Oscar-winning director James Cameron hasn’t rested on his laurels since his science-fiction epic Avatar turned 3D filmmaking into a Hollywood staple. Last year the filmmaker/explorer piloted a submersible to the deepest point under the ocean,the Mariana Trench. The resulting film, the August release James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenge 3D, was shot using new 3D technology Cameron and his team designed. The film, along with and his previous contributions, earned Cameron the inaugural BoxOffice? 3D Pioneer Award. He discussed his new film with BoxOffice Pro in a telephone interview from his farm in New Zealand, where he is busy writing scripts for three Avatar sequels.
自科幻巨制《阿凡达》把3D电影制作推向好莱坞主流以来，奥斯卡获奖导演詹姆斯·卡梅隆并未躺在桂冠上睡大觉。去年这位电影制片人兼探险家驾驶潜水器潜入了海洋最深处——马里亚纳海沟。由此拍成的电影《深海挑战3D》已在8月上映了，该片用由卡梅隆及其团队设计的最新3D技术摄制完成。该片以及卡梅隆之前所做的贡献，为他赢得BoxOffice 3D先锋奖。他接受了BoxOfficePro的电话采访，介绍他的新作；其时他身在新西兰的农场，正在紧张地赶写《阿凡达》三部曲的脚本。
BoxOffice Pro: You put 3D on the map with Avatar, and now with Deepsea Challenge 3D you're moving the genre forward again with new technology and a remarkable documentary film. But before jumping into questions about the movie, we would like to get your thoughts on the state of 3D. Is Hollywood getting closer to fulfilling the potential of the format?
BoxOfficePro：你用《阿凡达》把3D拽进行业视野，现在推出《深海挑战3D》，你再次以新技术和一部非凡的纪录片来提升3D体裁。在跳入电影正题前，我想知道你对3D现状的看法。好莱坞是否正在接近实现这种格式的潜力？
James Cameron: I think we still have a long way to go. The quality of projection continues to improve. It's usually about light levels more than anything. I think high frame rate shows promise in resolving some of the issues people have with 3D, but so far it has relatively few champions—Peter Jackson and myself, and a few others. We continue to see milestone 3D productions where 3D is integrated into the filmmaking. You have auteur filmmakers who are making it an integral part of their artistic process, which I think is the best thing you could have.
詹姆斯·卡梅隆：我觉得我们还有很长的路要走。放映的质量在不断改善,通常亮度水平比什么都重要。我认为高帧率对于解决3D存在的问题很有希望，但到目前为止同道者还寥寥无几——彼得·杰克逊和我，还有少数几人。我们不断看到3D里程碑作品，其中3D已经和电影制作水乳交融。你已经有个性化的制片人把3D作为艺术创作过程的有机部分，我觉得这是再好不过了。
You're known for making movies that are difficult with respect to technology and logistics. Avatar and Titanic come to mind. Here,you're diving to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
你是出名的擅长制作技术与后勤都难以对付的电影，譬如《阿凡达》与《泰坦尼克号》。这里，你又潜水深入马里亚纳海沟的底部。
And shooting in 3D! What's the point of going if you can't shoot in 3D?
而且还是用3D拍摄！如果去那儿不用3D拍摄那还有什么意义呢？
Was this the most difficult film you've done?
这是你做过的最困难的电影吗？
If you look at it purely from an engineering standpoint and technical hurdles, yes.
如果你纯粹以工程的角度和技术障碍来看，是的。
What was the biggest challenge?
那最大的挑战是什么呢？
Just making the vehicle to get down there was challenging enough, but we also had to build the cameras. We actually built a camera that probably weighed less than a quarter of a pound, and the size of your thumb, that's spitting out HD SDI. That's pretty amazing. We stuck two of them into titanium housing to withstand almost 15,000 psi pressure. We wound up with two of these smaller housings side by side. We had an ocean-rated stereo camera system that weighed 4.5 pounds. It's really a technical challenge, certainly along the lines of building the vehicle.
仅是让潜水器钻入海底就十分有挑战性了，而且我们还要造摄影机。我们实实在在地建造了一台摄影机，其重量大概不到四分之一磅，拇指般大小，输出HD SDI。这实在奇妙。我们将两台摄影机塞进钛质壳体，它可以承受将近15,000磅/平方英寸的压强。我们最后用了2套并排的这种小型钛壳摄影机。这样，我们有了一套重达4.5磅的海底立体摄像系统。这的确是一项技术挑战，当然与建造潜水器相当。
How much did the project cost?
这个项目的成本是多少？
It's a small fraction of what it would have cost had the government done it or big institutions done it. It was privately funded with some corporate sponsors and some money from myself. It was done extremely cost-effectively with a tiny team.Myself and one member of the sub's team are the only two who had worked on a submersible before. My theory on it was to put together a young, bright-eyed group that didn't know what they didn't know. The vehicle was so far outside the box from its conception that we couldn't see the box.
那只是由政府或大机构来完成这样项目的零头。这是由我个人和若干企业赞助商私人出资的。它凭借小团队极具成本效益地完成了制作。仅有我与潜水团队的其中一名成员有潜水工作经验。我对它的想法是聚集一个年轻、眼疾手快、无知无畏的团队。潜水器建造从一开始就大大超乎常规，看不见一点规则的影子。
Do you view yourself primarily as a filmmaker or an explorer?
你把自己主要是看作一个电影制片人还是一个探险家？
When I'm making a feature film, I'm a feature filmmaker. When I'm doing an expedition, I focus on that and being a filmmaker becomes secondary. I don't want to define myself 100 percent as a feature director because then the slingsand arrows of critics and production problems become all consuming. So I will probably continue to do some of each.
当我制作故事片时，我是个电影制片人。当我去探险时，我就专注于探险，制片人的身份也退居其次。我不想把自己100%定义成导演，如果这样的话，评论家的尖牙利齿和制作的问题就会变得很熬人。因此很可能我每一样都会继续做一些。
Was there a point when you felt you were in danger?
是否在某一刻你觉得是置身于危险之中呢？
You live with risks every second on a dive like that, when you depend on life support every second. An electrical fire could be devastating in such a tiny space.I didn’t let it prey on my mind. There was one point when I did have a close scrap. We were on one of the test dives in the New Britain Trench. The computer system failed and things were basically going nuts and I had to shut the sub down.I had to sit there and figure out how to stop the sub from crashing into the bottom,which I was able to do. So that was kind of scary.
这样的潜水你每一秒都依靠生命补给，因而你无时无刻都身处险境。在这样狭小的空间里，一场电气火灾就会是毁灭性的。但我没有让恐惧在脑海中折磨我。有一次我确实濒临危险。我们在新不列颠海沟进行试潜。计算机系统发生故障，基本上处于失控，我不得不关闭潜水器。我只能坐在那里，琢磨如何制动潜水器以免撞到海底，我还真做到了。所以那时真的很惊悚。
In DeepSea Challenge there is a segment that shows you as a child, building a cardboard submarine. You've set a number of films at sea. What inspired your interest in the ocean?
在《深海挑战》中有个片段展示你的孩提时代，正在制作一个纸质潜艇。你的许多电影都设定在海上。是什么激发了你对海洋的兴趣？
It was an interesting journey because it started with science fiction and going to other planets. When I was at an impressionable age I came in contact with Jacques Cousteau. I read about him and watched his TV specials and, man, I just ate that stuff up because I related to it as exploring another world on this planet.When I was 16 I was scuba certified, which is no mean feat when you live 600 miles from the ocean in Canada. I made my first open-water dive in a creek.
这是一次有趣的旅程，因为就是从科幻小说和遨游其他星球开始的。在我还处于敏感好奇的年龄段时我开始接触雅克·库斯托。我阅读他的事迹，观看他的电视专题，嘿，我完全痴迷于这些东西，因为我把它当作对这个星球上另一个世界的探索。当我还是16岁时就拿到了潜水执照，如果你住在加拿大离海边600英里的地方，那么这绝非易事。我第一次的天然水域潜水是在一条小溪里。
How did the reality compare with the imagination of your youth?
现实与你儿时的想象比较起来怎样？[page]
I wasn't that kid anymore, so I knew a lot about the deep ocean and I knew about the animals I would see. I didn't expect to see a giant squid, for example. I saw what I expected to see,informed by science. But that doesn't account for the emotional reactions. One was pride for the team and all it took for us to do it. I just happened to be the guy on the screen. And there's always something amazing when you see something nobody has seen before. That's a different sense of wonder.
我再也不是那个孩子了，所以关于深海我了解了许多，我也了解我会看到的动物。比如我就不会期望去碰到一只巨大的鱿鱼。利用科学知识，我看到了预期的一切。但这并不包括情绪反应。一个是团队自豪感，这驱使我们勇往直前。我只是碰巧成为登上银幕的那个人。还有，当你发现那些前所未见的景象时，总有些事物令人惊奇。那是一种迥然不同的奇妙感。
You had a terrible setback with the death of director Andrew Wight and cinematographer Mike deGruy in a helicopter crash just as you were about to sail to the Mariana Trench. How did you and crew deal with that?
你刚要驶往马里亚纳海沟，导演安德鲁·韦特和摄影师麦克·迪圭却直升机坠亡，这是一个沉重的打击。你与团队是如何应对这个危机的呢？
We just had to confront whether it even made sense to go on. It felt like there was this cloud over the project, with all of the risks of doing the deep diving with an unproven vehicle, an unproven crew. None of us had any faith in it and we just had this sense,did we really want to go out and maybe incur another tragedy? At a certain point almost everyone independently came to the same conclusion: Andrew and Mike,if they had lived and had to make this same decision, they would have gone on, because that's what they did, they were explorers. And the best way to honor them was to go on.
我们不得不去面对继续下去是否还有意义的问题。感觉整个项目都阴云笼罩，因为未经检验的潜水器、未经检验的团队，要去深潜危机四伏。没有人心中有底，我们都忐忑不安：难道我们真的要去趟这混水，或许再致灭顶之灾吗？有那么一个时刻大家几乎不约而同地想到同样的结论：安德鲁和麦克，如果他们还活着，也要面临这样的抉择，他们一定不会半途而废，因为他们就是干这个的，他们是探险家。向他们致敬的最好方式就是继续做完。
Generally documentaries don't do well commercially. What advice would you give to documentarians to make their work more appealing?
通常纪录片在商业化上都不太成功。你有什么建议给纪录片制作者，能让他们的作品更有吸引力呢？
You have to know your market and you have to have realistic expectations. If you have a social cause, you have to understand people aren't going to think about that as entertainment. That's going to be self-limiting because most people, when they go to the movies, just want to have a good time. I think a film like DeepSea Challenge inhabits a halfway point because it offers adventure and it also has an educational component. You're going to learn something.
你必须去了解你的市场，你必须有现实的期望值。如果你有某个社会的诉求，你必须清楚人们不会把那些当做娱乐消遣。这本身会有局限性，因为大多数人去看电影只是想娱乐一番。我觉得像《深海挑战》这样一部电影处于中间点，它既呈现了探险，又蕴含教育的成分。你会学到一些东西。