James Cameron was at Autodesk Beyond Boundaries in New York at One World Trade Center, a place also designed with Autodesk software. The talk covered many aspects of designing and making, possibly anything from movies to robots, and the need to ignite the imagination process to make people able to get beyond their own imagination limits.
Talking to Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk, Cameron said that only people who take risks are the ones who achieve something. He was referring to the latest technologies and ideas, as he divulged his belief that filmmakers have to exceed the expectations of audiences, more than just race along for utilizing tech.
James Cameron’s take on tech and creativity
James Cameron pointed out that in order to come up with something groundbreaking utilizing technology along with creativity, you have to step back to take a look from 10,000 feet away after taking a closer look from just 10 feet. Cameron was very clear about how AI can be helpful in filling some spaces and letting the artists stay above to focus on details.
“I think AI can be helpful, because it can fill in some of those detail levels and allow us as artists to stay at a higher level.”
Source: Autodesk.
Talking about his cognitive approach, he shared his thinking about how he envisions his creative work and how artists have to expand their perspective and divide their work into tiered layers, as he said AI can be helpful in filling the gaps for forming the larger picture. Cameron said,
“There’s the immediate pattern that you can see, and that’s the vision. That’s the thing you go after, but then as you go down levels of magnitude you see more and more patterns, and you realize that greater pattern, the grand pattern, is made up of all these kinds of fractal details that need to be there.”
Source: Autodesk.
Cameron’s talk focused on how artists can expand their ingenuity through new technology. Cameron said that technical breakthroughs are iterative more than before, and it was interesting to hear from the director of Terminator. The point he made was that tech is more iterative rather than revolutionary. According to him, behind the scenes is where the real innovation is happening, and that is to make films faster, cheaper, and more efficiently.
It’s not about efficiency and cost cutting only, at Autodesk Beyond Boundaries, Cameron was all in for testing artistic limits with the CGI tech that’s developing. Speaking of Avatars, he said his team knew that the tools weren’t up to par, so they had to crack the code.
Cameron’s Vision for Advancing CGI in Filmmaking
Cameron said the tools made by Autodesk are right for the task of bringing imagination directly to the screen. Speaking of enhancing the creative threshold and aiding the process, he mentioned,
Source: Autodesk.“I want to see something I couldn’t imagine for myself. People’s imaginations are pretty good, so that threshold keeps moving up, and so we attack that with everything at our disposal – all of the imaging tools, all the software tools, faster compute speeds, and more memory.”
According to the Autodesk 2024 State of Design & Make Report, designers and creators are incorporating AI into their works for sustainability, and 69% think that sustainability is helpful for the success of businesses, but only in the short term. Businesses that lack behind in committing to sustainability are unable to compete with those whose values are more aligned with the values of their customers.
Cameron had the view that we must live up to our standards. He emphasized that we cannot just make films that directly challenge people with excessive greed and extravagance that are already prevalent in our society. He envisioned absorbing the stories within ourselves about nature and balance before hitting the box office.
Find the original report here.
