James Cameron: I eat pressure for breakfast

Filmmaker James Cameron on how he juggled budgetary, deadline and creative pressures for Avatar 2

James Cameron: I eat pressure for breakfast

A still from the film

As the second instalment of epic science fiction film Avatar: The Way of Water is creating a tizzy at the box-office, award-winning director James Cameron has spoken about the pressures a filmmaker has to go through while making a movie at such a grand scale.

Cameron shared that one of the pressures on many filmmakers is how to stay objective about your own film. “I think there are a lot of pressures on many filmmakers. One of the biggest ones that people rarely talk about is how to stay objective about your own film. If you work on a film for five years, at the end of that period, can you still look at the movie and see it with fresh eyes? I think this is one of the hardest skills that as director one has to develop,” he said.

James Cameron

The Academy Award winner, 68, agreed that there are pressures. “There is also the pressure of getting the film done as quickly as possible and this is not a quick film to make. We have had over 3,000 VFX shots in this movie and to just to put that in perspective on Terminator 2 [1991], I had 42 VFX shots. So, that’s an enormous pressure.”

He shared his mantra of maintaining his calm. “[When] there is budgetary and deadline pressure, I joke around [saying], ‘I eat pressure for breakfast bring it on’. You have to fortify yourself with that kind of mantra. The truth of it is that if it was not joyful and didn’t feed an artiste creatively every single day, it wouldn’t be tolerable and I wouldn’t have [made it] again,” said Cameron, whose Avatar (2009) and Titanic (1997) are the highest and third highest-grossing films of all time. He even shared that while making Avatar franchise, he had “shot and captured Avatar 3 and even Avatar 4. These films are all written all the way to Avatar 5.”

Also Read: 'Avatar: The Way of Water' OST featuring The Weeknd out on Dec 20

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels