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 .
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 .
And my love of science fiction actually seemed to 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 .
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 .
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 .
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 in 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 .
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 .
But , when I chose a career , as an adult , it was film making .
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 , film making 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 film making .
So , you know , merging the two passions .
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 .
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 .
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 leap-frog 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 .
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 .
So , I shelved it , and I made this other movie about a big ship that sinks .
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 .
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 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 .
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 am like living in a science fiction movie .
This is really 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 .
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 , " Okay , 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 .
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 .
So , it was this absolutely remarkable experience .
And it really made me realize that the telepresense 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 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 .
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 are 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 .
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 to 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 .
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 .
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 .
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 2-3 months at a time .
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 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 .
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 .
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 film makers 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 . "
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 .