, and it's this one.

He literally is just
raising an X-Acto knife

that has no blade in it.

But we want there
to be a blade there.

And I don't remember anybody
raising a fuss about it

at the time.

Now, of course, with
internet trolls,

it'll be all over the
place within 24 hours.

Aha, those idiots.

But at the time, there
was a willing suspension

of disbelief, because effects
were cruder back in that day.

And as-- the farther you go
back, the cruder they were.

The willing suspension
of disbelief was greater.

Now, the willing
suspension of disbelief

is not as great, so you've
got to be even better.

But the good news is, the
effects techniques are better

and they're cheaper.

So you meet-- you
meet the demand.

It's a constant dance.

But, you know, just
full disclosure,

there's no blade in
the X-Acto knife,

and it's right there in
front of God and everybody,

and people want to see
that there's a blade there,

and so they do.

So once again, a
very low-budget film

that was trying very, very
hard to punch above its weight.

And when I see it today, you
know, it more or less holds up.

There's a lot of little
cringey moments, you know?

But I think it did
manage to punch

above its weight for
its-- for its time period.

And that's what you
always want to aspire to,

I think, as a filmmaker
working on a low budget.

Try to look like more
than what you had.

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