What cinematography techniques did you notice that Cameron used? Two come to my mind, both of which I believe he adapted from other movies: (1) The camera panning away from Rose as she's splashing in the ocean, so that we see all the others as well. This is similar to the panning away in "Gone With the Wind" where Scarlet is among the injured/dying from the Civil War. (2) At the end, after old Rose has revealed the diamond in her hand, there's a flashback to young Rose discovering it in her pocket. This is similar to "English Patient" at the end where the Juliette Binoche character is driving off to northern Italy and there's a flashback to Ralph (sp) Finnes flying (with his dead lover) off to the scene with which the movie opened. Cameron, you're a genius!

-- Bob Gregorio (rgregori@pacbell.net), January 18, 1998

Answers

Something that I did not notice was that for the "deep dive" footage shot on the actual wreck of Titanic, 2-perf (half-frame) 35mm film was shot at 16 frames per second (two-thirds of the normal speed of 24 fps). A 66.67 percent savings in film!

The later miniature work had to match the actual footage perfectly, especially since it was cut back-to-back. There was a *lot* of digital image processing to get the film grains to match.

The design of the custom-built camera looks squashed, stretched and mutated (like a greyhound) since it had to fit inside of a cylindrical titanium pressure vessel.

-- Thomas M. Terashima (tom@nucleus.com), January 21, 1998.

Other people have mentioned Cameron's use of a Rose and of "hands" as symbols in the movie. Everyone is calling Titanic an epic, so it's not surprising that it looks like other epics.

-- Dave Phillips (Sonitus@USA.net), January 18, 1998.

The scene where the camera focuses in on young rose's eye, and when it pans back out it's old rose and we're back in the present time was a cool effect.

-- susan d'amato (grubcd@ix.com), January 20, 1998.

A note to Thomas M. Terashimas's notes; the deep water dive scenes were filmed at 16 frames per second as the underwater camera's;designed and built by James Cameron's younger brother, a engineer and machinist like James; could only hold 12 min. of film at that speed.To film at 24 fps would have reduced the actual film time down to 8 min. Remember it took two hours of dive time to get that much film footage.

-- Paul Jon Kuroski (pkuroski@dwave.net), January 29, 1998.

When Rose is running away from her fiancee, down the spiral stairs, the camera folows her and jack down the stairs, whinding round and round. Which i thought was pretty cool.

-- Oliver James Whitworth (owhitworth@yahoo.com), December 12, 2002.

I noticed that the pace of shots varied a lot in the movie when scenes of urgency and emotion came about. He really meshed the footage well with the music creating a greater sense of the characters feelings.

-- Zach Smith (zsmitty@comcast.net), October 13, 2003.

Cameron is a genius when it comes to movies. He knows just what the audiance wants and he gives it to them.

-- Peter s. Gibbons (bigshot6969@yahoo.com), January 02, 2004.

James Cameron's use of light and sound is one in a million, and who ever likes good movies with awesome effects, all of Camerons movies are sweet.

-- Ben Dover (drunkskunk@aol.com), January 02, 2004.

I agree with Ben....the light and sound cannot be matched :)

-- John Harris (dynamite.ntn@gmail.com), October 10, 2004.