When James Cameron met Aamir Khan

Insiyah Vahanvaty in New Delhi

A college dropout, a filmmaker who sold his script for Terminator for one dollar on the condition that he direct it, and then went on to give us blockbusters like Titanic and Avatar, James Cameron wowed actor and director Aamir Khan alongwith everyone in the audience at The India Today Conclave 2010, whose theme was 'New Decade: Great Expectations' on March 13.

Held at The Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi, the session was chaired by editor in chief of the India Today magazine, Aroon Purie. The event was attended by the creme de la creme of society, all eager to hear what the two trend setting filmmakers had to say about The Future of Cinema.

Lovely ladies dressed in expensive silks, leaving behind trails of expensive perfume, perfectly turned out gentlemen, and the delicate clink of wine glasses were everywhere you turned.

And if that wasn't enough, the presence of celebrities like Asin, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Koel Puri to name a few, completed this star studded event. Once seated, beautiful table linens and choice wines accompanied the discussion that left everyone present enthralled.

The Oscar winning director shared what it was like to have a dream, and then to go ahead and realize it. At a time when 3-D films were almost unheard of, James Cameron decided to take the plunge and bring in a technological revolution that few had faith in. But Cameron knew this was just something he had to do.

"Though the 3-D cameras were unwieldy and almost as big as refrigerators and though this form of cinema was totally new, I was hooked from the start. Once I shot on 3-D cameras, I swore I would never go back to 2-D!" says the filmmaker.

But there was one big hurdle in his way -- the fact that few theatres were equipped to show 3-D films. That's where Avatar came in -- the dream was to make a film so big, so exciting and so irresistible that the theatres couldn't ignore it.

"Avatar is a film that was written 10 years before it was made. I had almost forgotten about it, but when I pulled it out again, I knew this could work, if done right. So I assembled together a crew and we got cracking. It was really exciting to be a part of something so cutting edge that if we had a problem, there was no manual to refer to -- we were going to have to figure it all out ourselves. That's why the film took 4.5 years to make!" reveals Cameron.