The opening scene with special significance at the beginning of the film is the result of the director's thinking for 20 hours in the later stage of editing work. At first, the scene of the wreck of Titanic at the bottom of the sea was partly real and partly model shot. The way to distinguish is that when there are two submarines in the scene, it is a model, and when there is only one submarine, it is the real wreck of the Titanic. Jack's first smoking scene in the movie was criticized as misleading children, but Cameron explained that smoking was a common phenomenon at that time, and if it was not added, the movie would look unreal. Kate Winslet took pains to send letters of recommendation to Cameron again and again, including roses and the words "I am the rose you are looking for", and finally won the role of Ruth in this century's works. During the filming, she also suffered from pneumonia. The scene of setting sail was shot in front of a green screen in a parking lot. The picture of the sunken ship is simulated by models and computer special effects (such as waves and passengers). The actors perform on the green screen, and the stunt team synthesizes the picture of the glacier. The director is telling the actors where to look, and they must assume that the Titanic is sinking there. The scene of the lifeboat searching for survivors was taken in a large water tank filled with more than 350 thousand gallons of water. Most of the "oceans" in the film are actually only 3 feet deep. Because only the right half of the full-scale Titanic model is completely completed, the director deliberately took out props with opposite roles to shoot, and then the film was played backwards, so if there are props on board that need words, it needs to be made in two sets. Titanic, which cost more than 200 million dollars, was the most expensive movie at that time. The filming process lasted five years. After the shooting, the whole device was sold as scrap metal.

In filming, the most challenging thing is to reproduce the scene of the shipwreck. Cameron has a purpose, that is, these scenes should be as immersive as going back in time. In a month and a half, Cameron directed a series of visual preview research. The founder made a research model of the ship and took pictures around it with a camera, thus knowing the structural layout and the most wonderful and spectacular perspective of the Titanic. With the deepening of research, architectural landscape has become the most important. Cameron said: "You can't just build a set, because the big ship in the film is always changing angles, and different angles need corresponding sets." Under the guarantee of strict engineering technology and safety measures, most of the films were shot in indoor and outdoor sinks. Among them, the first-class dining room and the three-story staircase were built according to the actual size, and were built on the hydraulic platform 30 feet deep in the indoor sink of Studio 2. This hydraulic platform can change the angle. The crew introduced 5 million gallons of seawater from the seaside a few yards away, and the filtered seawater will gradually flood the landscape on the hydraulic platform.

In the research, Ramon found that the manufacturer of carpets used in D-floor restaurants and reception rooms is still alive, and this company still maintains the style of carpets and can reproduce the dyes at that time. The manufacturer immediately started ordering. Ramon recalled: "In nearly a year, we made sets and all kinds of furniture and ornaments in Mexico City, new york and Los Angeles, and copied thousands of reclining chairs, desk lamps, porcelain, suitcases, life jackets and navigation parts according to the real quantity. Although the 775-foot-long shooting location was built in different ways, it is as complicated as the real Titanic and can only be completed in one tenth of the time. " In addition, because the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, the interior decoration was not completely completed at that time, and there were few photos. Through sufficient research and the help of consultants, Ramon led the production team to accurately reproduce the first-class restaurant, reception room, first-class smoking room, trail area, afternoon tea hall, gym and several special cabins according to the only remaining internal photos of Titanic and its sister ship Olympic. Cameron said: "It took us a long time to realize the true size of the Titanic. It is 880 feet long, with a drainage tonnage of 48,000 tons and an actual weight of nearly 60,000 tons, just like a huge monster. " In order to create the illusion that Titanic was sailing on the sea, the scenery and water tank of the hull were built along the coastline, thus showing an endless horizon during the day and night. When shooting the night scene, the deck is 45 feet high when the hull is in a horizontal position, and the stern rises very high when it sinks, so the lighting effect of the scene needs the help of the tower crane. In order to shoot the scene on the high ship, Cameron used advanced shooting equipment-Akelacrane. This is the largest camera rocker arm in the world today, with an arm length of 80 feet. However, to put all the scenes in the mirror, Cameron still relies on a huge tower crane. He said: "The large tower crane we built can reach 200 feet. We laid a guide rail along the side of the hull in the cabin, which takes only 5 minutes from the bow to the stern, so that we can take pictures as we like. " When shooting, Cameron will also be suspended above the set, and together with photography director Russell Carpenter, he will take photos with a gyro-stabilized camera. After the three-week Christmas holiday, the film crew used two fully completed deck platforms to shoot the sinking scene. In the final stage of the disaster, the hull split in half and the first half sank 40 feet underwater. When the real incident happened, the lifeboats on board could only hold less than half of the passengers. Because the crew failed to fill every lifeboat, only one third of the passengers were finally rescued. The lifeboat davits used in the shooting were made by the same company that provided the same accessories for the real Titanic. The davits produced by Welland Company according to the past drawings are exactly the same as those on Titanic.

post production

Rob Legato of Digital Domain Digital Studio in the United States, when talking about the production of this film, his most commonly used word is "realism". "Before I started making this film, I couldn't imagine what the terrible night of the shipwreck would be like." Mr Legato is the visual effects production director of Paramount Film Company. He said, "You can see people falling from a height of 230 feet, breaking their arms and legs, chimneys hitting them, ropes crackling and breaking, and one end of the boat is sinking rapidly. People who are in a panic are very scared and don't understand what happened ... This amazing visual special effects technology created a terrible scene at that time." Softimage|3D, a 3D animation creation system developed by American Avid Company, is mainly used in the animation production of this film. The work of 3D animation is divided into five working groups. The working group led by Matthew Butler is mainly responsible for tracking the camera, determining the position of the object in the real shot and the position of the camera in the computer, and then providing these data to the team making scenes such as oceans, ships and people. These data enable passengers with 3D animation to touch the deck, walk in the corridor or lean against the railing. The seawater produced by computer animation can wash the hull; Smoke can come out of chimneys, and so on. These tasks are very arduous, and it is necessary to obtain motion control data from models with different specifications and motion matching. The team led by Richard Kidd is mainly responsible for making oceans with three-dimensional animation. This work will establish some parameters for time, wind speed, wave fluctuation, sun position and reflection, so as to make it closer to the ocean in real shooting, or create a complete digital ocean, dig out an area in it, replace this area with a good hull model lens, and then make the residue left on the water when the ship passes by, and use motion blur to make the ocean look more powerful. The team led by RichardPayne is mainly responsible for the three-dimensional animation of the ship. They first made a 45-foot-long ship model with the scale of 1/20, and then synthesized the lens of the ship model in the area dug by the three-dimensional animation, and at the same time synthesized it with many different ship model exterior scenes. The team led by Kelly Port is mainly responsible for making all scenes except characters with 3D animation, such as seagulls, flags, fish, stars in the sky, debris falling from ship to ship, waves, ropes, smoke, fluctuating sails, icebergs, ice cubes on deck, broken glass and so on. When these productions are combined with real shots, it is conceivable that thousands of computer-generated characters will be the most attractive. The team led by Keiji amaguchi uses the motion capture system to capture all kinds of actions performed by actors, and applies the data to the three-dimensional animated character model. When combined with ship models, it is hard to believe that these figures with such vitality are made of visual effects. In the shipwreck scene at night in the film, the producer added key-frame animation to the motion capture from the actor's performance, because no one wanted to simulate jumping into the sea from 230 feet. This kind of keyframe animation with normal motion curve is easy to modify and expand. When you see the scene where the stern begins to tilt to 90 degrees and thousands of people scream for their lives in despair, 85% of the animation is done by key frame animation technology.

This film was written by James Cameron, in which the story of the hero and heroine is fictional. But there are similar real events: According to the Daily Express and The Sun, the fictional love in the movie Titanic touched countless people. But little known is that on the Titanic, there was a truly emotional "love between life and death": American gentleman Edward and American writer Helen fell in love at first sight when they boarded the Titanic. On April 19 12, the ship hit an iceberg and sank. Helen boarded the lifeboat, but Edward sank into the sea with the ship. After 93 years, their farewell promise will probably be auctioned at a high price of 65,438+2,000 pounds, so that this realistic version of the Titanic story finally surfaced.