James Cameron Confesses That Titanic’s Most Famous Scene has One Imperfection

James Cameron is something of a perfectionist when it comes to his movies, so his confession that there is an error in one of his most iconic scenes is surprising to say the least. Having become known for spending many years perfecting every frame of his Avatar movies, James Cameron has set his bar very high in terms of box office success. However, thanks to a featurette included in the new 4K Ultra HD release of the director’s Oscar-winning Titanic, Cameron confesses that the film’s memorable “I’m flying, Jack” scene ended up being slightly out of focus in the final cut of the movie.

One of the best-known scenes in Cameron’s epic 3-hour drama sees Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack and Kate Winslet’s Rose standing on the bow of the legendary ship, with their arms extended, a moment that has almost become more famous for the amount of times it has been parodied than its original appearance. Although many fans believe the scene is perfect, Cameron explains that the most observant of cinephiles could notice the imperfection in the footage. As shared by Entertainment Weekly, Cameron explained:

We shot two takes before we lost the light. The first one — completely out of focus. The second one is out of focus for about four seconds and then it pops in. And that’s the one that’s in the movie.
Although most of the movie’s shots featuring the ship were rendered in CGI, that scene used footage recorded at sundown, meaning it was imperative for Cameron to capture what he needed at that moment. Having only had time to record two takes, he had no alternative but to accept the very slight flaw to be able to feature the beautiful sunset in the movie.

Kate Winslet Says Filming Was Hilariously Hectic

Although James Cameron can come across as being quite serious when it comes to the quality of his movies, Titanic’s Kate Winslet recalled the recording of that particular scene being nothing short of hilarious thanks to the director’s desire to capture the sunset in the shot. In the same featurette, Winslet recalled:

“We did it with a real sunset. Which was hilarious because Jim would be like, ‘Sunset’s amazing — go, go go!’ And we’d be like, ‘What?’ and suddenly, Leo and I are having to basically climb up this forklift, extended, protracted thing and climb up this damn ladder. ‘We’re going to miss it, we’re going to miss it.’ So we’d get up there and suddenly, we’d go, ‘Oh, action.’ And we’d have like two minutes of us just endlessly doing this clinch. God forbid if we started laughing. It was really, honestly hilarious.”
Naturally, the very minor moment of blurriness that crept into Titanic has not marred either the movie’s box office performance or its awards haul. The movie swept the board at the 1998 Academy Awards, delivering 11 wins, including a Best Director Oscar to Cameron, while also picking up awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Film Editing.