You think James Cameron’s Titanic was epic? Sure, it had a star-studded cast, cost $200 million to produce, featured an iconic Celine Dion love song, and took two years to complete — but multi-disciplinary artist Claudia Bitrán has, in her own way, gone a step further with her own shot-by-shot remake.
Titled Titanic, A Deep Emotion, Bitrán’s opus has taken 12 years to complete, with a cast and crew that added up to around 1,600 people. The budget, however, was somewhat modest in comparison: about $285,000, funded with a mix of grants and her own money.
The idea came to her during a lull at work one day, when she was a waitress at a Mexican restaurant.
“I was thinking, um, I really want to do something big. And something that I can make without much money, that I can make with my friends and that I can do in the city,” Bitrán recalls. “I had already remade all of Britney Spears’ video,s and I had done a bunch of animations and films that I really liked. That’s when I thought about ‘Titanic’ because it’s the only thing that I love as much as Britney.”
The filming was accomplished with a variety of gear, giving some truth to the old saying that “the best camera is the one you have with you.”
“I’ve used many different cameras,” she tells us. “A lot of iPhone, a Canon 7D, two kinds of GoPros, a Nikon 3700, and then all of the cameras that other people brought, like some big, beautiful Sonys.”
“I had a set of rules,” Bitrán explains of her working parameters.
