Although the Titanic was a great tragedy, working on the movie was a good experience for one OSU graduate.Hae-Jeon Lee, a graduate of the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design in the College of the Arts, worked for six months doing special effects for the movie “Titanic.”She worked to create what she calls computer-generated stunt people. These images depicted people falling off the sinking boat in the movie.At first, Director James Cameron used real people for the stunts, but this resulted in too many injuries. He decided instead to use computer-generated images.To make these images look real, a team of people used a camera to digitally record human movements. Lee used those recordings as a reference to create lifelike computer generations that resemble the human movements of walking and falling.”I put in 12-hour workdays, seven days a week,” Lee said. “James Cameron is the most visually demanding director.”His best compliment was “it doesn’t suck at all,” she said.She also worked on touching up some shots. Sometimes when the film crew shoots a scene, it doesn’t always come out perfect, so computer generations are used to fix the mistakes.Previously, she worked on the film “The Fifth Element”, which held a record of 223 computer-generated shots. “Titanic” smashed that record with a total of 600, she said.The only time she was ever on the actual movie set was just for fun, she said.When she started working on the movie, she had no idea it was going to be such a big success.Lee is originally from Korea, where she did her undergraduate work. She completed her graduate work with the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at OSU in 1996.”OSU has a great reputation in the computer generated industry,” she said. “Sometimes I got an interview just because I went to OSU.”Upon graduation, she found a job with Digital Domain, where Cameron is a partner. They are one of the 19 companies that worked on the computer images for the movie, she said.”It’s impossible for just one company to do it all,” she said. “There just aren’t enough resources.”OSU’s connection to Hollywood special effects goes beyond Lee, though.”We’ve been involved with this discipline for 20 years,” said Wayne Carlson, director of the computing center.Other graduates of the program have worked on films such as “Spawn,” “Men In Black,” and “Alien Resurrection,” he said.