Think about all the movies James Cameron has made: cool stuff happens in all of them, and the films are shot and edited with James Cameron’s inimitable style, but what really clinched their success was James Cameron’s ability to build fascinating characters and make us care about them.

It is understandable, then, that when fans saw the trailer for “Avatar”, replete with tall blue alien creatures, they freaked out: they thought it might be a soulless science-fiction movie whose characters we do not care about; a movie, in short, worthy of the many journeyman directors out there, but not worthy of James Cameron.

We need not have worried.  James Cameron has delivered a masterpiece yet again: fascinating characters in a fascinating world, with a story that is genuinely interesting and makes sense at all times, including a climactic battle scene at the end which, together with the battles in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan,” has surely got to be one of the best battle scenes ever.  As I have written in the past, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are the only directors who are able to direct battle scenes that actually make sense and are not merely a random assembly of explosions and mayhem.

There are also some shots that will make cinematic history, such as the one in which passengers are woken up on the spaceship shortly before arriving on Pandora.  That scene itself was comfortably worth the price of admission!

The haters also love to say that the whole film was based on 3-D movie technology and that it would fail to hold up in 2-D.  Of course this is spectacularly incorrect and the film retains almost all of its entertainment and cinematic value when watched in 2-D.

Avatar won the Golden globes for best drama and best director. If it goes on to win the Academy Awards in those categories, they will be amply deserved.

Oh, and it made 1.6 billion dollars in a single month. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Spielberg re-made Firelight as Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977. The day after the screening of Firelight the Spielbergs moved to Los Angeles, where Steven immediately set about breaking into the Hollywood film industry. He befriended an editor at Universal called Chuck Silvers, to whom he showed the movies he had made. Silvers was favorably impressed but never did anything about it, until one day Spielberg walked in with a print of Amblin’ under his arm.

Shot on 35mm without dialog, Amblin’ is a 26-minute film that Spielberg made in 1968 for the express purpose of breaking into Hollywood. Chuck Silvers was so impressed that he screened it for Syd Sheinberg, head of TV production at Universal Studios.

Sheinberg immediately offered Spielberg to a 7-year contract to direct episodic TV for Universal Studios. He wasn’t even given time to complete his college degree: he signed in December and by January he was directing Joan Crawford in a Night Gallery episode, at the tender age of twenty-two. Syd Sheinberg took the young Spielberg under his wing and did a lot of pushing for him, especially in the early years.

Spielberg immediately impressed everyone at Universal, consistently outclassing directors who were two or three times as old as he was.

His second major break came when he directed Duel. It was supposed to be a TV movie, but it was so good that it was also released theatrically, after additional footage was shot for it. Duel catapulted Spielberg from TV to feature films.

His first feature film was The Sugarland Express (1972), based on a true story and starring Goldie Hawn. It performed poorly at the box office — perhaps because the title was tonally misleading — but it is a truly delightful film, with all of Steven Spielberg’s hallmarks: the best camerawork in the business, terrific human warmth and a near-perfect screenplay.

His next film, Jaws (1975), broke all box office records, started the blockbuster paradigm (along with Star Wars) and made Spielberg a wealthy man. At the age of twenty-eight, Spielberg had become one of the hottest directors in Hollywood, and he only got better from there.

After moving to California from Canada, James Cameron worked as a truck driver for a few years before finally realising that the time had come for him to make a compelling bid on the film industry.

Via a series of circumstances he obtained the money to make a 12-minute short called Xenogenesis, which got him a job at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. James Cameron’s sheer talent and motivation saw to it that he quickly moved up in the low-budget and chaotic environment of Corman’s outfit, and he was soon running his own FX department.

Although Corman was justifiably impressed with the young James Cameron, making him an obvious choice as the director of a future film, the opportunity arose sooner then expected: an Italian producer saw James Cameron directing a second-unit scene involving maggots and hired him on the spot to direct Piranha 2.

By all accounts Piranha 2 was a disaster, through no fault of James Cameron’s. He was not allowed to watch the dailies and was unceremoniously fired when the film wrapped, after being told that his work was rubbish.

Undaunted, James Cameron flew to Rome, where the producer was editing the picture, and managed to break into the editing room by using a credit card — just like the movies. He worked nights, cutting the picture as he wanted, without the film editor ever noticing.

It was in Rome that James Cameron had a nightmare about a relentless robot from the future; he flew back to the States and wrote The Terminator based on that nightmare. He also teamed up with young producer Gale Anne Hurd and sold the script to her for one dollar, with the stipulation that he would be the one to direct it.

It took James Cameron a full two years to find a production company willing to let him direct it, during which he survived by producing posters for B-movies. Everyone wanted to buy the Terminator script and let a “real director” make the picture, but James Cameron stuck to his guns.

Eventually, a company called Hemdale agreed to finance The Terminator and let James Cameron direct it. The movie cost only $6 million and would have been consigned to the art house circuit, had it not been for Schwarzenegger’s intervention.

The Terminator was a major hit and made James Cameron a hot director. Which is not to say that his subsequent movies went smoothly; Aliens involved a nightmare shoot in England, and The Abyss was bedevilled by even greater problems during production.

But the most inspiring lesson to be learned from James Cameron’s story is just how rocky his beginnings were: he was fired off his first picture, which also turned out to be a mess; with most directors, that would have been pretty much the end of it. Not only did it not spell the end of James Cameron — he also went on to become one the world’s foremost film directors and innovators.

James Cameron and Stephen Spielberg are the only directors on this planet who are able to direct a battle scene that actually makes sense, as opposed to being dull and pointless.

Every other director — including one who has a particular penchant for explosions and spectacle — simply takes the approach of shooting random mayhem and explosions from many angles and then leaving it to the unfortunate film editor to cobble together a half-decent battle scene.

With James Cameron and Steven Spielberg, it is a totally different story. These two directors do not just shoot random mayhem; their battle scenes are coherent, meaningful and very easy to follow. Battle scenes directed by these two directors are truly riveting, and contrast sharply with the battle scenes of all other directors, which are tedious, pointless and ultimately nothing more than a big load of flaming nonsense.

James Cameron recently re-confirmed his genius with his film Avatar, which features what could be argued to be the perfect battle scene at the end. The battle scene makes perfect sense: every round fired, every explosion, every strategic decision is easy to understand and has a clear purpose. We know exactly what is being done, by whom and WHY.

It takes a genius to achieve true simplicity and clarity. Props to James Cameron and Steven Spielberg — two modern-day geniuses in the greatest Renaissance tradition.

1. Shoot the video with care and use good video production practices. This means ensuring that the subject is well lit and not darker than the background. If you are using a webcam or a cell phone to shoot this video, paying attention to the lighting conditions is especially important. If all you have is a cell phone, by all means go ahead and shoot your video — just make sure that the video is not shaky and that the main subject is brighter than the background.

2. If the YouTube video you are making is a “how to video”, it is particularly important that whatever you are showing us is clearly visible. You could be showing us your favorite car, your stamp collection or pretty much anything else you care to share. Whatever it is, we’ve got to be able to take a good look at it, otherwise the “tour” will be pointless and frustrating.

3. Pay attention to what is going on in the background, especially if you are a total video newbie. I have seen a lot of YouTube videos get flamed or derided as a result of something going on in the background that the viewers found annoying or worse. One excellent video blogger recently posted a video that he shot in a hotel room because he was on a business trip, and a large fraction of the comments focused on a figure that was faintly visible on the bed in the background, and speculation abounded on who it might be. YouTube viewers are incredibly good at spotting anything in the background that is in any way noteworthy, so be very careful.

4. If you are making a blog-type video, speak clearly and be as compelling and concise as possible. One thing that all successful YouTube video bloggers have in common is that they speak very well, and tend to be something of a character. Those who do poorly are very long-winded and speak in a monotonous voice. They upload 10-minute videos in which they ramble without making a point. Their videos feel “slow” and very few viewers make it to the end.

Conversely, successful video bloggers are amusing to listen to and pack a lot of useful information and insights into their videos. Almost everyone watches the videos all the way to the end and then goes back to the beginning and watches again. With good video bloggers, people cannot wait for the next installment.

5. Make sure that the title of your video is both accurate and keyword-rich. This will help users to find your video and is very important when you are in the process of building your YouTube following.

6. Here is the big YouTube video tip: no matter what kind of video you’re uploading, make sure that it fully complies with YouTube’s recommended settings in terms of frame size and aspect ratio. If your video’s aspect ratio or frame size does not match the settings, YouTube will resize it and/or display in the incorrect aspect ratio, which is incredibly annoying. For HD YouTube videos, the best settings are H.264, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 format, 1280×720 resolution, 44.1KHz Stereo MP3 or AAC audio. Make the frame rate the same as that of the original video.

Good luck with your YouTube videos!

However, if the free content in question is a real movie, we have a problem. The production of even a half-decent film takes highly significant financial and human resources — civilians cannot even imagine just how expensive, time-consuming and labor-intensive it is to make a film of any kind. And all it takes to destroy it is an illegal Internet upload.

Movies and the Internet do not get along and must be kept well apart. The availability of a film free of charge on the Internet massively reduces its value, and must therefore be fought strenuously and without compromise.

That piracy harms the film industry is self-evident, but what should be done about it? Here is how I would do it: keep movies off DVDs (and hence off the Internet) for as long as possible. A movie must only exist as 35mm film prints in the first phase of its life, and this phase must be as long as possible. If the movie only exists as 35mm prints, it is next to impossible to pirate it. Piracy only really kicks in when DVDs become available. Therefore the DVD release must be massively delayed. Make people buy those tickets. Let them buy tickets to your movie more than once, if it is good enough. Make people feel that the DVD release is so far away, so utterly unattainable, that they should go out and watch the movie in a theater if they want to watch the movie at all.

Bring back second-run movie theaters. Bring back double features. Squeeze a movie for all it’s worth before those wretched DVDs are released; exploit the movie until its film prints are so scratched and full of dust that you have to bin them. Then, and only then, should you release the DVDs. Of course they will be instantly pirated, but at least you made decent revenues during the long theatrical run. Tickets will have been sold and seats will have felt the profitable warmth of moviegoers’ buttocks.

Send a clear message that good movies are valuable and that people will have to pay good money for the privilege of watching them. If they are unwilling to cooperate, let them stay at home and watch “user-generated content” on YouTube.

There was a time when content was valuable, because there was no way to enjoy it other than by paying a decent price for it. The Internet is conditioning this generation’s kids to feel entitled to an unlimited supply of movies free of charge. This madness must stop. The movie studios should take aggressive and relentless action to defend the value of their output.

The first high-profile, explicit foray into stand-alone branded content was probably the series of short films produced by Ridley Scott Associates for BMW in 2001. The series was entitled “The Hire.” The short films had particularly strong scripts and were directed by some serious directors, including Tony Scott. It worked like a charm, and the short films are still very popular and have stood the test of time.

So is branded content the future of advertising? As it happens, they do not directly compete with traditional TV commercials. Instead, they satisfy the demand that has been created by the maturation of online video. When people log on to YouTube they want entertainment, they want it immediately and they want it free of charge. Branded content like the BMW shorts lend themselves beautifully to outlets like YouTube, and will contribute to its future profitability. Users feast on the free entertainment they crave and the advertisers get plenty of exposure. It could also be argued that because the users actively seek these videos, their level of engagement with the brand is greater than with TV commercials that they are forced to watch on television.

With YouTube steadily increasing the quality of its video and the speed with which it is delivered, the opportunities for branded content are also growing.

This is one of those much-vaunted “win-win” situations for advertisers and their potential customers, provided that the branded content is produced to the highest standards — nothing less than RSA’s BMW shorts will do. User-generated content will definitely not cut it here, at least not in the majority of cases.

A more recent example is the safety video made by Air New Zealand, “Bare essentials.” It is a safety video that rapidly went viral by virtue of the fact that the staff in the video are buck naked, with uniforms painted directly on their skin. The painting was so well done that the first time I watched the video I could not for the life of me figure out what I was looking at. They did not look naked, but their clothes did not look right; something was off. It was only later that I found out what they had really done. The company probably knew exactly what it was doing when they made it; it is perfect viral fodder for the Internet crowd. It also technically counts as branded content, because it was meticulously scripted, designed and produced — it is very much an entertainment product in the traditional sense, with the safety info being somewhat tangential. It is very entertaining and makes Air New Zealand look very good; check it out below.

YouTube is increasing its video encoding and delivery capabilities, companies are increasingly reluctant to spend money on expensive TV commercials and the Internet crowd’s appetite for free content is veritably insatiable: this confluence of factors may reasonably be expected to stimulate the production of branded content in the future.

James Cameron had several excellent movies to choose from for this three-dimensionalization process, but it is not surprising that he chose “Titanic.” In a talk he recently gave in Santa Monica, he said that drama is the genre in which 3D is likely to have the strongest effects on audiences, on the grounds that 3D drama is more likely to trick the brain into perceiving it as a real experience, presumably because real-life memories in our brains are much more closely related to drama than to science fiction or fantasy.

His choice therefore makes sense, because “Titanic” is perhaps the most drama-rich movie he has ever made. I am a huge fan of “The Abyss” and would love to see it in 3D, but I do think that Titanic in 3D will be particularly compelling. It will be fascinating to see just how effective the 2D-to-3D conversion process is. With James Cameron’s track record of healthy perfectionism (or “greatism,” as he likes to call it), it will probably be the best attempt ever made.