All language subtitles for MasterClass - James Cameron Teaches Filmmaking 11.Crafting And Introducing Compelling Characters Eng

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's absolutely critical in
any film to have a character

that you're willing to
go on the journey with.

And people use the term a
fully-realized character.

But I think it's important
to understand that film

is a very stylized art form.

It it's not capable of the kind
of novelistic detail of a 600

or 1,000-page novel.

So you're never going
to know everything

about that character.

You have to fill in
the blanks with bits

and pieces of your own life,
and those of your friends,

and so on.

So how do you do all that?

Well, you have to find
little, universal things

that you can relate
to from one's life,

as an audience member,
and have the character do

something or do things
that you recognize.

You can set huge
challenges for yourself

if it's a nonverbal character.

And you're putting
so much on the actor

to express with their
eyes, with their face,

with their yearning
expression, or whatever it is.

But every character is a
creation that exists between

the screenplay-- the
imagined character--

which is still out of focus,
we don't apply a face yet,

and then the director's
imagination of what

that can be on the screen.

And then the actor fills in the
final and, ultimately, the most

important piece, what does
this person look like?

How do they move?

How do they speak?

So a character is really
never more than a sketch.

But it has to be a
very compelling sketch.

Giving an average person, a
relatable, average person,

an enormous problem
and seeing how

they solve that problem
or process that problem

is a good way to get buy-in.

You basically want the audience
to buy into the narrative.

And they usually buy
into the narrative

through the characters.

It's key in the way that
you introduce a character

to understand where they are
in their life, what they're

feeling, and what
their problem is.

Any character that you're going
to follow has got a problem.

And that problem needs to
be declared fairly early on.

Sometimes you can do it
in the very first scene.

And then the whole movie should
ultimately be about somehow

that problem gets addressed,
gets resolved, or at least

we understand that
it's the thing that

drove that character into
whatever situation evolves.

And the problem may
escalate as well.

But I do believe in the kind
of principle of character

is destiny.

That character winds up in a
situation of their own creation

in some way.

And it's somehow related to
them solving their problem,

whatever their problem might be.

It might be that
nobody sees them,

that they're kind of invisible
to the people around them,

that they haven't
found who they are

yet or a way of expressing it.

It may be that they don't have
love, or that they've lost love

and are now incapable
of opening themselves

to a new relationship.

Whatever the
character's problem is,

you need to define it early on.

And you need to do it in
an interesting way where

the audience can
sympathize because we

have this capacity for
empathy and for understanding

other people.

It's innate to who we
are as human beings.

So you introduce a character.

And then we somehow
relate to that character.

Even if that character
is Frankenstein's monster

and the story is told from the
perspective of the monster,

we must somehow find a
way, a sense of empathy.

The film must create that in us,
an interest in that character.

I think it's about
expressing something

that the audience can relate to
and you care about the outcome.

Or at the very least,
you care about seeing

what this person
is going to do next

and what they're what's
around the corner for them.

In the case of "The
Terminator," the initial idea

was that there was an
entity sent from the future

to kill somebody in the past
whose life had great meaning.

I pretty quickly went
to a female character

whose son, in the future, will
become a great sort of prophet,

so basically a kind of
Virgin Mary character,

because that's an archetype
that we all get quite quickly.

And she was, in the biblical
story, of very humble origins,

basically a kind of a peasant.

Her husband was a
tradesman, a carpenter.

So I said, all right, a
waitress, a very common job,

a very dismissible person.

I wanted the most dismissable
person you could imagine.

It could have been a secretary.

It could have been a
waitress, somebody like that.

It like, they
couldn't possibly be

an important,
earth-shaking existence.

And I thought that's
good because that's

how most people feel.

Most people going
to a movie theater

are not presidents, or
heads of major corporations,

or big, important people.

They're average people.

And they could,
I thought, invest

in the idea of an average person
who is suddenly snatched out

of their daily
existence and finds out

that their life has great
meaning in another framework,

in another frame of reference,
which the film supplies.

And all of a sudden, not only
is she fighting for her life,

but she's fighting for the
future of the entire world.

She becomes the most
important person

in the world for a
moment in history.

So now I'm telling the story
from a female perspective.

So now I have to draw
upon all the women

that I've ever known
in my life and/or read

about in anything from comic
books, to novels, to the news.

Now, it just so happens that
just before I wrote that,

I was married to a
Bob's Big Boy waitress.

So I went, Bob's Big
Boy waitress, perfect.

Write what you know.

So I basically wrote my
first wife, which was plucky,

a lot of humor, kind of
cynical, but likable.

And so, boom, there's
your character.

Now put that character in an
extraordinary circumstance.

And I think what
I would advise is

that people be kind of authentic
to their own life experience,

but not to the extent that
you're literally just telling

your own life story.

I happen to enjoy writing
female characters.

That's controversial now.

There are people
that say, oh, well,

female characters and films
about female characters

should be directed
by women and they

should be written by women.

It's like, okay,
so I can only write

paunchy, middle-aged
Canadian white guys?

I don't think that's
how art works.

The whole point of acting, the
whole point of storytelling,

I think, is to live
outside yourself.

But you have to do it
with some connection

to your own personal experience.

You have to make it personal.

But that shouldn't prevent you
from writing a character that

is not like you.

How am I going to introduce
my main characters?

And how am I going to
do that in a way that

is the quintessence
of that character?

What is the quintessence
of that character?

And how can I encapsulate
that in a kind

of almost a synecdoche.

A synecdoche is-- if
I get this right--

it's like if you
call somebody a suit.

You're using the
suit as a stand-in

for an entire
description of them

as a corporate
executive or whatever.

It's basically taking a
person or reducing them

to a single object or principle.

But you want a kind of creative
synecdoche of your character

when that character's
introduced.

So I think that there are
interesting ways to do that.

Colonel Quaritch in "Avatar,"
he was a military guy.

He was very formal.

And he was in a position
of command and authority.

And he was introduced with the
image of his military boots

on a steel floor.

We hear the creak
of the leather.

We hear his voice.

He was a very verbal character
and he carried a lot of power

in his voice.

We see his pistol.

We see his broad shoulders.

We see the back of his
tightly-clipped Marine Corps

haircut.

And we think we
know who the guy is.

And then he turns to us and
he's got these massive scars.

And he delivers a
line on that turn.

Wants to kill you and
eat your eyes for jujubes.

I was reasonably pleased
with that as a as a character

introduction because,
once again, he

was reduced to that synecdoche
of his greater character.

He was also a character that
didn't exist in shades of gray,

kind of to a fault. He was,
what you see is what you get.

And there wasn't a lot of
nuance to his character.

There was just a lot
of flourish in creating

that relatively simplistic
character, which

is another way to go.

I use the Darth Vader example.

Darth Vader didn't
have a lot of shades

of gray in the first movie.

But there was some
subtlety that was

brought into it later,
obviously, which

was interesting then.

But he was kind of archetypal.

And that was okay
because it was just

do the archetype really, really
well and in a new creative way.

You also look
forward to the moment

where that main character
meets that main character.

So that moment of introduction
is also very important.

So when you went to
Titanic, and you probably

knew from the poster,
at least, that there

was going to be a girl
and going to be a guy.

And if you knew more about
the film, that there was Rose,

and there was Jack, and
Leonardo, and Kate Winslet.

Well, how are they
going to meet?

Are they going to meet cute?

Which is the sort of classic
screenwriter term for,

do they get in a car crash,
and have a big argument,

and then realize they
actually like each other?

And there are infinite
number of variations of that.

And people generally look
forward to that moment

when the characters collide.

In "Terminator" it was
interesting, structurally,

because it was
the end of act one

was the three main
characters meeting.

And they met in a violent
life-or-death confrontation.

But we had been following them
as individual story streams

for an entire act, and literally
just jumping back and forth

between three plot lines,
and watching these plot lines

slowly converging to a
point in space and time

where everything exploded.

[SHOTGUN BLASTING]

And that turned out to be a
powerful storytelling method.

There's a stylistic
cinematic relish

in how you introduce
Character A and Character B.

And then you look forward
to the inevitable moment

where Character A meets
Character B, interacts

with Character B. And then
you, I think, as a filmmaker,

as a screenwriter, you
have fun with that.

And as actors, you
have fun with that.

And typically, where the
characters are going to wind up

is not where they are initially.

There's the classic sort of,
you get two characters together

that you know are going
to be together later

and you create conflict.

And there's an art to
that because the audience

can smell that a mile away if
that conflict feels forced,

like the screenwriter
really needed them to fight.

So put a lot of
obstacles in their path.

And if it doesn't
feel authentic and it

doesn't feel natural
to the situation,

it feels overblown, the audience
goes, yeah, predictable,

I knew that.

If you're doing a character
from a certain period,

a historical period or a
certain specific situation

that you're dramatizing,
do your research.

Learn everything you
can about that world.

And if it was a real
person, learn everything

you can about that person.

Ask yourself what
was really going on.

Because we can't even
get the facts right

in a news story about something
that happened the day before.

And different outlets
will argue with each other

over what actually
happened and what it means.

Now imagine history
as a distillation

of a little bit of coming down
to us of, basically, a bunch

of news stories from back then.

How much can we trust that?

So as you go into history--
and I found this on "Titanic"--

you have to ask yourself
questions about like,

what was really happening?

Who was really doing
what to who here?

So you got to do your research.

You got to understand
the character,

if it was a real historical
person, really understand them.

If it's a made-up person in
a real historical setting,

what would the forces be
at work on that character?

What would expectations
of them be?

How is this character unique?

What makes this
character interesting?

It's relatively
easy, in a sense,

to write outstanding women
outside of the present time

because they were always
misunderstood and dismissed.

And audiences hate
it when they're

investing in a character and
that character is dismissed,

or misunderstood, or
judged harshly, or not

seen for how great they are.

So these are all techniques
for getting your character

to be interesting.

Ultimately, what's important
is that your characters

come to life in your mind.

And then they're going to
come to life again when

you cast the film.

How you imagine
that character is

going to find its final
expression through a living,

breathing human being who has
a look, has a physiognomy,

and has a skill set.

And they are going to
change that character.

The key to it is to get
the actor to a safe place

where they can explore and
they can feel empowered to go

as far as they feel like going.

Maybe later in the
cutting room, you

say that might be a
little bit too much.

Or maybe on the set, your
own instinct kicks in

and you say, you know,
maybe let's try muting that.

And let me feel that that crazy
energy is going on in your mind

but there's something
holding you back

from saying it quite that way.

And let's feel that tension.

I mean, after a
while I think one

learns to speak a language
that actors can hear.

Because I think the most
sacred part of the job,

ultimately, is to help the
actor achieve their best work.

I like to have done rehearsal so
that we can talk through ideas,

not lock them in,
but stand them up.

Try it, workshop.

But I think of it more as sort
of work-shopping the script.

And often I'll find the
dialogue shakes out.

Because I'll say,
all right, just

forget about the written word.

Forget about the page.

Just improv the scene.

This was very
helpful in "Titanic"

because some of the
language was a bit stilted

because it was of its period.

And I wanted these
two young actors

to get a sense for,
well, just play

the scene the way you'd play
it now in your current idiom,

the way you would speak.

And so they just played it
as themselves, essentially.

I mean, the sort of halfway
between the character

was the character,
but interpreted

through contemporary language.

And some interesting
ideas came out of that.

An interesting dynamic
came out of it.

I said, all right,
I'm going to go off

and I'm going to
rewrite the scene.

And I'm going to put it
into the idiom of the time.

But it'll be these ideas.

It'll be these things that
we discovered in rehearsal.

I mean, a really good
example that I think really

added value to a particular
scene in "Titanic,"

we were rehearsing the scene
where Cal, her fiancee,

grabs her arm and tries to
drag her aboard the lifeboat,

tries to control her, not
listen to her, as usual.

And the way I had
written it, she

pulls a hatpin out of her hair
and sticks him in the arm,

forcing him to release her.

And she runs away
into the crowd.

But then we were
talking about the hatpin

and Kate said, well, why
don't I just spit in his face?

And it was so brilliant.

I don't even think she
realized how great it

was because it was a callback
to a previous scene, the scene

in the film where Jack--

Leonardo's character-- teaches
her how to spit like a man.

So it was a perfect
closure of the ellipse.

It was something Jack
taught her how to do.

And she used it in
that moment to break,

to end the relationship, or at
least she thought so, with Cal.

Where are you going?

What, to him?

To be a whore to a gutter rat?

I'd rather be his
whore than your wife.

No.

I said no.

WOMAN: Rose, please stop.

It was perfect.

It was like it was like a
moment a writer would go aha,

this is great.

I've solved the problem.

And she solved it.

So that's how we did it.

Now, poor Billy Zane
didn't particularly

like having a big old loogie
shot into his face 50 times.

By the time we were done
shooting that scene,

he was well over the idea.

But I think it turned
out to be a nice moment.