Christopher Nolan

IntroductionChristopher Nolan is an American-English writer, director and cinematographer. He was born in Westminster, London in 1970. Chris has been extremely successful in filmmaking. From the 9 films he has produced, they have grossed over $4.2 billion and have earned 26 Oscar nominations and numerous awards. Nolan made his directorial debut with ‘The Following’ in 1998. However, his career started to gain popularity with his 2000 hit ‘The Memento’ since then, he has written and directed some of the largest blockbusters in recent history. This includes ‘Intersteller’ ‘Shutter Island’ and ‘The Dark Night Trilogy’ Nolan has co-written several of his films with his younger brother, Jonathan Nolan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife Emma Thomas.

Christopher NolanChristopher Nolan is described as an auteur and postmodern director, he has said in multiple interviews that most of his films are heavily influenced by ‘noir’ he loves working with deep, evocative shadows and using as many natural settings as possible. He is a creative person and this is shown in his filmmaking. He is a very unique director who is well known for making movies that are difficult to understand at first. He is fascinated by our ‘subjective perception of reality’ this is shown in Interstellar and Inception. His characters are often emotionally disturbed and morally ambiguous, facing the fears and anxieties of loneliness, guilt, jealousy, and greed; in addition to the larger themes of corruption and conspiracy. Nolan's most prominent recurring theme is the concept of time. The director has identified that all of his films "have had some odd relationship with time, usually in just a structural sense, in that I have always been interested in the subjectivity of time."

InceptionInception is an action-thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It was written and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. Inception incorporates the idea that Nolan had of people sharing a ‘Dream Space’ in which people could access somebody’s unconscious mind. The plot of Inception is that Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) A professional thief who steals information by infiltrating a subconscious mind. The casting of Inception was moulded completely around Leonardo DiCaprio. The main actors included Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt and Ellen Page.

Setting

Inception is based in six different countries on four continents, including Japan, Morocco, France, England, Canada and the United States. The balance of the filming, however, was done in and around Los Angeles. Nolan incorporated ‘Colour Palettes’ for the dreams the cast entered. This dreams included a dark world constantly raining, a dream filmed completely inside a hotel, a white on white dream with hints of grey and finally a dream set in Limbo.

Camerawork

Nolan incorporates many different camera angles in Inception. In the infamous hotel scene, Nolan uses his infamous camera roll, in which the camera rolls on its axis multiple times. Nolan has used this camera technique in some of his biggest hits including The Dark Night. The film was shot mostly on a 35mm anamorphic film., with significant sequences filmed in 65mm. Inception incorporates many different camera angles including: Close up, extreme close up, extreme long shots, low angles and high angles.

Music

The music for Inception was written by Hans Zimmer simultaneously to the filming of the movie. Zimmer described the music as “A very electronic dense score, filled with Nostalgia and sadness”

InterstellarInterstellar is an American-British film written by Jonathon and Christopher Nolan. It was also directed by Christopher. It had a budget $165 million and it grossed $675 million. It was released in 2014 and stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon and Michael Caine. Interstellar’s plot is somewhat complicated. A widowed NASA astronaut is tasked with finding new habitable planets since a wormhole was discovered near Saturn. He was given 8,000 embryos to colonise the planet as Earth is being affected by a crop blight.

Setting

Interstellar was filmed in many different places, however the majority of the movie was filmed in Iceland and Alberta, Canada. Other locations include Los Angeles and Torrance, California. Interstellar is set in the year 2070 ahead of a crop blight on Earth.

Camerawork

Camerawork in Interstellar is unique in many ways, firstly is Nolan’s use of using as many natural environments as possible. He shot most of the film in Iceland. The movie was shot mostly in 35mm anamorphic film while also major parts of the movie was shot in 70mm IMAX technology.

Music

Hans Zimmer composed all the music for Interstellar. He has worked with Nolan many times, with his music featuring in Inception and The Batman series.

The Dark KnightThe Dark Night is a superhero thriller film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. It was released in 2008. The film stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. The plot of the film is based around Gotham police and Batman forming an alliance to get rid of Gotham’s organised crime. The film is primarily focused on The Joker’s movements in Gotham. The Dark Knight had a budget of $185 million and grossed over £1 billion at the box office. The Dark Knight is a very ‘dark’ film which is unsurprising considering Nolan’s love for ‘noir’ films

Setting

The Dark Knight was filmed in Chicago however, a small part of the movie was also filmed in Hong Kong. The Dark Night is a very grimy, dark film . Chicago was edited to make it seem more like this way.

Camerawork The camerawork in The Dark Knight is very unique. Nolan used his signature camera roll many times in this movie, most specifically when The Joker was hanging upside down. Nolan uses camera angles in The Dark Knight to emphasise the feelings of the character at that time. For example, whenever the character would say something important, the camera would do a close up shot of that characters face.

MusicBatman Begins composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard returned to score the sequel. Composition began before shooting, and during filming Nolan received an iPod with ten hours of recordings.