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Ghosts of the Abyss (2003)
Starring Bill Paxton and James Cameron. Cinematography by Vince Pace and D.J. Roller. Edited by David C. Cook, Ed W. Marsh, Sven Pape, and John Refoua. Produced by John Bruno, Chuck Comisky, Janace Tashjian, Andrew Wight, and James Cameron. Directed by James Cameron.
In the early hours of the morning on April 12th, 1912 the Titanic, a ship deemed unsinkable, ran headlong into an iceberg and sunk. Of the two thousand two hundred and twenty seven passengers and crew members on board, only seven hundred and five survived. In 1985 the ship was found about three hundred and fifty miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, but the dive technology of the time minimized the exploration of the sunken vessel. Then in August of 2001, four years after the release of his blockbuster Titanic, James Cameron returned to the site with a mission to explore and film the wreckage like no one has ever done before.
With his friend Bill Paxton, and a team of scientists and historians, Cameron shipped out with some the most advanced diving equipment in the world. He took two ships; one the largest research sea vessel in the world and the other used to light the Titanic with a submersible “chandelier” that was held in position over the ship. There are only four submersible vehicles in the world that can sustain the kind of pressure at the depth of the wreckage (five thousand pounds per square inch).
Cameron used two of those vehicles; the Russian crafts MIR-1 and MIR-2. He also had two remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, that were small and agile enough that they could actually be maneuvered through the ship and for the first time provide images that haven’t been seen in almost a century. Theses underwater robots were engineered by Cameron’s brother, Mike Cameron, with this exploration in mind.
Cameron used cutting edge filmmaking technology to capture Ghosts of the Abyss. He filmed the exploration with a camera designed specifically for the project called “The Reality System”. “The Reality System” is a 3D, large format, high definition, digital film technology that allowed Cameron to capture underwater footage that is second to none. Whatever areas were out of the reach of his cameras he expertly recreated with computer generated images.
He also used a technique he called “echoes in time” to superimpose objects and people onto the wreckage to depict what function that area had or what story it had been reported there. The film was originally presented in a 3D format in IMAX theaters and was almost an hour long. An expanded version of the film with an additional thirty minutes of footage is available on DVD. If you have any interest in the Titanic or underwater exploration, you really should check out this film. It’s pretty incredible.
Budget: $13,000,000
Total US Gross: $16,227,935
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 59 Minutes (90 Minutes for the DVD Extended Version)
US Release Date: 4/11/03
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Awards: none
Tagline: The Legend No One Can Forget Has Become The Greatest 3D Adventure Ever Filmed.
Quote: “We’re pushing the limits of technology which is a little eerie considering the fate of the ship we’re about to explore.”
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