All language subtitles for MasterClass - James Cameron Teaches Filmmaking 10.The Terminator Future World Breakdown Creating A Set Piece On A Budget Eng

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JAMES CAMERON: What we have here
is the entire first future war

sequence storyboarded
from end to end.

So what I was thinking
is, we take the movie

and look for the commonality.

So here in the
storyboard, I imagine

that Reese kind of
lays his head down

on the side of the car
door and goes to sleep,

and then this is a dream, as
opposed to what we wound up

doing in the film, which
is that he's waiting--

sitting, waiting in the car.

And he looks over and sees
the construction vehicle.

We do this kind of instant
transition to the future,

but we don't know we're
in the future yet.

But we are.

We're now on a--

the vehicle that has
treads in the future,

it's called a hunter-killer,
and we tilt down,

there are a bunch of
skulls on the ground.

So clearly we've done some
kind of dreamlike transition,

but we haven't seen the
moment where he fell asleep.

And we don't even know
that that's happening yet.

And now or in the future.

So if you look at-- at
the storyboard for that,

it looks like this.

Here's the vehicle
with the treads

near the skulls down below.

Here's a fairly
abstract shot looking up

at the hunter-killer.

And then if you
progress the film,

here's that-- here's that shot.

Now I'm not seeing the
spotlight or the searchlight.

And then we see
Reese in the ruins.

He's established coming up here.

It wound up being a
little bit different,

but, you know, here we establish
Reese in his future world.

You don't have to follow
the storyboards exactly.

So here's the hunter-killer
crushing the skulls,

and here's the hunter-killer
crushing the skull.

So there are certain
images that survived

through the process and certain
ones that were either winnowed

out and we wound up not doing.

For example, the
way I imagined it

is that it's all very
abstract at first,

and we see Reese
introduced by his legs

running as he's getting
shot at by this machine,

and we think he's
gotten killed, but he's

hiding behind a column.

I wound up not shooting that.

I don't remember exactly
why at this point.

Maybe because we
didn't have time,

maybe I felt it just
wasn't necessary.

But where we get into a
similarity to the sequence

again is him taking cover.

Ah.

So here, we introduce this
young female resistance fighter,

and then that moment is here.

Now you can see that the
camera wound up reversed.

Probably just simply because
of the way the set laid out,

you know?

And where the key light was.

And me not having the time--

and it really didn't matter.

And so Reese signals
to her, and this

is him signaling to her here.

And then they run together.

He signals and they run.

But first they
crawl, then they run.

So I think the fact the
idea of him crawling

through the wreckage
is actually indicated

in the next storyboard
while we see the--

the hunter-killer
in the background.

So it was all fairly well
thought out ahead of time,

but the important thing
about storyboards is

they're-- they're not--

they're not an
absolute blueprint,

they're a departure point.

And what you shoot in the moment
is what becomes the final film.

So you can see that the
idea of seeing the-- seeing

the hunter-killer up
through the wreckage as it

towers over them, I
believe that-- that concept

was retained.

Ah, there it is.

So maybe-- maybe
in the cutting we

decided it was better to put
that shot a little bit later,

but you can see, there's
a fairly close correlation

between a concept,
which is that there's

some post-nuclear holocaust
wreckage in the foreground

and this big chrome
machine with these lights,

and it's kind of Reese's POV
as the little rat running

through the maze and
seeing it up above,

and that's more or less
what you have right here.

So this was very useful
to the miniature unit

when they were trying
to build on this.

So they knew they had to
build a model big enough

that they could put a foreground
piece and it would hold focus.

So they wound up building
quite tall models.

I think it was almost four
feet tall of the hunter-killer.

So they get a lot of
information from these.

And then we see Reese take
shelter behind something.

Now they're running
through open space here.

That's accounted for here.

So we get the same idea.

So again, this is just
an idea for a shot.

This is the execution of
it, but what's locked in?

The edgy lighting,
the spotlights,

the emphasis on the kind
of blue night light,

the cold feeling of it.

The bright magnesium-like
explosions on the ground.

So those ideas were already
embedded in the-- and these are

sort of a combination of
storyboards and design

drawings, really, because
they're-- they're giving a lot

of information to
the model unit.

There's a big shot where
they cover a lot of ground,

and they run-- they run
across a large area.

So here, you can see little
tiny figures running.

Big machine in the
background and ruins.

And-- and then they
reappear in another plate.

So a plate is a live element.

Sometimes the background
element, sometimes it's

a foreground element.

In this case it's a foreground
element of our characters.

In this case, there are
actually two plates.

There's one over here before
they go behind the car and one

over here after they come
out from behind the car.

And then there's
another big plate

in the background that's of
the-- of the miniature, right?

And then some optical lasers
are put across the foreground.

And you can see that
that concept exists

in the storyboard and
it's in the description

of the storyboard here,
that that's one plate.

The car is the breakpoint,
and that's another plate.

So the other thing
that I think it's

important to remember
about "The Terminator"

is that it was done at a time
when we didn't have CG at all.

So we were using
tools like miniatures,

front screen projection,
rear screen projection.

So this is a cheap,
low-budget, but high epic--

you know, attempting to
be epic on a low budget

and doing it with
rear projection.

So literally, this
was a rear projection,

this was a rear projection, and
that was a rear projection, all

on a big miniature set.

And that's how that was done.

To me, the power of
rear screen projection

was that you could
hand-hold the camera,

and you could even
zoom in or move around

and made it feel
very subjective.

It didn't suddenly have
to become a lock-off,

because a lot of visual
effects suffered from,

all of a sudden you knew you
were watching a visual effects

shot because the camera
locked off so that they

could composite in things.

It was all very crude.

And nowadays it's not a problem.

You just shoot--
shoot it handheld

if you want a blue
screen shot, and you just

make sure you've got
your tracking dots around

and then they can
extract that camera move

and apply the same camera
move to the background.

So you're in a car,
and you're supposed

to be driving down the freeway.

There's nothing outside the
window but a blue screen.

And the camera operator sitting
in the right seat-- well,

I say this in New Zealand here,
they'd be sitting in the left

side--

shooting-- shooting
the actor driving.

And the camera's
kind of shaky and you

pan over and look out the
window and you come back.

And there's nothing
there but blue.

But it's relatively
easy to add a background

plate of what's outside that--

outside that window these days.

It's-- it's not a big deal.

I wound up with six
months to sketch out

all of the key scenes and to
really refine all the designs

and be ready.

And when I got to shoot that
film, every second counted.

We had 42 days, and a
lot of them were nights.

And even on a guerilla
filmmaking schedule,

I'm working 14-hour days,
it was a lot of material

to shoot in that amount of time.

But I was ready.

I knew what to shoot.

I knew every shot that I needed.

And I was just a machine.

Just going from shot to
shot to shot, you know?

It's critically important
to know your film

before you shoot your film.

And everything
starts with the art.

Spend a good part
of your time just

looking at how things really
are with an artist's eye,

like you're going
to try to paint it.

Like Vermeer.

You know.

There were thousands of years
of painters before Vermeer,

and Vermeer suddenly
figured-- he looked at light

the way it came in a window
and the way it lit a scene

or lit a figure of a woman
standing at a counter.

And all of a sudden he
saw what that light did.

How bright the
source was, the fact

that you didn't see
the source, you just

saw the effect of the source,
how it bounced around,

how it lit her, how
it lit the wall, how

the bounce from
the wall lit her.

And all of a sudden he was
able to do something nobody

had ever done before, which
is paint light the way

it really worked.

And he just did it
with the wetware.

He didn't have any software,
he didn't have any computers,

he didn't even have a camera.

It didn't exist yet.

But he saw how light worked.

So, I happened to be an artist.

Great.

A lot of-- some-- some
other directors are artists.

Ridley Scott's a
good sketch artist,

Guillermo Del Toro is a
very accomplished artist.

Great.

If you're not an
artist, study art.

Learn to draw on a
very rudimentary way,

and I don't care if
it's balloon heads

with smiley faces on them.

Learn to draw so that
you force yourself

with a pencil and paper
to think compositionally.

Do I want the character
in the middle of the frame

or do I want them on the
left side of the frame,

leaving the rest of the frame
open in a cinemascope aspect

ratio like Sergio
Leone used to do?

What style am I going to do?

What's my compositional style?

So that you can have
that conversation.

First with yourself, then with
your director of photography,

and then subsequent to that,
in the moment on the set.

I like this, I don't like
that, pan more right.

Study art so you
understand perspective,

so you understand
light, so you understand

these ideas of what's
going on in that frame.

Because figurative art, painting
has all been about the frame.

What's in and what's not.

And filmmaking is all
about what's in the frame

and what isn't in the frame,
and what you need in the frame,

and what you can safely
exclude from the frame

and get by inference.

You don't have to see the
sun to know it's there,

it's coming in the window.

That's an extreme example.

You don't have to see the
other characters to know

they're still in the room
when you cut to a close-up.

But what's in the frame
and why is it in the frame?

And that's a question that I
ask myself a hundred times a day

when I'm composing a shot.

To this day.

There's nothing automatic
about any of it.

All of those decisions
are fresh decisions

and they have to be
made every single day.

So study art.

Study photography.

Still photography.

Black and white photography.

Understand light,
understand how it works.

Those are great--
those are great basics.

Before you ever pick up a motion
camera, study perspective.

Study aerial perspective.

What makes things look far away?

So the most important thing
as a filmmaker in general

is your power of observation.

What you learn about
people by observing them.

And participating with them.

But there's a part of your
mind that's always observing.

Even interactions where
you're directly involved, even

in a heated argument or
in a torrid love affair

or whatever it is, there's
a part of your mind

that's a video camera that's
recording and making notes.

Because ultimately you're going
to have to create something

in a highly artificial
environment surrounded

by lights and people
like we are right now,

looking through
cameras, and you're

going to have to create
a bit of reality that

is credible to an audience.

And it's especially
true in visual effects.

You have to understand
how light works.

You have to understand what
things really look like.

Now that's if you're trying to
make a realistic visual effect.

Some-- some people aren't
interested in reality,

they might be going for some--

some kind of heightened
or stylized look, or maybe

it's a Pixar animated
film and the characters

don't really exist and
everything is kind of

heightened or stylized.

That's great, but know the rules
before you break the rules.

And these days with--

with visual effects,
with the quality

that's available
right now, there's

nothing that can't
look 100% real.

It's not-- it's not
about the tools,

and not about how
expensive the tools are.

It's about how good the
power of observation

is of the people
manipulating the tools.

And obviously that
buck finally stops

on the desk of the director,
because the director's

got to approve the shot or not.

And it's going to cost you a
ton of money if you literally

say,it doesn't look
real, try it again.

And any filmmaker
should feel comfortable

being able to do that.

And then you have control.

It's safer.

You can control the lighting.

It can always be exactly
the right time of day

with the sun in exactly
the right position.

But you have to be
very-- you have to be

observant of the natural world.

The key to visual
effects, I believe,

the one great fundamental is
observe reality carefully.

If you don't effects but you
want to do an effects film

and you want to do
it on a low budget,

get really chummy with some
aspiring visual effects

people that have been noodling
around with this stuff,

maybe doing it--

maybe doing it at a
boutique effects house

where they've actually been
hands-on and done shots,

maybe working on
their own with apps

like After Effects
and things like

that where you can do
relatively simple composites.

Tracking-- tracking software
is readily available

now so that you
can track images.

You can do composite work.

You could even set up your
own facility if you wanted to.

You could probably
put five or six seats

in of Maya and Nuke
and things like that

and just be able to do basics.

So you've got a network.

You've got to have
like-minded colleagues.

You have to build your
little revolutionary army.

You don't just
spend all your time

knocking on doors trying to
have lunch with people that

are way above you
in the food chain,

you're wasting your time.

You've got to work
at a peer level.

There's no sort of inside
knowledge that so--

that's a magic
bullet that's going

to leap you up three levels
in the film industry.

You have to work your way
up through those levels

and you have to do it
by learning the craft.

So it's a chicken
and egg problem.

Who's going to give
you the budget?

Well, probably nobody.

So you have to figure
out how to do it

for basically almost
nothing and build

the skill set that is scalable
once you do get a little money.

You've already done it.

You've already done
examples of it.

I'd already done,
working for someone else,

working for Roger Corman
on super low-budget science

fiction films, I'd done examples
of all the types of shots

that I had in mind
for "Terminator."

So I was taking what I
knew, I was meticulously

planning how it was
going to be done,

and-- and what that allowed
the-- the-- the effects

people to do was to budget
very close to the bone.

Because normally,
visual effects budgets,

they have to pad them up
because they don't know

what the director really wants.

And that lack of precision
translates to additional costs,

like a lot.

They'll put in a
big fudge factor.

It might be 30%, it might be
40%, because they don't know.

But here, they could literally
budget almost to the dollar

how much it was
going to cost them

to do these shots because I
had been so precise in my--

my previs.

And that's what allowed us
to do the film for basically

$4 million below the line.

So I felt I was
presenting a package

to a low-budget producer
that was actually

attractive and made sense.

There was logic behind every
decision that was made.

There was logic to shoot the
vast majority of the film

on the streets of LA
with available light,

and to only dip our toe into
the exotic environment that

required the visual
effects sparingly.

Pick our battles.

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