I grew up on a steady diet of science fiction. In high school, I took a bus to school an hour each way every day. And I was always absorbed in a book, science fiction book, which took my mind to other worlds, and satisfied, in a narrative form, this insatiable sense of curiosity that I had.
Odrastao sam na znanstvenoj fantastici. U srednjoj sam školi putovao autobusom jedan sat u oba pravca svaki dan. I uvijek sam bio udubljen u knjigu, knjigu znanstvene fantastike, koja je odnosila moj um u druge svjetove, i koja je zadovoljavala, u narativnom obliku, nezasitan osjećaj znatiželje koji sam imao.
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.
Znatiželja se također manifestirala u činjenici da kad god nisam bio u školi bio sam vani u šumi, planinario i uzimao "uzorke", žabe, zmije, kukce i vodu iz ribnjaka, i donosio ih nazad, promatrao ih pod mikroskopom. Bio sam pravi znanstveni lumen. No radilo se o pokušaju da se razumije svijet, razumiju granice mogućnosti.
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.
I moja ljubav prema znanstvenoj fantastici zapravo kao da se zrcalila u svijetu oko mene, zbog toga što se događalo, bilo je to kasnih '60-ih, putovali smo na mjesec, istraživali smo duboke oceane. Jacques Cousteau je dolazio u naše dnevne boravke sa svojim nevjerojatnim specijalima koji su nam pokazivali životinje i mjesta i prekrasan svijet koje nikad prije nismo mogli ni zamisliti. Dakle, to je izgleda imalo odjek u svoj toj znanstvenoj fantastici.
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.
I bio sam umjetnik. Mogao sam crtati. Mogao sam slikati. I otkrio sam to jer tada nije bilo videoigara i te zasićenosti kompjuterski stvorenim filmovima i svih tih slika u medijskom krajoliku, morao sam stvarati te slike u svojoj glavi. Znate, svi smo to radili, kao djeca koja su morala čitati knjigu, i putem autorovog opisa staviti nešto na filmsko platno u našim glavama. Dakle, moj odgovor na to bio je da bojam, da slikam vanzemaljska stvorenja, vanzemaljske svjetove, robote, svemirske brodove, i tomu slično. Znali bi me uloviti na satovima matematike kako šaram iza udžbenika. To jest, kreativnost je morala nekako izaći.
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.
I dogodila se zanimljiva stvar, emisije Jacquesa Cousteaua zapravo su me jako uzbudile zbog činjenice da postoji vanzemaljski svijet upravo ovdje na Zemlji. Možda neću stvarno otići u vanzemaljski svijet svemirskim brodom jednog dana. To je izgledalo sasvim nevjerojatno. No to je bio svijet u koji sam stvarno mogao ići, upravo ovdje na Zemlji, to je bilo bogato i egzotično kao bilo što što sam mogao zamisliti čitajući te knjige.
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.
Dakle, odlučio sam postati ronilac s 15 godina. I jedini je problem bio u tome što sam živio u malom mjestu u Kanadi, 600 milja od najbližeg oceana. No nisam dopustio da me to zaplaši. Dosađivao sam svom ocu dok napokon nije pronašao tečaj ronjenja u Buffalu, New Yorku, prekoputa granice gdje smo živjeli. I stvarno sam dobio licencu u bazenu u YMCA-u usred zime u Buffalu, New Yorku. I nisam vidio ocean, pravi ocean, sljedeće dvije godine, sve dok se nismo preselili u Kaliforniju.
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.
Otada, u posljednjih 40 godina, proveo sam oko 3.000 sati pod vodom, I od toga 500 sati u podvodnim plovilima. I naučio sam da je taj okoliš u dubokom oceanu, i čak u pličinama, toliko bogat nevjerojatnim životom da doista nadmašuje našu maštu. Mašta prirode je bezgranična u usporedbi s našom siromašnom ljudskom maštom. I još uvijek sam pun strahopoštovanja prema onome što vidim dok ronim. I moja ljubav prema oceanu još traje i jača je no ikad.
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.
No, kad sam odabrao zvanje, kao odrastao čovjek, bilo je to stvaranje filmova. I to je izgleda bio najbolji način da se pomiri ta težnja koju sam imao da pričam priče, s mojim težnjama da stvaram slike. I stalno sam, kao dijete, crtao stripove, i tako dalje. Dakle, stvaranje filmova bio je način da spojim slike i priče. I to je imalo smisla. I naravno da su priče koje sam odabrao da ispričam bile znanstveno-fantastične priče: "Terminator", "Aliens", i "Bezdan". I s "Bezdanom" spojio sam svoju ljubav prema podmorju i ronjenju, sa stvaranjem filmova. Znate, stapanje dviju strasti.
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.
Nešto je zanimljivo proizašlo iz "Bezdana", morali smo riješiti specifični narativni problem u tom filmu, stvoriti tu vrstu bića od tekuće vode, i morali smo preuzetu kompjuterski stvorenu animaciju, CG. I to je rezultiralo prvim likom s mekanom površinom, kompjuterska animacija koje nikad prije nije bilo u filmu. I iako film nije donio zaradu, jedva se isplatio, rekao bih, svjedočio sam nečemu nevjerojatnom - publika iz cijelog svijeta bila je hipnotizirana tom očitom čarolijom.
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.
Znate, zakon Arthura Clarkea kaže da je bilo koja dovoljno napredna tehnologija neodvojiva od čarolije. Vidjeli su nešto čarobno. I to me je jako uzbudilo. I pomislio sam, "Uh, to je nešto što treba primijeniti u kinematografiji." Dakle, s "Terminatorom 2", mojim sljedećim filmom, otišli smo puno dalje. Radeći s ILM-om, stvorili smo čovjeka od tekućeg metala u tom filmu. Uspjeh filma je ovisio o tome da li će taj efekt uspjeti. I uspio je. I opet smo stvorili čaroliju. I imali smo isti rezultat s publikom. Mada smo zaradili malo više novca na tom filmu.
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.
Dakle, spajajući te dvije vrste iskustva, shvatio sam da će to biti sasvim novi svijet, to je bio sasvim novi svijet kreativnosti za filmske umjetnike. Dakle, osnovao sam kompaniju sa Stanom Winstonom, mojim dobrim prijateljem, glavnim dizajnerom kreatura i šminke u to vrijeme, i nazvana je Digital Domain. Ideja kompanije je bila da preskočimo analogne procese optičkih printera i tomu slično, i odmah prijeđemo na digitalnu obradu. I doista smo to učinili i to nam je dalo konkurentsku prednost na neko vrijeme.
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.
No sredinom '90-ih smo zaostajali u dizajniranju stvorova i likova zbog čega smo zapravo i osnovali kompaniju. Dakle, napisao sam komad pod nazivom "Avatar", koji je trebao apsolutno pomaknuti granice vizualnih efekata, kompjuterski stvorenih efekata, više, s karakterima realističnih ljudskih emocija kompjuterski stvorenih i glavni karakteri su trebali biti kompjuterski animirani. Također i njihov svijet. No granice su se vratile. I ljudi iz moje kompanije su mi rekli da to nećemo moći učiniti neko vrijeme.
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. (Applause) 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. 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. (Laughter)
Stavio sam to na policu, i napravio taj drugi film o velikom brodu koji tone. (Smijeh) Znate, predstavio sam ga studiju kao "'Romeo i Julija' na brodu". Bit će to epska romantična priča, strastven film. Potajno sam htio roniti do stvarne olupine "Titanika". I zato sam napravio taj film. (Pljesak) I to je istina. Studio to nije znao. No uvjerio sam ih. Rekao sam, "Namjeravamo roniti do olupine. Namjeravamo je stvarno snimiti. Upotrijebit ćemo to na početku filma. To će biti doista važno. Bit će to veliki marketinški trik." I nagovorio sam ih da financiraju ekspediciju. (Smijeh)
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. (Applause)
Zvuči ludo. No to se vraća na temu o vašoj mašti koja stvara realnost. Zato što smo mi zapravo stvorili realnost šest mjeseci kasnije u ruskoj podmornici dvije i pol milje dolje u sjevernom Atlantiku, gledajući stvarni Titanik kroz prozorčić, ne kao film, ne u HD-u, za stvarno. (Pljesak)
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."
To me potreslo. Puno smo se pripremali, morali smo napraviti kamere i svjetla i razno razne stvari. No iznenadilo me koliko je taj zaron, ti duboki zaroni bili nalik na svemirsku misiju. Znate, bilo je visokotehnološko i zahtijevalo je puno planiranja. Ulazite u tu kapsulu, idete dolje u to mračno neprijateljsko okruženje gdje nema nade za spas ako se ne možeš vratiti sam. I pomislio sam, "Uh. Kao da živim u znanstveno-fantastičnom filmu. To je stvarno cool."
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. But I couldn't imagine what I was seeing out that window. As we did some of our subsequent expeditions, I was seeing creatures at hydrothermal vents and sometimes things that I had never seen before, sometimes things that no one had seen before, that actually were not described by science at the time that we saw them and imaged them.
Doista sam se bio navukao na istraživanja dubokih oceana. Naravno, znatiželja, znanstvena komponenta svega toga. To je bilo sve. Avantura, znatiželja. Mašta. To je bilo iskustvo koje mi Hollywood nije mogao dati. Zato što mogu zamisliti stvorenje i mi možemo stvoriti vizualni efekt za nj. No ja nisam mogao zamisliti ono što sam vidio kroz taj prozorčić. Kako smo išli na daljnje ekspedicije viđao sam stvorenja kraj hidrotermalnih otvora i ponekad stvari koje nikad prije nisam vidio, ponekad stvari koje nitko prije nije vidio, koje zapravo znanost još nije objasnila u vrijeme kad smo ih vidjeli i snimili.
So, I was completely smitten by this, and had to do more. And so, I actually made a kind of curious decision. After the success of "Titanic," I said, "OK, I'm going to park my day job as a Hollywood movie maker, and I'm going to go be a full-time explorer for a while." And so, we started planning these expeditions. And we wound up going to the Bismark, and exploring it with robotic vehicles. We went back to the Titanic wreck. We took little bots that we had created that spooled a fiber optic. 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.
Bio sam potpuno očaran time, i morao sam napraviti više. Zapravo sam donio svojevrsnu zanimljivu odluku. Nakon uspjeha "Titanika", rekao sam, "U redu, zasad ću ostaviti svoj posao hollywoodskog filmaša, i postat ću istraživač na neko vrijeme." Počeli smo planirati te ekspedicije. I završili bi kod Bismarka, i istraživali ga robotskim vozilom. Vratili smo se olupini Titanika. Uzeli smo male robote koje smo napravili koji su vukli optičko vlakno. Zamisao je bila da se uđe unutra i pregleda unutrašnjost broda, što nikad prije nije napravljeno. Nitko nikad nije pogledao unutar olupine. Nisu postojala sredstva za to, pa smo mi stvorili tehnologiju da se to napravi.
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. 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.
Dakle, ovdje sam, na palubi Titanika, sjedim u podmornici, i gledam pod nalik na ovaj, za koji sam znao da je na njemu svirao orkestar. I upravljam malim robotskim vozilom kroz hodnik broda. Kad kažem, upravljam njime, no moj um je u vozilu. Osjećao sam kao da sam fizički prisutan u olupini Titanika. I to je bilo najveće nadrealističko iskustvo "već viđenog" koje sam ikad imao, zato što sam znao prije nego što bih zašao za ugao što će se pojaviti prije nego što to svjetla vozila stvarno otkriju, zato što sam šetao setom mjesecima kad smo snimali film. I set se bazirao na točnoj kopiji nacrta broda.
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.
Dakle, bilo je to apsolutno izvanredno iskustvo. Shvatio sam da je iskustvo daljinskog upravljanja moguće, da doista možete imati te robotske avatare, gdje je vaša svijest ubačena u vozilo, u taj drugi oblik postojanja. Bilo je to stvarno stvarno intenzivno iskustvo. I možda tračak nečega što će se događati za nekoliko desetljeća kad ćemo imati kibernetička tijela za istraživanje ili u neke druge svrhe u različitim oblicima postljudskih budućnosti koje mogu zamisliti, kao obožavatelj znanstvene fantastike.
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.
Dakle, bio sam na tim ekspedicijama, stvarno sam počeo cijeniti ono što se nalazi tamo dolje, primjerice kraj otvora u dubokom oceanu gdje se nalaze te nevjerojatne nevjerojatne životinje. To su u osnovi vanzemaljci upravo ovdje na Zemlji. Žive u okruženju kemosinteze. Ne mogu preživjeti u sustavu koji se bazira na suncu, kao mi. Možete vidjeti životinje koje žive pokraj mlazova vode temperature 500 Celzijevih stupnjeva. Mislite da jednostavno ne mogu postojati.
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. 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.
Istovremeno sam postao jako zainteresiran za znanost o svemiru, opet pod utjecajem znanstvene fantastike iz djetinjstva. Uključio sam se u svemirsku zajednicu, u rad s NASA-om, sjedio u savjetničkom odboru NASA-e, planirao prave svemirske misije, putovao u Rusiju, išao na medicinske provjere prije leta u svemir, i tomu slično, da bi stvarno išao i letio na internacionalnu svemirsku postaju s našim sustavima trodimenzionalnih kamera. To je bilo fascinantno. No na kraju sam dovodio znanstvenike k nama u dubinu. I vodio ih dolje gdje su imali dostup astrobiologe, planetologe, ljude koji su bili zainteresirani za ta ekstremna okruženja, vodio ih dolje do otvora, i davao im da vide, da uzimaju uzorke i testiraju instrumente, i tako dalje.
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.
Stvarali smo dokumentarne filmove, no zapravo smo se bavili znanošću, zapravo znanošću o svemiru. U potpunosti sam zatvorio krug između bavljenja znanstvenom fantastikom kao dijete, i bavljenja time za stvarno. I za vrijeme tog putovanja otkrića, puno sam naučio. Naučio sam puno o znanosti. No također sam naučio puno o vodstvu. Sad mislite da režiser mora biti vođa, vođa, kapetan broda, i tomu slično.
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.
Nisam zapravo učio o vodstvu dok nisam otišao na te ekspedicije. Zato što sam morao, u određenom trenutku, reći, "Što ja radim ovdje? Zašto to radim? Što imam od toga?" Ne zarađujemo novac od tih prokletih filmova. Jedva nam se isplatilo. Od toga nema slave. Ljudi su mislili da sam otišao između "Titanika" i "Avatara" i da negdje rašpam nokte, sjedeći na plaži. Napravio sam sve te filmove, sve te dokumentarne filmove za ograničenu publiku.
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.
Nema slave, ugleda, novca. Što to radiš? Radiš zbog samog posla, zbog izazova -- i ocean je najizazovnije okruženje koje postoji, zbog uzbuđenja otkrića, i zbog te neobične veze koja se dogodi kad mala grupa ljudi stvori tijesno povezan tim. Zato što bismo radili te stvari sa 10-12 ljudi radeći nekoliko godina zaredom. Ponekad na moru 2-3 mjeseca zaredom.
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.
I u toj vezi shvatite da je najvažnija stvar vaše poštovanje prema njima i njihovo prema vama, da ste obavili posao koji ne možete nikome drugome objasniti. Kad dođete nazad na obalu i kažete, "Moramo napraviti ovo, i optičko vlakno, i atentuaciju, i ovo i ono, svu tehnologiju, teškoće, aspekte ljudskog djelovanja u radu na moru, ne možete objasniti ljudima. To je nešto što možda imaju policajci, ili ljudi u borbi koji su prošli nešto zajedno i koji znaju da to nikad neće moći objasniti. Stvara se veza, veza zasnovana na poštovanju.
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. 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.
Kad sam se vratio da snimim sljedeći film, to je bio "Avatar", pokušao sam primijeniti iste principe vodstva a to je da poštujete svoj tim, i da zaslužite njihovo poštovanje zauzvrat. I to je doista promijenilo dinamiku. I evo me opet s malim timom, na nepoznatom teritoriju radim "Avatar", stvaram novu tehnologiju koja prije nije postojala. Strahovito uzbudljivo. Strahovito izazovno. Postali smo obitelj, u razdoblju od četiri i pol godine. To je u potpunosti promijenilo način na koji radim filmove. Ljudi su komentirali kako ste donijeli nazad organizme iz oceana i stavili ih na planet Pandoru. Za mene je to bilo više od osnovnog načina poslovanja, sam proces koji se promijenio kao rezultat toga.
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."
Dakle, što možemo zaključiti iz svega toga? Koje smo lekcije naučili? Mislim da je broj jedan znatiželja. To je najmoćnija stvar koju imate. Mašta je snaga koja može doista manifestirati stvarnost. I poštovanje vašeg tima je važnije od svih lovorika na svijetu. Mladi filmaši mi prilaze i govore, "Dajte mi savjet kako da ovo napravim." I ja kažem, "Ne ograničavaj se. Drugi ljudi će to raditi za tebe, nemoj si to sam raditi, nemoj raditi protiv sebe. I riskiraj."
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. Thank you. (Applause)
NASA ima izraz koji vole: "Neuspjeh nije opcija." No neuspjeh mora biti opcija u umjetnosti i istraživanju, zato što je to put u neizvjesnost. I nijedno važno nastojanje koje zahtijeva inovaciju nije napravljeno bez rizika. Morate biti spremni riskirati. To je misao s kojom bih vas ostavio, štogod radite, neuspjeh je opcija, no strah nije. Hvala vam. (Pljesak)