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《阿凡达》导演卡梅隆TED演讲：想要创新，必需冒险
詹姆斯卡梅伦的电影为全世界的观众创造出一个超乎想象的虚幻世界。在演讲中，他揭示了他童年对“奇幻”的迷恋，从读科幻小说到上山下海，最后那些“奇幻经历”又是如何推动他打造出轰动一时的热门作品呢？看过《外星人》、《终结者》、《泰坦尼克号》和《阿凡达》的你，一定不能错过这场精彩的谈话。
时长：17：36
TED演讲稿
我是在科幻小说的陪伴下长大的。高中的时候，我每天要搭乘一个小时的公交车往返学校。漫长车程中，我总是沉浸在书本里，那些科幻小说将我的思想带到其他的世界，以叙事的方式，满足了我当时强烈的好奇感。 And you know, that curiosity also manifested itself in the fact that whenever I wasn't in school I was out in the woods, hiking and taking "samples" -- frogs and snakes and bugs and pond water -- and bringing it back, looking at it under the microscope. You know, I was a real science geek. But it was all about trying to understand the world, understand the limits of possibility.除此之外，我的好奇心也展现在其他方面：每当我不需要上课的时候，我总会前往树林里，远足和采集“标本”，青蛙呀、蛇呀、虫子呀、池水呀，通通带回家中，放到显微镜下研究。我当时算得上是极品的科学狂人。但这一切都是为了尝试了解这个世界，了解可能的边界。 And my love of science fiction actually seemed mirrored in the world around me, because what was happening, this was in the late '60s, we were going to the moon, we were exploring the deep oceans. Jacques Cousteau was coming into our living rooms with his amazing specials that showed us animals and places and a wondrous world that we could never really have previously imagined. So, that seemed to resonate with the whole science fiction part of it.而我对科幻小说的喜爱也是与我周围的世界相呼应的，因为当时是60年代末期，人类开始登月，开始潜入深海。雅克.格斯特（法国电影摄影师）将他神奇的视觉特效带入我们的生活中，为我们呈现了之前无法想象的动物、景观和一个美妙的世界。这一切都似乎和科幻小说之间产生着共鸣。 And I was an artist. I could draw. I could paint. And I found that because there weren't video games and this saturation of CG movies and all of this imagery in the media landscape, I had to create these images in my head. You know, we all did, as kids having to read a book, and through the author's description, put something on the movie screen in our heads. And so, my response to this was to paint, to draw alien creatures, alien worlds, robots, spaceships, all that stuff. I was endlessly getting busted in math class doodling behind the textbook. That was -- the creativity had to find its outlet somehow.与此同时，我也是名艺术家。我能绘能画。我也发现因为当时没有电子游戏、特效电影的渗入以及现今传媒产业中大量的图像化，我不得不在我的头脑中来创造这些图像。相信大家小时候都和我一样，在读书的时候，往往会在我们大脑中把作者所描述的东西像电影一样播放。而我则是在脑海中描绘外星生物、外星世界、机器人、宇宙飞船等等。我躲在教科书后面涂鸦的行径总是被数学老师给逮个正着。正因此，我不得不为我的创造力寻求其他的宣泄途径。 And an interesting thing happened: The Jacques Cousteau shows actually got me very excited about the fact that there was an alien world right here on Earth. I might not really go to an alien world on a spaceship someday -- that seemed pretty darn unlikely. But that was a world I could really go to, right here on Earth, that was as rich and exotic as anything that I had imagined from reading these books.有趣的是，雅克.格斯特的影片令我惊喜地发现，原来在这个地球上就存在着一个外星世界。我也许无法真的在有生之年乘坐宇宙飞船前往外星世界。这听起来太不着边际了。但这个地球上确实存在着一个我真的可以前往的世界——富饶而奇异，拥有着我通过书本所幻想的一切。 So, I decided I was going to become a scuba diver at the age of 15. And the only problem with that was that I lived in a little village in Canada, 600 miles from the nearest ocean. But I didn't let that daunt me. I pestered my father until he finally found a scuba class in Buffalo, New York, right across the border from where we live. And I actually got certified in a pool at a YMCA in the dead of winter in Buffalo, New York. And I didn't see the ocean, a real ocean, for another two years, until we moved to California.因此在我15岁的那一年，我决定成为一名潜水员。不过唯一的问题是，我当时住在加拿大的一个小村庄里，最近的海也要600英里远。但我却没有因此而心灰意冷。我反复纠缠我的老爸，直到他在纽约水牛市为我找到了一个潜水训练班，它就在美加边界的另一侧。就这样，在水牛市刺骨的深冬，在基督教青年会的泳池内，我拿到了我的潜水证书。但在随后的两年里，我却不曾亲眼看见过大海，直到我们搬到了加利福尼亚洲。 Since then, in the intervening 40 years, I've spent about 3,000 hours underwater, and 500 hours of that was in submersibles. And I've learned that that deep-ocean environment, and even the shallow oceans, are so rich with amazing life that really is beyond our imagination. Nature's imagination is so boundless compared to our own meager human imagination. I still, to this day, stand in absolute awe of what I see when I make these dives. And my love affair with the ocean is ongoing, and just as strong as it ever was.在那之后的40年里，我在水下度过了大概3000个小时。其中500个小时是在潜水器中度过的。我发现深海之中──即使是浅海之中──也会充满了令人惊奇的生命，这远远超出了我们的想象。同我们人类狭隘的想象范围相比，大自然的想象力是无边无际的。直到今日，我潜水时所目睹的一切仍令我感到无比惊奇。我对海洋的热爱始终如一、不曾改变。 But when I chose a career as an adult, it was filmmaking. And that seemed to be the best way to reconcile this urge I had to tell stories with my urges to create images. And I was, as a kid, constantly drawing comic books, and so on. So, filmmaking was the way to put pictures and stories together, and that made sense. And of course the stories that I chose to tell were science fiction stories: "Terminator," "Aliens" and "The Abyss." And with "The Abyss," I was putting together my love of underwater and diving with filmmaking. So, you know, merging the two passions.但当我长大成人，需要择业的时候，我选择了电影制作。在当时看来，这是将我讲故事的渴求与创造图象的欲望合二为一的最好途径。在我还是个孩子的时候，我常常画漫画。而电影制作正好将图象和故事结合在一起。理所当然，水到渠成。当然了，我讲的故事都是些科幻故事《终结者》《异性》 和《深渊》。在《深渊》中，我将我对深海和潜水的喜爱与电影制作结合到了一起。将两份热忱，合二为一。 Something interesting came out of "The Abyss," which was that to solve a specific narrative problem on that film, which was to create this kind of liquid water creature, we actually embraced computer generated animation, CG. And this resulted in the first soft-surface character, CG animation that was ever in a movie. And even though the film didn't make any money -- barely broke even, I should say -- I witnessed something amazing, which is that the audience, the global audience, was mesmerized by this apparent magic.而《深渊》也带来了另一种启迪：为了更好的呈现影片的叙事模式，创造出影片中的液体水生物，我们开始使用电脑动画技术。电影业中的首个电脑制作的软表面人物也因此而诞生。尽管那部电影票房不济，刚好回本罢了，我却因此而目睹了令人惊奇的一幕──全球观众都被影片所呈现的魔法深深吸引。 You know, it's Arthur Clarke's law that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. They were seeing something magical. And so that got me very excited. And I thought, "Wow, this is something that needs to be embraced into the cinematic art." So, with "Terminator 2," which was my next film, we took that much farther. Working with ILM, we created the liquid metal dude in that film. The success hung in the balance on whether that effect would work. And it did, and we created magic again, and we had the same result with an audience -- although we did make a little more money on that one.这就是阿瑟·克拉克定律──先进的科技和魔法之间是难以区分的。而当时观众所目睹的正是这种魔力。这令我感到无比兴奋。我当时想到，“天呀，这项技术需要在电影艺术中大范围推广。”所以在我的下一部电影《终结者2》中，我们将这项技术推上了新的台阶。通过和“工业光魔”(ILM)电影特效公司的合作，我们创造了影片中那个液体金属家伙。而电影的成功与否将取决于这项技术能否奏效。结果它奏效了，我们再次创造了魔法，我们再次从观众那里得到了同样的回馈。不过那部电影的票房要稍微好一点。 So, drawing a line through those two dots of experience came to, "This is going to be a whole new world," this was a whole new world of creativity for film artists. So, I started a company with Stan Winston, my good friend Stan Winston, who is the premier make-up and creature designer at that time, and it was called Digital Domain. And the concept of the company was that we would leapfrog past the analog processes of optical printers and so on, and we would go right to digital production. And we actually did that and it gave us a competitive advantage for a while.综合这两次经历，我们意识到这将是一个全新的世界，一个容许电影艺术者们施展想象力的全新世界。所以我和我的好友Stan Winston成立了一家公司。Stan Winston是当时的知名化妆师和造型师。公司的名字就叫做"数码领域"（Digital Domain）。公司的理念是，我们将超越光学打印机等的模拟工艺，直接进入数字生产。实际上，我们做到了，这在很长一段时间里给了我们竞争优势。 But we found ourselves lagging in the mid '90s in the creature and character design stuff that we had actually founded the company to do. So, I wrote this piece called "Avatar," which was meant to absolutely push the envelope of visual effects, of CG effects, beyond, with realistic human emotive characters generated in CG, and the main characters would all be in CG, and the world would be in CG. And the envelope pushed back, and I was told by the folks at my company that we weren't going to be able to do this for a while.但在90年代中叶，我们发现虽然公司的初衷是在生物、人物设计方面有所建树，但我们在这一方面却是落伍了。因此我创作了这个《阿凡达》的作品，旨在将视觉效果和电脑特效推向极限，利用电脑动画制造出具有真实人类情感的生物。主要角色将由电脑制作。整个场景也都是由电脑制作。但我却碰了一鼻子灰。我们公司里的人告诉我说，我们在当时的技术条件下，是无法完成这样的特效的。 So, I shelved it, and I made this other movie about a big ship that sinks. (Laughter) You know, I went and pitched it to the studio as "Romeo and Juliet' on a ship: "It's going to be this epic romance, passionate film. Secretly, what I wanted to do was I wanted to dive to the real wreck of "Titanic." And that's why I made the movie. And that's the truth. Now, the studio didn't know that. But I convinced them. I said, "We're going to dive to the wreck. We're going to film it for real. 所以我将这个想法放置一旁，转而制作了一部关于大船沉入海底的电影。我当时跟电影公司说这部电影将会是船上的“罗密欧与朱丽叶”，将会是一部史诗般的、浪漫激情的电影。但私底下，我的真实动机是去拜访一下泰坦尼克的残骸。这才是我制作那部电影的原因。我说的是事实。不过电影公司当时是不知情的。我说服了他们。我说：“我们将潜入船骸，实地取景， We'll be using it in the opening of the film. It will be really important. It will be a great marketing hook." And I talked them into funding an expedition. Sounds crazy. But this goes back to that theme about your imagination creating a reality. Because we actually created a reality where six months later, I find myself in a Russian submersible two and a half miles down in the north Atlantic, looking at the real Titanic through a view port. Not a movie, not HD -- for real. 作为影片的开场。此事至关重要、极具噱头。”于是我说服了他们投资于一场冒险历程。听起来很疯狂。但这件事归根结底，依旧是关于如何用你的想像力来创造一个现实。事实上，我们的确在六个月后创造了一个现实──我在北大西洋2.5英里水下，身处一个俄罗斯潜水器中，通过一个视口观望真正的泰坦尼克。不是电影，不是高清，而是身临其境。 Now, that blew my mind. And it took a lot of preparation, we had to build cameras and lights and all kinds of things. But, it struck me how much this dive, these deep dives, was like a space mission. You know, where it was highly technical, and it required enormous planning. You get in this capsule, you go down to this dark hostile environment where there is no hope of rescue if you can't get back by yourself. And I thought like, "Wow. I'm like, living in a science fiction movie. This is really cool."那次经历令我大为惊叹。前期的准备工作是很繁琐的，我们需要搭建摄像机、灯光等等。但真正让我震惊的是，这些深海潜水活动就如宇宙探险一样。两者都是高科技产物，两者都需要缜密的部署。你踏进船舱，踏入这漆黑险恶的环境，如果你无法依靠自己的力量返回的话，你是没有任何被营救的可能的。我当时想到：“天呀！我就好像活在一个科幻电影里面一样。太酷了！” And so, I really got bitten by the bug of deep-ocean exploration. Of course, the curiosity, the science component of it -- it was everything. It was adventure, it was curiosity, it was imagination. And it was an experience that Hollywood couldn't give me. Because, you know, I could imagine a creature and we could create a visual effect for it. 正因此，深海探险成了我新的嗜好。当然了，这归结于其中的好奇感、科学性。它是万物合一、是探求未知、是好奇无边、是想象无限，是好莱坞无法给予我的难得经历。虽然我可以想象出一个生物，然后利用电脑特效将它创造出来。
And the idea was to go in and do an interior survey of that ship, which had never been done. Nobody had ever looked inside the wreck. They didn't have the means to do it, so we created technology to do it. So, you know, here I am now, on the deck of Titanic, sitting in a submersible, and looking out at planks that look much like this, where I knew that the band had played. And I'm flying a little robotic vehicle through the corridor of the ship. 目的就是深入到残骸中，探索其内部的样子──一个前无古人的做法。在此之前，没有人看过残骸的内部。他们没有所需要的技术，所以我们就创造出相应的技术。要知道，我当时就在泰坦尼克的甲板上，坐在一个潜水器内，看着就如同这个的木质甲板，心想着曾在这里表演的乐队。我操控着一个小型的机器人探索器飞过船内的走廊。 When I say, "I'm operating it," but my mind is in the vehicle. I felt like I was physically present inside the shipwreck of Titanic. And it was the most surreal kind of deja vu experience I've ever had, because I would know before I turned a corner what was going to be there before the lights of the vehicle actually revealed it, because I had walked the set for months when we were making the movie. And the set was based as an exact replica on the blueprints of the ship.虽然我在操控着它，我的思想却是在这个探索器内，我感觉我确确实实地置身在泰坦尼克的残骸中。那是我所经历过的最难以置信的却又似曾相识的感觉，因为在机器人的探测灯照亮周围之前，我就已经知道每个转角背后所隐藏的一切，原因就在于电影制作的过程中，我花费了很多个月的时间在这个场景中走来走去。而摄影棚中的道具就是依照这个船的设计图所制造出来的一个真实模型。 So, it was this absolutely remarkable experience. And it really made me realize that the telepresence experience -- that you actually can have these robotic avatars, then your consciousness is injected into the vehicle, into this other form of existence. It was really, really quite profound. And it may be a little bit of a glimpse as to what might be happening some decades out as we start to have cyborg bodies for exploration or for other means in many sort of post-human futures that I can imagine, as a science fiction fan.所以那一次的经历是非比寻常的，它使我感受到了一种远程监控的经历──你实际上可以拥有阿凡达的化身，然后你的意识被注入到车辆中，注入到另一种存在形式中。这的确是很深刻的感受。也许这一切可以让我们大致猜想几十年后的世界会是怎样的。作为一名科学小说迷，我可以想象各种人类社会的未来，利用半机械人来进行探险以及其他活动。 So, having done these expeditions, and really beginning to appreciate what was down there, such as at the deep ocean vents where we had these amazing, amazing animals -- they're basically aliens right here on Earth. They live in an environment of chemosynthesis. They don't survive on sunlight-based system the way we do. And so, you're seeing animals that are living next to a 500-degree-Centigrade water plumes. You think they can't possibly exist.所以通过这些探险，我开始真正地欣赏海底的美妙，比如那些生活在深海裂口处的奇妙的动物们。它们算得上就是地球上的外星生物。它们住在一个化学合成的环境中，完全不需要我们赖以生存的太阳光照。所以当你看到那些生活在500度高温的海底地柱周边的动物时， 你也许会觉得它们完全不可能存活。 At the same time I was getting very interested in space science as well -- again, it's the science fiction influence, as a kid. And I wound up getting involved with the space community, really involved with NASA, sitting on the NASA advisory board, planning actual space missions, going to Russia, going through the pre-cosmonaut biomedical protocols, and all these sorts of things, to actually go and fly to the international space station with our 3D camera systems.与此同时，我也开始对太空科技感兴趣。这自然也是受到了年少时候科学小说的影响。结果我和太空社区建立了很紧密的联系，和美国航天局合作，成为了他们咨询委员会的一员，策划真正的太空任务，前往俄罗斯，参观宇航员之前的生物科学协议等等一系列的事情，以便于我们带着我们的3D摄影器材前往国际空间站。 And this was fascinating. But what I wound up doing was bringing space scientists with us into the deep. And taking them down so that they had access -- astrobiologists, planetary scientists, people who were interested in these extreme environments -- taking them down to the vents, and letting them see, and take samples and test instruments, and so on.这种经历是令人难忘的。但我到头来所做的，却是说服太空科学家们跟随我们前往海洋深处，让他们可以切身体验。太空生物学家、天体科学家等等对极端环境感兴趣的人们都被我们带到深海裂口处，让他们能亲眼观看、采取样品、探测仪器等等。 So, here we were making documentary films, but actually doing science, and actually doing space science. I'd completely closed the loop between being the science fiction fan, you know, as a kid, and doing this stuff for real. And you know, along the way in this journey of discovery, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about science. But I also learned a lot about leadership. Now you think director has got to be a leader, leader of, captain of the ship, and all that sort of thing.所以我们在制作记录片的同时，却是在研究太空科学。我把小时候身为科学小说迷的经历和真实从事这一行业的经历联系到了一起。在这个探索之旅中，我也学到了很多东西。我学到了很多关于科学的东西。但我也学会了很多关于领袖才能的东西。毕竟导演必须得是一名领袖人才，是领导、是掌舵者之类的。 I didn't really learn about leadership until I did these expeditions. Because I had to, at a certain point, say, "What am I doing out here? Why am I doing this? What do I get out of it?" We don't make money at these damn shows. We barely break even. There is no fame in it. People sort of think I went away between "Titanic" and "Avatar" and was buffing my nails someplace, sitting at the beach. Made all these films, made all these documentary films for a very limited audience.但在这些探险之前，我对领袖才能却是一无所知。因为我还得问自己：“我到底在做些什么呢？我为什么要做这些事情？我从中得到什么呢？”这些该死的纪录片根本不赚钱。我们想回本都不容易。没名没份的。很多人都认为我在《泰坦尼克》和《阿凡达》两部电影之间退居幕后，坐在沙滩上面修指甲罢了。但事实上我制作了这些电影，这些纪录片，只有很少数的观众看过。 No fame, no glory, no money. What are you doing? You're doing it for the task itself, for the challenge -- and the ocean is the most challenging environment there is -- for the thrill of discovery, and for that strange bond that happens when a small group of people form a tightly knit team. Because we would do these things with 10, 12 people, working for years at a time, sometimes at sea for two, three months at a time.没名、没份、没钱。你到底在做什么呢？我做这一切是为了这个经历本身的价值，为了这个挑战──而大海就是最富挑战的环境，我做这一切也是为了探索发现的惊奇感，为了那种一小群人组成一个紧密的团队时所撞击出的奇妙的凝聚力。因为每一次我们都会和10到12个人一起工作上几个年头。有时要在海上呆上个2-3个月。 And in that bond, you realize that the most important thing is the respect that you have for them and that they have for you, that you've done a task that you can't explain to someone else. When you come back to the shore and you say, "We had to do this, and the fiber optic, and the attentuation, and the this and the that, all the technology of it, and the difficulty, the human-performance aspects of working at sea," you can't explain it to people. It's that thing that maybe cops have, or people in combat that have gone through something together and they know they can never explain it. Creates a bond, creates a bond of respect.而在那种凝聚力下，你意识到最重要的事情就是你与他们彼此之间的尊敬，你们共同完成了一个无法向他人解释的任务。当你回到海岸上，你会说：“我们需要做这个，这个光学纤维，这个电律衰减，还有这个、那个。”各项技术、其中的难度、海上作业的工作效率──这些都是你无法向他人解释的。这就好像那些同甘共苦过的警察、战士一样，他们知道自己是无法向其他人解释其中的经历的。创造一个有凝聚力的团队，创造一个充满尊重之情的团队。 So, when I came back to make my next movie, which was "Avatar," I tried to apply that same principle of leadership, which is that you respect your team, and you earn their respect in return. And it really changed the dynamic. So, here I was again with a small team, in uncharted territory, doing "Avatar," coming up with new technology that didn't exist before. Tremendously exciting.所以当我回来制作我的下一部电影 《阿凡达》的时候，我试着应用同样的领导信条──尊敬你的团队，他们才会回过头来尊敬你。而这一信条的确是改变了团队的活力。我再次和一个小团队走到了一起，共同前往未知的领域，制作《阿凡达》，创造不曾存在过的新科技。这很振奋人心。 Tremendously challenging. And we became a family, over a four-and-half year period. And it completely changed how I do movies. So, people have commented on how, "Well, you know, you brought back the ocean organisms and put them on the planet of Pandora." To me, it was more of a fundamental way of doing business, the process itself, that changed as a result of that.充满挑战。在四年半的时间里，我们变成了一个大家庭。这个经历彻底改变了我制作电影的方式。人们评论说：你把海底生物带回到人们视野中来，放到了潘朵拉这个星球上。对于我而言，则更侧重于做事的基本法则和这个过程本身，这也会改变了事情的结果。 So, what can we synthesize out of all this? You know, what are the lessons learned? Well, I think number one is curiosity. It's the most powerful thing you own. Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality. And the respect of your team is more important than all the laurels in the world. I have young filmmakers come up to me and say, "Give me some advice for doing this." And I say, "Don't put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you -- don't do it to yourself, don't bet against yourself, and take risks."所以我们从这一切中得到了什么呢？学到了哪些东西呢？我觉得第一点就是好奇心。这是你所拥有的最有力的东西。想象力是一种力量，一种可以反映现实的力量。而你团队对你的尊敬要比这个世界上所有其他的桂冠都要重要。有时年轻电影导演会问我：“给我一些电影方面的建议。”我的回答是：“不要局限你自己。别人会来局限你，会为你去划边界，但你不要自己局限自己。不要赌自己会输。要敢于冒险。” NASA has this phrase that they like: "Failure is not an option." But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration, because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks. So, that's the thought I would leave you with, is that in whatever you're doing, failure is an option, but fear is not. 美国航空局有一则他们很喜欢的名言：“失败不是一个选项。”但在艺术和探险中，失败必定是个选项，因为这些都需要敢于挑战的信心。没有哪个需要创新的重要奋斗是在没有风险的条件下完成的。你必须愿意承担这些风险。而这就是我所想要留给你们的启迪：无论你做什么，失败都是其中一个选项，但畏惧却不是。
Thank you.谢谢你们。
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