Years later, you’re going to find out a great movie trivia that completely changes your outlook on a scene that you thought you knew backwards and forwards. Titanic has done this to me recently and it has been great.
The sketches Jack draws of Rose, were not drawn by Leonardo DiCaprio. They were created by James Cameron. Perhaps if you know all about that movie then this is nothing new to you.
Yes, James Cameron directed Titanic, the guy who created these huge ship sets and crazy emotional drama also created everything that you see on screen in those intimate drawings. The why behind this is very practical, DiCaprio is right handed, but the character of Jack had to draw with his left. To teach an actor how to sketch convincingly with the wrong hand, with all the practicality that goes along with it, would have ended up being an absolute disaster. James Cameron happened to be left handed and happened to be an excellent artist, so he personally solved the problem. The camera focused on Jack’s left hand, the paper and the pencil. Some of those shots were then flipped in the editing room to make everything line up perfectly.
It's not only the cleverness of that practical decision that impressed me, but also the remarkable attention to detail in making sure that people are going to see these very subtle things. Almost no one is going to notice that the hand is left handed. Almost no one is ever going to even ask themselves if it was actually a left hand or a right hand. But, it did matter.
Those sketches are about a deep understanding of someone. To know that they are actually drawn by the director increases the intimacy to the moment. It continues to reinforce for me that even the greatest blockbusters are actually created and maintained by small, human decisions.
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