Avatar The Movie - James Cameron - The Early Influences

James Francis Bacon Cameron is the writer, producer and director of the box office record breaking blockbuster “Avatar”.

Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Canada on August 16 1954 but he grew up in Chippawa, a small town just outside of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and he was the eldest of the five sons born to Phillip and Shirley Cameron., Philip was an electrical engineer and Shirley a housewife and an artist and together they gave Cameron the blend of genes and nurture needed to start him on the journey to where he is today.

Cameron has admitted that engineering has always fascinated him and his desire to build things has been lifelong. He believes this interest may have been an attempt to get his father's respect or interest, or it may be just down to a genetic love of technology. It would seem that his ambition started at an early age, as rather than look to make things like a bow and arrow or a wooden boat to float down the river, he instead chose to make a fully functional catapult that was capable of throwing boulders large enough to create craters on impact and a submersible vehicle for a mouse that took it to the bottom of the Niagara River and back again! He also made news at an early age due to U.F.O. scare caused by the night time launch of a candle powered hot-air balloon.

Through his mother Cameron was inspired to paint and as a teenager he also illustrated his own comic book and these skills have proved extremely useful on his chosen career path. In spite of his obvious practical talents for making things and his drawing and painting talents he didn't think of himself as being gifted. The standards for being gifted in the environment he grew up were being good in Little League or football and he was considered by his peers to be a nerdy kid which resulted in him being bullied at high school. Payback did come as Cameron advised in one interview "If you ever go to a 25th high school reunion make sure that in the previous two months you've made the world's highest-grossing movie [“Titanic”], won 11 Academy Awards and become physically bigger than most of those guys who used to beat you up. I walked up to them one by one and said, You know, I could take your ass right now, and I'm tempted, but I won't.”

In spite of the bullies Cameron made good grades at school and he was an avid reader. It won’t come as a surprise to many to find that his favourite books were science fiction books by authors like A.E. Van Vogt and Arthur C Clarke. However it was the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Stanley Kubrick which provided the inspiration for Cameron’s film making career. He desperately wanted to know how the film’s special effects had been created.

Cameron also developed his lifelong interest with scuba diving in his youth and he learnt to dive at a YMCA pool in Buffalo when he was seventeen. His hero was Jacques Cousteau and Cousteau probably set the seeds of the environmental agenda which Cameron developed later in life and which were shown in the storyline of "Avatar".