James Cameron

It's okay if I just kind of roam.

I love it.

Please.

There's a certain point in making a movie where it's not your movie anymore.

I think it's my movie when I write it.

I think the second I cast it, it's not my movie anymore.

And the second I'm working with designers and we're building sets and all that, now it's got its own momentum.

It's got its own life.

And there's a point in post-production where it's being received.

And I don't mean that necessarily in a mystical way, although it might be.

I don't know.

But it's being received from the group's creative energy, what the actors did, what the designers did, what the camera operator did.

um you know what the dp did and it's just up to me to to to see it and see it emerging and then help assist you know clear clear the debris out of the way get it to to kind of emerge and and i felt that more so especially on these last two avatar films that i've ever felt before

We got a long film.

It's half an hour longer than it could be.

You've got to take stuff out.

So you're paring away and themes are emerging and getting stronger.

And it even got quite snaky on this last one because I felt the themes emerging so strongly that I actually wrote new scenes and asked the actors to come back and reshape the whole thing.

For example, there was a scene in the script, which we captured, where Jake teaches all the Na'vi how to fire machine guns.

I was wrong.