Original URL: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/headline/entertainment/1859736 April 11 LOS ANGELES -- All right, so James Cameron delivered the textbook case for creating a sequel that can stand on its own without merely copycatting the original (Aliens). Web site > He made science fiction both smart and rousing in the relatively low-budget The Terminator, then pioneered morphing visual effects in its sequel, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He launched modern cinema's biggest blockbuster with Titanic, dominating the Academy Awards and luring teenage girls back to see it again and again to pine over Leonardo DiCaprio. But what's he done for us lately? In Ghosts of the Abyss, James Cameron revisits the how he made famous in Titanic. Five years after his Oscar triumph, Cameron goes back to Titanic with Ghosts of the Abyss, an hourlong documentary chronicling his return trip to the wrecked vessel in summer 2001. The movie will play in huge-screen IMAX cinemas and specially equipped regular theaters. The first theatrical project Cameron has directed since Titanic, Ghosts of the Abyss was made using remarkable advances in underwater cinematography and three-dimensional imaging. "My fantasy for a long time had been to shoot 3-D underwater," Cameron said in an interview. "Because underwater and 3-D go together so well. You have these floating subjects and dark scenes that have indeterminate edges to the frame, and something kind of glowing in the lights in the middle of the frame just seems to come right out at you. It really gives you a greater sense of being physically present." Cameron, 48, is writing the screenplay for his first fictional feature since Titanic, which begins shooting late this year or early next with the same 3-D camera system used on Ghosts of the Abyss. Cameron hopes both films will revive interest in 3-D moviemaking, which began in the early 1950s as a short-lived gimmick and has since been applied mainly to IMAX documentaries or the occasional horror flick. Like other 3-D imaging, the system uses two side-by-side cameras. But Cameron's setup miniaturizes the cameras so the lenses can be placed closer together at roughly the distance between a pair of human eyes. The resulting images reduce eyestrain that turned many viewers off from earlier 3-D movies, and the depth of the pictures is often dazzling. Waves coming at the camera look as if they will spill over the theater seats into viewers' laps. Actors Cameron used to recreate scenes aboard Titanic appear to hover only a foot or two away, while the wreck of the ship seems close enough to touch. Viewers still must wear 3-D glasses, which trick the brain into perceiving the dual, slightly offset images as a single picture. The other big innovation on Ghosts of the Abyss were two small robot cameras able to withstand water pressure 2 1/2 miles deep, developed by Mike Cameron, the director's brother. Nicknamed "Jake" and "Elwood," the remote-control cameras were able to film staterooms, dining halls and other Titanic interiors while manned minisubs photographed the wreck's exterior. After Titanic and its $1.8 billion worldwide haul, Cameron's hiatus from filmmaking left people guessing about what he was up to. To the public, it looked as though Cameron was on an extended vacation. But Cameron said he's worked nonstop the last five years, overseeing his new camera technology, consulting with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration about Mars exploration and filming in space, and dabbling in television, including his short-lived series Dark Angel and a documentary last year on the sunken German warship Bismarck. "If people know someone primarily from their theatrical films, then they just kind of assume I'm kicking back on a beach someplace screwing up the courage to go make another film," Cameron said. "When, in fact, I've been pretty darn busy the last few years. "I always said to myself that I was going to work in the Hollywood fantasy mill for a while until I made a big score, then I was going to take a few years and do the things I had kind of always wanted to do." That meant indulging old enthusiasms for hard science and technology. Cameron, who grew up near Niagara Falls, Canada, had studied marine biology and physics in college before switching to literature and moving into film work in the late 1970s for B-movie king Roger Corman. "He's always been a futurist," said Bill Paxton, a co-star in Titanic and other Cameron movies, who went along on the director's 2001 ocean dives and narrates Ghosts of the Abyss. "Jim's the kind of guy who thinks in terms of goals that won't be realized in his own lifetime. ... "He's heralding the new technology, he's actually taking the time to bring these things on. He's more in the tradition to me of a Thomas Edison or an Alexander Bell." For the next few years, Cameron plans to focus on feature films. He will not disclose the plot or genre of the 3-D film that he hopes to start next December or January. While Cameron's next fiction film is a ways off, he hit on some unexpected drama in Ghosts of the Abyss. The film includes a tense sequence in which one of the robot cameras rescues the other, hauling it out by tether after its battery died deep inside Titanic. After the rescue, one of Cameron's team grins into the camera aboard a minisub and announces the rescue time: 6:16 p.m., Sept. 11, 2001. Cameron and crew surfaced hours later to the news of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Sept. 11 also prompted Cameron to scrap a sequel to True Lies, his comic spy thriller with Arnold Schwarzenegger, star of the Terminator movies. "We were struggling with it, trying to figure out a story," Cameron said. "Then when Sept. 11 happened, I just thought an action comedy about an anti-terrorism unit trying to stop Arab terrorists from smuggling nuclear weapons onto U.S. soil was just not that funny anymore." Minus Cameron as writer and director, Schwarzenegger stars in the upcoming Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The movie was directed by Jonathan Mostow, assuming the role of upstart director taking over someone else's franchise, which Cameron did when he directed 1986's Aliens. Alien director Ridley Scott initially was not amused, Cameron said. The two subsequently have talked about doing an Alien film together, with Cameron writing and producing and Scott directing, Cameron said. David Fincher's Alien 3 -- which killed off characters Cameron created, essentially negating the outcome of Aliens -- has braced Cameron for anything that Terminator 3 might deliver. "I'm like so over that by now. You can't hold on to that stuff," Cameron said. "There's nothing they can do to me on Terminator 3 that's going to be as outrageous as that."