Director Analysis

Darwin Serrano

Media Studies Summer Assignment

Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan is recognised as one of the world’s best and most popular Film directors in today’s film industry. He has written, directed and produced in films such as the new revamped Superman movie: Man of steel, All three in the highly rated Batman trilogy: Batman Begins, The Dark knight and the Dark Knight Rises and the 2010 science fiction heist film: Inception.

Awards Won

He believes that his works are of a high standard and has awards to show for it by winning 3 AVI movies of the year awards with The Dark knight, The Dark knight raises and Inception. He has also won the Saturn awards 3 times for Best Director and Best writer, the Golden Eddie Film maker of the year award in 2011 and the AAFCA award for best Director. From this it is easier to understand why he is one of the most sought after directors in the world.

Why I chose to write about him

The best directors deliver an experience that goes beyond the product being sold to you.  They produce movies that, after watching, make you want to be a friend that has not seen the movie just so that you can relive that experience again. With Christopher Nolan you get just that. I think that this is what has drawn and influenced me to choose him as the director that I wanted to write about because from the movies that he had directed, written and produced, they had reminded me with feelings of what made me love movies in the first place.

A movie in particular that I feel Christopher Nolan has done this very well on is the Dark knight rises: the finale of the Batman trilogy. I think that this fictional thriller shows off Christopher Nolan’s skill as a writer, producer and director very well. It is especially hard to be successful in a film like this where everyone is so familiar with the character of Batman and that it has had many other different films made before it, thus it is much more difficult to input your own ideas and therefore make it stand out from the rest. But he did this and has managed to completely change everyone’s view of batman, from a funny looking chap in a spandex grey suit and a mask to a dark, broad and mysterious Hero, the Batman that we know today.

Methods in creating a film

When working with actors, Christopher Nolan prefers giving them the time to perform as many takes of a given scene as they want. "I've come to realize that the lighting and camera setups, the technical things, take all the time, but running another take generally only adds a couple of minutes. ... If an actor tells me they can do something more with a scene, I give them the chance, because it's not going to cost that much time. It can't all be about the technical issues." – Speaking in an interview. He had been praised by Gary Oldman for having a relaxed and calm atmosphere on set. "I've never seen him raise his voice to anyone" He also explained that Nolan does not give direction for direction's sake, rather "He lets you have the space to find things in the scene, and if he needs to tweak something he will simply step in and give you a note."

This method of directing gives actors the power to perform a scene the way they feel their character will act. This means that the movie is produced with ideas from both the actors and Christopher Nolan himself.

Christopher Nolan also seeks to minimize the use of Computer Generated Imagery in his films, preferring to use practical effects as much as possible. He only uses CGI to enhance elements which he has photographed by camera. For instance, his films Batman Begins and Inception featured 620 and 500 visual-effects shots, which might sound like it is a lot but compared with contemporary visual-effects epics which may have upwards of 1,500 to 2,000

Conclusion

Christopher Nolan will continue to grow into becoming one of the world’s best directors and as he does that, he will continue to create films which will deliver a reminder to everyone why films are so great.