COMM 2660 Assignment 3--Post Production

Samual Jamie Rogers

COMM 2660

2012.4.25

Assignment 3—Post-production

There are things in life that most people have a hard time admitting; instances when they are wrong, their own faults, weaknesses for particular junk foods, and appreciation of particular films. The latter is no exception for an adolescent high school boy who might not want to own-up to watching so-called “chick-flicks.”

            This was the case during the holiday season of 1997 when James Cameron’s Titanic first released into theaters. It was hard to admit then, but I did go and see the movie—several times. I suppose it could have been the same hype that was propelling the film to breaking records that pushed me to add to its near-$2 billion in ticket sales. I know for a fact that it wasn’t due to the persuasion of a cute girl that got me to the theaters, but there were plenty of the female variety in the seats, all of whom cried at the end of the movie, no matter how many times they had seen it.

            One thing that came with the hype was the work and the detail that was put into the production of the film by James Cameron and his crew. Titanic was the most expensive movie made up to that point and with the help of Leo, Kate, and Celine, it wasn’t the easiest thing to ignore. Production included the building of a 90-percent scale model of the ship in a 17 million gallon tank that was used for the flooding and sinking of the set. The post-production—which will be the focus of this blog post—included CGI, or computer generated imagery, that helped model how events occurred and also with complete the overall look of the film.

 Earlier this month along with the 100^th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, an updated version of the film was re-released in theaters in 3D. Among the dozens of interviews from cast and crew members surrounding the re-release, came the confession from Kate Winslet that the famous love song makes her feel “like throwing up.”

Another revealing detail emerged about the original release of the film—James Cameron got a couple things incorrect. First was the way the broken half of the Titanic that the lead characters held on to until the very last moment, sank. In an interview with ABC’s Nightline, Cameron said about the climatic point in the film, “…it wasn't quite as dramatic and as static as we showed in the film," he said. "It probably wasn't straight up. It was probably at an angle.”

Another mistake that was noted by astronomer was the alignment of the stars in the night sky that Winslet’s character, Rose, is looking up at from her floating door near the end of the film. The stars in the film were depicted as incorrect for that time of year in that part of the world. As part of the re-master and re-release of the film in 3D, Cameron promised to not change anything from the original, but did say the thought had crossed his mind. "There was a moment when I thought fleetingly I could correct the film and actually have it match what Titanic really looked like," Cameron said in the Nightline interview.

I suppose in what one could call “post-post production” Cameron’s crew consisted of over 300 computer artists to make the conversion to 3D and to make one, slight change to the stars in the night sky above the sinking ship. The filmmaker/historian also used CGI to render as close to exactly what happened as possible as the ship split apart and sank. In the special documentary filmed for the National Geographic channel—Titanic: the Final Word—Cameron revealed how the new CGI model differed from the original idea of how the ship sank and broke up in its descent. The CGI animation was made possible by dozens of trips taken to the sight of the sunken ship and by creating additional CGI models of the different debris scattered on the ocean floor.

This is what’s amazing to me. James Cameron is a known perfectionist and his track record of successful box office hits is proof of that. When it comes to “perfecting” the re-release of Titanic, the fact that he actually thought about changing the CGI and effects to make it more up to date with what is now known, is amazing to me. Just that the technology and rendering capabilities exist, is even more amazing. George Lucas, almost comically, edited his first three Star Wars films and added CGI and changed a few notable things around because the technology didn’t initially exist. Adding a few creatures and explosions here-and-there seems almost like child’s play compared to changing the entire way the most intense part of Titanic went down…no pun intended.

Not only did James Cameron think about it, but he could have pulled it all off! Yes, the film would have been more historically correct, and, possibly, less dramatic and Titanic-movie fans everywhere may have been in an uproar, but it would have been more perfect.

The 3D conversion and changing of the stars in the sky was the only additional post-production work that was done during the re-release. The ship’s sinking was not changed to match the CGI animation and Jack still died at the end. The first weekend of the re-release made enough at the box office to cover the $18 million in costs, though.

Essentially, the CGI update seemed to be a pretty standard task for the same director who turned Arnold into an android, made a man out of liquid metal, and created an entire planet of new types of species, especially the 10 foot tall, blue, type.

To me—only a new student of the film production—there is no substitute to capturing moments live on camera are priceless. No amount of post-production doctoring or CGI and effects can make a film something it’s not. It’s like I learned in my Converged Audio class: no amount of mixing can make a bad recording good. In my opinion, what the camera captures and the overall vision of a director, editors, cast, and crew is what makes up a film. CGI and effects is just becoming a more useful and realistic tool for artists to utilize.





References:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/titanic-100-years/ngc-return-to-titanic-2/
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/
http://gawker.com/5898584/james-cameron-alters-titanic-in-nerdiest-way-possible?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/james-cameron-mistakes-original-titanic-frame-changed-titanic/story?id=16014757#.T5fFM6uXS-a
http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/kate-winslet-titanics-my-heart-will-go-on-makes-want-to-throw-up-2012303