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《阿凡達》把3D電影制作推向好萊塢主流以來，奧斯卡獲獎導演詹姆斯·卡梅隆并未躺在桂冠上睡大覺。去年這位電影制片人兼探險家駕駛潛水器潛入了海洋最深處——馬里亞納海溝。由此拍成的電影《深海挑戰3D》已在8月上映了，該片用由卡梅隆及其團隊設計的最新3D技術攝制完成。該片以及卡梅隆之前所做的貢獻，為他贏得BoxOffice 3D先鋒獎。他接受了BoxOfficePro的電話采訪，介紹他的新作；其時他身在新西蘭的農場，正在緊張地趕寫《阿凡達》三部曲的腳本。

　　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《阿凡達》把3D拽進行業視野，現在推出《深海挑戰3D》，你再次以新技術和一部非凡的紀錄片來提升3D體裁。在跳入電影正題前，我想知道你對3D現狀的看法。好萊塢是否正在接近實現這種格式的潛力？

　　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：我覺得我們還有很長的路要走。放映的質量在不斷改善,通常亮度水平比什么都重要。我認為高幀率對于解決3D存在的問題很有希望，但到目前為止同道者還寥寥無幾——彼得·杰克遜和我，還有少數幾人。我們不斷看到3D里程碑作品，其中3D已經和電影制作水乳交融。你已經有個性化的制片人把3D作為藝術創作過程的有機部分，我覺得這是再好不過了。

　　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.
　　你是出名的擅長制作技術與后勤都難以對付的電影，譬如《阿凡達》與《泰坦尼克號》。這里，你又潛水深入馬里亞納海溝的底部。

　　And shooting in 3D! What's the point of going if you can't shoot in 3D?
　　而且還是用3D拍攝！如果去那兒不用3D拍攝那還有什么意義呢？

　　Was this the most difficult film you've done?
　　這是你做過的最困難的電影嗎？

　　If you look at it purely from an engineering standpoint and technical hurdles, yes.
　　如果你純粹以工程的角度和技術障礙來看，是的。

　　What was the biggest challenge?
　　那最大的挑戰是什么呢？

　　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.
　　僅是讓潛水器鉆入海底就十分有挑戰性了，而且我們還要造攝影機。我們實實在在地建造了一臺攝影機，其重量大概不到四分之一磅，拇指般大小，輸出HD SDI。這實在奇妙。我們將兩臺攝影機塞進鈦質殼體，它可以承受將近15,000磅/平方英寸的壓強。我們最后用了2套并排的這種小型鈦殼攝影機。這樣，我們有了一套重達4.5磅的海底立體攝像系統。這的確是一項技術挑戰，當然與建造潛水器相當。

　　How much did the project cost?
　　這個項目的成本是多少？

　　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.
　　那只是由政府或大機構來完成這樣項目的零頭。這是由我個人和若干企業贊助商私人出資的。它憑借小團隊極具成本效益地完成了制作。僅有我與潛水團隊的其中一名成員有潛水工作經驗。我對它的想法是聚集一個年輕、眼疾手快、無知無畏的團隊。潛水器建造從一開始就大大超乎常規，看不見一點規則的影子。

　　Do you view yourself primarily as a filmmaker or an explorer?
　　你把自己主要是看作一個電影制片人還是一個探險家？

　　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.
　　當我制作故事片時，我是個電影制片人。當我去探險時，我就專注于探險，制片人的身份也退居其次。我不想把自己100%定義成導演，如果這樣的話，評論家的尖牙利齒和制作的問題就會變得很熬人。因此很可能我每一樣都會繼續做一些。

　　Was there a point when you felt you were in danger?
　　是否在某一刻你覺得是置身于危險之中呢？

　　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.
　　這樣的潛水你每一秒都依靠生命補給，因而你無時無刻都身處險境。在這樣狹小的空間里，一場電氣火災就會是毀滅性的。但我沒有讓恐懼在腦海中折磨我。有一次我確實瀕臨危險。我們在新不列顛海溝進行試潛。計算機系統發生故障，基本上處于失控，我不得不關閉潛水器。我只能坐在那里，琢磨如何制動潛水器以免撞到海底，我還真做到了。所以那時真的很驚悚。

　　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《深海挑戰》中有個片段展示你的孩提時代，正在制作一個紙質潛艇。你的許多電影都設定在海上。是什么激發了你對海洋的興趣？

　　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.
　　這是一次有趣的旅程，因為就是從科幻小說和遨游其他星球開始的。在我還處于敏感好奇的年齡段時我開始接觸雅克·庫斯托。我閱讀他的事跡，觀看他的電視專題，嘿，我完全癡迷于這些東西，因為我把它當作對這個星球上另一個世界的探索。當我還是16歲時就拿到了潛水執照，如果你住在加拿大離海邊600英里的地方，那么這絕非易事。我第一次的天然水域潛水是在一條小溪里。

　　How did the reality compare with the imagination of your youth?
　　現實與你兒時的想象比較起來怎樣？[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.
　　我再也不是那個孩子了，所以關于深海我了解了許多，我也了解我會看到的動物。比如我就不會期望去碰到一只巨大的魷魚。利用科學知識，我看到了預期的一切。但這并不包括情緒反應。一個是團隊自豪感，這驅使我們勇往直前。我只是碰巧成為登上銀幕的那個人。還有，當你發現那些前所未見的景象時，總有些事物令人驚奇。那是一種迥然不同的奇妙感。

　　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?
　　你剛要駛往馬里亞納海溝，導演安德魯·韋特和攝影師麥克·迪圭卻直升機墜亡，這是一個沉重的打擊。你與團隊是如何應對這個危機的呢？

　　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.
　　我們不得不去面對繼續下去是否還有意義的問題。感覺整個項目都陰云籠罩，因為未經檢驗的潛水器、未經檢驗的團隊，要去深潛危機四伏。沒有人心中有底，我們都忐忑不安：難道我們真的要去趟這混水，或許再致滅頂之災嗎？有那么一個時刻大家幾乎不約而同地想到同樣的結論：安德魯和麥克，如果他們還活著，也要面臨這樣的抉擇，他們一定不會半途而廢，因為他們就是干這個的，他們是探險家。向他們致敬的最好方式就是繼續做完。

　　Generally documentaries don't do well commercially. What advice would you give to documentarians to make their work more appealing?
　　通常紀錄片在商業化上都不太成功。你有什么建議給紀錄片制作者，能讓他們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.
　　你必須去了解你的市場，你必須有現實的期望值。如果你有某個社會的訴求，你必須清楚人們不會把那些當做娛樂消遣。這本身會有局限性，因為大多數人去看電影只是想娛樂一番。我覺得像《深海挑戰》這樣一部電影處于中間點，它既呈現了探險，又蘊含教育的成分。你會學到一些東西。