MOVIEGOERS TO COVER COST OF CAMERON’S DEEP SEA EXPLORATION

So, who paid for James Cameron’s pioneering voyage to the bottom of the sea last weekend? Well, he indicated in an interview with reporters in London, you and I did. It was already known that Cameron had a massive lighting display rigged up on the body of the Deepsea Challenger, together with 4 3D movie cameras. “We spent a fair bit of the development budget of the sub figuring out how we would be lighting it and how we would do 3D photography at full ocean depth. We did tackle a lot of challenges but, always, the thinking was this expedition is going to get paid for by a film,” he said in the London interview. He explained that part of the problem was developing a housing for the camera and the lighting that would withstand massive pressure. MSNBC early this week described the pressure at 6.8 miles below the surface as being “the equivalent of three SUVs sitting on your toe.”