Wired’s Scott Brown recently published a fantastic article about the techniques being employed to shoot everyone’s must see movie of eternity The Dark Knight (the follow up to 2005’s Batman Begins). It’s a fantastic article for anyone even remotely interested in any of the elements - Bat-tastic action, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan or film-making itself.

Between interesting tidbits like Christian Bale himself standing on the edge of the Sears Tower, arguments with the Chinese government to allow stunt helicopters over Hong Kong, and the film’s huge 8K Imax cameras outright cracking their mounts, you really get a glimpse of the trouble the filmmakers went through to nail a gritty visual effect while using CGI only sparsely.

I can’t agree more with Scott Brown’s observation that we’ve all gorged ourselves on digital synthetics just a little too much, “. . . and, perhaps fearing retinal diabetes, now they’re cutting back (Speed Racer, anyone?)”. The opening paragraphs detail just how much effort they’re going to in order to make this movie look like something really genuine.

I do find Nolan’s rationale for this realism a little strange though, given after such feats as “Memento”

“Anything you notice as technology reminds you that you’re in a movie theater,” Nolan explains. “Even if you’re trying to portray something fantastical and otherworldly, it’s always about trying to achieve invisible manipulation.”

I was under the impression he had his roots with the Brechtian hipsters, but apparently not.

Wally Pfister, the DOP on Dark Knight, also has some fantastic insights into why they’re bothering to use mo-fo big 70 mm film stock (35 mm is the standard for features) in the age of digital cinema - especially given the emphasis on 1080p HD and home viewing these days.

It’s more of a visceral thing. You can see something way off on the horizon. You can see a little glint of light, a reflection in Batman’s eye. You can’t see it in a conventional theatre. And you definitely can’t see it on a plasma screen at home.

As a result of all this extra detail, it’s impacted on their editing as well - leaving shots for longer to allow you longer to scan the screen for detail. Which is terribly satisfying if you’re the type of person who nearly has an epileptic fit everytime you see one of Michael Bay’s new summer hits.

I’m really excited about this film - it’s predecessor was one of the most tense fantasy film noirs made in the last decade, and by far the most human and accessible (not hard when it’s competing with the likes of Lynch’s Lost Highway). I just hope that the studio hype-engine doesn’t over do it and burn the movie out with hysteria before we even get a chance to sit in the cinema. (Although, it’s marketing to date deserves a post of it’s own for it’s fantastic-ness)

Anyway, before I go and quote the whole article, go and check it out here.

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