Of these dives, 51 were in Russian Mir submersibles to depths of up to 16,000 feet. He has made 72 deep submersible dives, including 33 to Titanic, logging more hours on that ship than Captain Smith himself. Since that first expedition, Cameron has led six subsequent expeditions, including a forensic study of the Bismarck wreck site and 3-D imaging of deep hydrothermal vent sites along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the East Pacific Rise, and the Sea of Cortez. Bitten by the deep-ocean exploration bug, Cameron formed Earthship Productions to make documentary films about ocean exploration and conservation. The latter required him to make 12 submersible dives to the wreck itself, two and a half miles down in the North Atlantic. Two of Cameron’s passions-filmmaking and diving-blended in his work on the movies The Abyss and Titanic. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won three. Avatar won Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Picture. These techniques are combined with stereoscopic photography to create a hybrid CG/live-action film. In 1984, his first directed film, Terminator, became an unexpected breakout hit. Since then, Cameron has written, produced, and directed a number of award-winning films that have blazed new trails in visual effects and set numerous box office records, including Avatar and Titanic, which are the two highest grossing films in history.Īvatar, a 3-D science fiction epic set in the virgin ecosystem of a distant planet, required more than two years of development of new production technologies, including image-based facial performance capture, a real-time virtual camera for CG production, and the SIMULCAM system, for real-time tracking and compositing of CG characters into live-action scenes.
Setting his sights on a career in film, Cameron quit his trucking job and went to work on low-budget science fiction films as a self-taught designer and visual effects artist.
He studied physics at Fullerton Junior College while working as a machinist, and later a truck driver. Expedition Leader, Submersible Co-designer, and Pilot Born in Canada, James Cameron moved to California in 1971 at the age of 17.