Air America beta radio has mentioned last friday an unauthorized documentary about Leonardo DiCaprio’s life.You’re probably wondering, “What is this, the 90s?” In a way, yes. All of the footage featured in “Hangin’ With Leo” looks like it’s from the late 1990s, when DiCaprio was riding the wave of “Titanic” ending up on “The Beach.” If you would like [...]
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OWF at the INCEPTION press conference
Posted By Taly on July 20th, 2010
It is common to be asked where you are from on entering press events. Usually you are being asked which publication or website you are representing. They take your name, check you off the list and you are free to grab a coffee and make last minute preparations for your interview. I stepped into the plush surroundings of the Dorchester Hotel (in London’s Mayfair) to attend a press conference for Christopher Nolan’s Inception (review here) and was soon asked that familiar question: “where are you from?” I gave the usual reply, “I’m from Obsessed with Film.” How naive I was. The PR lady said, “No, I meant, which country are you from?”
Yes, this press conference was a truly international affair, which is fitting as the press notes keenly stress that this is an international story, filmed on location around the globe. Journalists had come from around Europe and beyond to catch a glimpse of the film’s international cast of stars. From Japan, Academy Award nominee Ken Watanabe, from Canada came another Academy Award nominee, Ellen Page. They were joined by the Irish actor Cillian Murphy, the English Tom Hardy as well as the American duo of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Leonardo DiCaprio – who when answering one of a few token questions about the World Cup described himself as “half-German”. We were also lucky enough to be joined by a husband and wife duo: director/writer Christopher Nolan (a dual national and citizen of the world) and his producer Emma Thomas.
After everyone had entered the room to orchestrated thunderous applause, Nolan was asked about the genesis of this unique project:
“I’d always wanted to address dreams in film-making and do something set in this world – about ten years ago – and focused in on the idea of exploring a technology that allowed people to share dreams, and the uses and abuses of that, and came up with this idea of really trying to tell this story of a heist set in the world of dreams, with a technology that would allow somebody to penetrate somebody else’s subconscious. The idea was always to tell a large-scale action film with an unusual twist to the world in which it takes place.”
But what of the technical challenges involved in making the film? Emmas Thomas revealed why the movie HAD to be a big-budget affair:
“The biggest challenge was the thing of making a film in as many different places as we were making it and it’s hard enough making a film when you’re dealing with one country or two countries, but six was something else. We had talked about, at earlier points, making it as a smaller movie, but because of the subject matter of it – dreams have infinite possibility – so we had to do it this way to fulfill the promise of what the movie could be.”
But what did the actors make of the script? Did they understand it right away? “It certainly took a couple of readings,” volunteered DiCaprio, “but it really was the interaction with Chris, I think for all of us, one-on-one”:
“For me a lot of the preparation, a lot of the understanding of what he was trying to accomplish and achieve was being able to sit down with him and understand that he had this extremely ambitious concept of doing a highly entertaining Hollywood film which is existential and cerebral and surreal, that delves into various states of the subconscious and the way he wanted to put that on screen involved us really talking with him at great length to truly understand his concepts.”
DiCaprio’s co-star, Tom “Bronson” Hardy, revealed that he modeled his performance on Nolan:
“I found myself speaking in Chris’ cadence a lot on set with Chris, I don’t know if he’s noticed that, but I sort copied things he’d say… and his mannerisms on set as much as possible… it meant I didn’t have to think too much I could practically apply this this on the floor.”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t have let that out!” said Hardy, who plays “The Forger” Eames in the film. He also agreed with his DiCaprio, adding “it was was essential to speak to Chris for the vision and to fit in and be part of the ensemble.” Indeed, like Nolan’s previous films, Inception does boast quite an impressive cast and the actors absent from the press event are just as impressive as those present and include Dileep Rao, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite, all of whom add considerable weight to their respective roles with relatively little screen time between them (especially the latter two who are barely seen).
Amongst these players, Inception finds Nolan reunited with three actors from the Batman franchise, and the two present were asked what attracted them to working with the director again. Ken Watanabe was glad to have a more substantial role in this film, saying:
“When I worked before on Batman Begins it was a really short time, something like ten days… but by this time he is one of the biggest young… young? [looks at Chris and laughs]… directors and so I had no reason to decline!”
Cillian Murphy had more to add, enthusiastically praising the man for whom he played, Batman villain, the Scarecrow back in 2005 (and again in a 2008 cameo) and leaving us in doubt as to how Nolan could get such an ensemble together:
“If you asked any actor working today “would you be in a Chris Nolan film?” they’d just drop everything and go for it right away… he has so many talents wrapped up in one, to be able to do movies of this scale that have that emotion and to be such a brilliant writer. The thing about working on Chris’ sets is they feel really intimate it doesn’t feel like a huge movie and you feel secure and safe and able to experiment. He really makes time for the performers. He allows you to find stuff and to grow the scene organically and there couldn’t be a more conducive set to trying to do your best work.”
It was important for Nolan to get such a gifted bunch of actors in, as it was essential that Inception be a human story as well as a visual effects extravaganza. Ellen Page found reading the script “an incredibly immersive experience” saying that, “even with the complexity the emotional through-line of Leo’s character and Marion’s character and the sincerity and the honest base of everything really made me attach.” For all the complexity of the ideas in Nolan’s script, Joseph Gordon-Levitt says that in the final film “so many of these idea which, when reading them in the script I maybe had to go back and figure them out, when they are visually rendered just become visceral and much more emotional.”
A few on the panel were, perhaps understandably, bored after a morning of such events. Especially Tom Hardy who hardly seemed to be awake at times and had to be encouraged to contribute by the host (“what was the question? Sorry, I was dreaming then”). The exceptions were DiCaprio and Watanabe. DiCaprio spoke at length, treated every question with respect and would come forward to fill any silences left by his co-stars, always speaking intelligently, even when asked a series of vague questions about dreams:
“I actually tried to take a very traditional approach to researching this film and read the analysis of dreams immediately and tried to pick apart the psychology of what things represented in the dreamworld. But I quickly realised that this was a whole new type of preparation and that, like I said, meant basically talking with Chris at great length about this cathartic therapy session my character goes on, the psychoanalysis – Ellen’s character is like my therapist in this movie. In doing that we created this really powerful emotional journey. As far as the dreams… how Chris was going make four different states of the human subconscious interact with each other in a cohesive plot structure, I left entirely up to him and did not want to get involved, because he is obviously very capable at pulling off complex narratives like this and making them emotionally engaging for an audience, so it’s reassuring as an actor that you’re working with someone who has a great track record for stuff like that.”
Watanabe was charismatic and very funny throughout and often had everybody laughing when he spoke, whether he was pretending not to have understood the script or playfully bemoaning all the travel involved in shooting in six different countries. He was also one of a number of the panelists to praise Nolan’s method for shooting action sequences: “Chris doesn’t want to use a green screen and he built whole sets… I was always surprised on the set.”
There is, of course, a lot of CGI in the film but where possible practical effects were used, improving the action scenes, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt explained:
“[Nolan] had built these enormous contraptions and various devices and techniques, the floor really was spinning out from under my feet and I really was ten stories up in the air with nothing beneath me and I think that makes the scenes more compelling… I think those sequences look really different than your average digitally created action scene and I think that’s why they are so good to watch.”
Nolan was asked some of the most interesting questions and responded by giving some of the most interesting answers. When quizzed about the tight veil of secrecy which was drawn over the film during its production, he had this to say:
“It’s difficult to keep anything fresh for an audience these days, with technology being what it is people seem to know everything about before we’ve even made it. For me, as a film-goer, I like nothing more than to sit in a cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I’m about to see and every time we go to make a film we do everything we can to just systematize things so we’re able to make the film in private. Once it’s finished it is for the audience to make of it what they will.”
He was also asked about the similarities between creating dreams and creating motion pictures:
“From my point of view as a director, now that I look at Inception as a finished film it is probably as close as I want to get to making a film about film-making… when I watch the scenes in the film where these guys – this team – are putting the plan together it reminds me very much of a lot of the processes we go through in film-making.”
And the film-maker, who prefers shooting on film, also gave his thoughts on the newer technologies, including one of the more positive and balanced assessments of the much derided post conversion process which turns 2D movies into 3D in post production:
I wouldn’t want to bore everyone to death, but people who know me know I could speak about this for hours passionately. The bottom line is, we made the film in a traditional way so we shot on film, we cut the negative, we photochemically timed the film. The reason I do that is it’s the best way still to get the highest quality in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of money, so it’s in my opinion by far the best way of doing things technically and it gets better and better as fewer and fewer people do it because you go to the lab and they give you a lot of attention now… As far as future developments… I’d love to see IMAX develop smaller more lightweight cameras, but at the same time the R&D costs are extensive considering how few people shoot with those cameras. 3D is something I’m looking at, but I see at the moment significant technical limitations to the presentation format: mostly the dimness of the image and the fact you have wear the glasses. The post-conversion process can be done very effectively actually, we did tests on it for this film, decided we didn’t have time to get it to the standard we wanted, but it’s perfectly possible to do it if you’re acquiring a high quality film format you should be able to do a high quality conversion with enough time.”
There were also a few cringey and uncomfortable questions, such as when DiCaprio was asked what idea he would plant in the mind of the head of BP if he had the chance: “To pay back fool!”, said the star before making an earnest go of speaking broadly on the subject of deep-sea drilling and of his concerns on our dependency on oil. These kinds of political messages are often derided when they come from Hollywood’s “self-important” stars, but it is worth remembering that they are usually answering a question rather than making an announcement (although that is how it is reported). A similar line of questioning fell to Ellen Page, who also tried her best to answer without sounding pompous. The question shouldn’t be “why do these stars give us their opinions?” But “why are journalists asking them these questions?” Of the more constructive (and film related) answers to environmental questions, Page recommended the animal cruelty documentary Earthlings, visibly shaken when talking about it, she said it was one of the most important and disturbing films she had ever seen.
If you are not looking to be disturbed by an unsettling documentary, but what to be entertained, amused and excited, you could do much worse than to check out Inception when it is released in the UK on Friday the 16th of July. The Full OWF review is here.
source: http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/specials/owf-at-the-inception-press-conference.php#ixzz0uEQrsn7a
Posted in Inception
Check out Leo at the Tokyo premiere!!
Posted By Taly on July 20th, 2010
Today Leo arrived at the Tokyo premiere of Inception, he’s latest movie.
You can check out hi latest pics following this link:
http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?contractUrl=2&language=en-US&family=editorial&p=dicaprio&assetType=image#1
Posted in Inception
Inception: Christopher Nolan and cast UK press conference
Posted By Taly on July 20th, 2010
The post-conversion process can be done very effectively, actually – we did tests for this film, but decided we didn’t have enough time to get it to the standard that we wanted.Director Christopher Nolan and stars discuss the forthcoming Inception – including the post-production 3D tests the director undertook with the film…
Published on Jul 7, 2010
The improbably bejewelled opulence of the Dorchester Hotel was the venue for an Inception press conference, where director Christopher Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt discussed the making of the film…
Can you talk about your initial inspiration behind Inception, and how it developed the movie it is today?
Christopher Nolan: I’d always wanted to make a film that addressed dreams, and do something set in that world. About ten years ago I focused in on the idea of a technology that might allow people to share their dreams, and the uses and abuses of that, and came up with this idea of doing a heist film set in the world of dreams where somebody could use a technology to penetrate a person’s subconscious.
The idea was always to tell a large-scale action film with an unusual twist to the world in which it takes place.
It’s an emotionally complex, complicated film. This is to the actors: when you were first approached to appear in the film, did you understand it?
Leonardo DiCaprio: It certainly took a couple of readings, but it was really the interaction with Chris, for all of us, one-on-one. It’s an idea that’s been locked in his mind for eight years now. So for me a lot of the preparation was understanding what he wanted to accomplish and achieve. And being able to sit down with him and understand that he had this concept of doing a highly entertaining Hollywood film, that is existential, cerebral, surreal, and that delves into various states of the subconscious.
Tom Hardy: Speaking to Chris was essential for the simplification of the script.
Ellen Page: When I read the script I found it incredibly awesome experience, and even with the complexity, the emotional through-line of Leo’s character and the sincerity really made me attach to it.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Normally when you read the script for a movie it’s just so predictable that you know what’s going to happen, and it doesn’t take much thought to figure anything out. And I enjoy a challenge, a little provocation and something to think about, so the first time I read [Inception], it posed a challenge, and that’s enjoyable to me, rather than something I’ve just seen before.
What’s interesting is that, seeing the final movie, so many of these ideas in the script that I had to maybe go back and figure out, when they’re visually rendered just become visceral and much more emotional.
Cillian Murphy: The movie’s so visual, when you read it on the page it’s quite difficult to get your head around. Once you understand the rules of it, they’re actually quite simple, and they’re the tools to understanding the script.
Ken Watanabe: When I read the script it was so confusing, and I had to go back again and read it three times, as the first thirty pages were just so complicated. It was when we started shooting that I realised the huge scale of the story. The amount of baggage I needed for the travelling was a lot – six countries!
The film was kept under a very mysterious, heavy veil. Why was this, and was it difficult to maintain such secrecy?
CN: It’s difficult to keep anything fresh in movies these days, with technology being what it is. People seem to know everything there is to know before you’ve even made it.
For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I’m about to see or unfold on-screen. And every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we’re able to make the film in private, so that when it’s finished it’s up to the audience to make of it what they will.
Leonardo DiCaprio, if you could, what idea would you insert into the mind of the CEO of BP?
LD: To pay back, fool! Hopefully this is a turning point for us to realise that digging for oil in the depths of the ocean is probably not the best alternative for the future, and that we need to make a transition to cleaner, greener technologies.
What were the challenges of making this movie?
CN: For me, the underlying tone of the thing is best summed up by Leo’s character saying that dreams feel real while you’re in them. So everything we did in a production sense was an attempt to try and retain a tactile sense of reality to the world of the dreams, so they felt like possible worlds even while impossible things were happening.
This creates challenges for all departments, for example, when you have a freight train barreling down the street smashing cars and things. We wanted to do these things for real, so they would feel possible to the audience and that we wouldn’t have an obviously surreal quality to things. That’s why we went to all these locations and travelled all around the world, and shot in blizzards and so forth.
Hopefully that adds up to some greater sense of reality to the world of dreams.
Emma Thomas: I think the biggest challenge of making the movie was making it in as many different places as we did. It’s hard enough making a film when you’re dealing with one country or two countries, but six was really something else.
We talked over the years about making it at earlier points as a smaller movie, but because of the subject matter, we had to do it this way to fulfil its promise.
How long do you plan to survive in the digital realm? What are your views on the development of IMAX and 3D – I understand you’re not keen on post-production 3D?
CN: I wouldn’t want to bore everyone to death on technical things – people that know me will tell you I could talk on the subject for hours.
The film was shot and cut on film in a very traditional way, simply because it’s the best way, still, to get the finest quality in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of money. So in my opinion, by far the best way to do things. Technically, it gets better and better as fewer directors use it – people in the lab give me a lot of attention now, whereas when I started out as a 16mm filmmaker struggling, it was all I could to get the labs to process your film.
So as far as future developments go, I’d love to see IMAX develop smaller and more lightweight cameras, but at the same time, the R & D costs are extensive considering how few people shoot with those cameras.
3D is something we’re looking at, but I see at the moment significant technical limitations to the presentation format, mostly with the dimness of the image and the fact that you have to wear the glasses. The post-conversion process can be done very effectively, actually – we did tests for this film, but decided we didn’t have enough time to get it to the standard that we wanted.
But it’s perfectly possible to do it, and if you acquire a high quality enough film format, you should be able to do a good conversion with enough time.
How did you find the process of creating the rules of Inception’s dream worlds, as compared to the realism of The Dark Knight?
CN: I think with every film you take on you try to establish the rules and the tone of what you’re working with. In taking on the idea of dreams, you have a burden on the rules of the film, because dreams are infinite, and have infinite potential, which is the thing that makes them fascinating in the first place.
But it also makes them hard to address in drama, because anything can happen, and therefore how does anything matter? The rules of the world were designed to impose limits. The key thing for that, in my head, was to make it the story of a con – as soon as you take on the idea of trying to fool somebody, and creating a reality for somebody else, naturally the team have to adhere to certain rules within the dream to avoid fracturing the reality of it.
There were some incredibly intricate action sequences in Inception – which was the most challenging?
CN: What turned out to really be the hardest were the scenes scripted in heavy rain, which had to be shot in the middle of the summer in LA. And we didn’t want to do the effect digitally, so we had to put rain towers on tops of buildings, and deal with those situations that we’d imposed on ourselves. It makes everything very, very tricky, just in terms of the equipment and keeping people dry.
Can you have imagine that we’ll ever have the technology to access another person’s dream?
CN: I don’t think we will, no. While I enjoyed playing with the idea for the story, I came away with the realisation that the fact our dreams are private is very important. I came away feeling like our minds aren’t understood fully by science, and that kind of technology just couldn’t happen.
After the success of The Dark Knight, how did you go about selling Inception to the studio system?
CN: Well, having had the success of The Dark Knight, which we were very happy and surprised by, frankly, it made it much easier for us to go to the studio and get the backing. But at the same time I have to acknowledge that we approached them nine years ago with this idea and they were up for it, and it was actually me that decided to wait until I felt ready. So really a lot of things fell into place, including me growing in to the film, in a sense.
Inception is out in cinemas from 16 July
Inception: International Featurette
Posted By Marcie on July 19th, 2010
Go here to see the video. This one did not have an embed code.
INTERVIEW: Leonardo Dicaprio Talks To GMTV Ahead Of ‘Inception’s’ Release…
Posted By Taly on July 14th, 2010
Friday, 9 July 2010INTERVIEW: Leonardo Dicaprio Talks To GMTV Ahead Of ‘Inception’s’ Release…
INTERVIEW: Leonardo Dicaprio Talks To GMTV Ahead Of Inception’s Release…
Oh, dear GOD we don’t think we can wait anymore.
We have been waiting for this movie for over a year and a half, ever since Christopher Nolan announced that his next project wouldn’t be a Batman one, but another, secret, one.
Then we heard about Inception.
Then we saw the trailer.
And now we are less than a week away from its release..
*SCREAMS*
Inception: Christopher Nolan and cast UK press conference
Posted By Taly on July 11th, 2010
Inception: Christopher Nolan and cast UK press conference
Ryan Lambie
The post-conversion process can be done very effectively, actually – we did tests for this film, but decided we didn’t have enough time to get it to the standard that we wanted.Director Christopher Nolan and stars discuss the forthcoming Inception – including the post-production 3D tests the director undertook with the film…
Published on Jul 7, 2010
The improbably bejewelled opulence of the Dorchester Hotel was the venue for an Inception press conference, where director Christopher Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt discussed the making of the film…
Can you talk about your initial inspiration behind Inception, and how it developed the movie it is today?
Christopher Nolan: I’d always wanted to make a film that addressed dreams, and do something set in that world. About ten years ago I focused in on the idea of a technology that might allow people to share their dreams, and the uses and abuses of that, and came up with this idea of doing a heist film set in the world of dreams where somebody could use a technology to penetrate a person’s subconscious.
The idea was always to tell a large-scale action film with an unusual twist to the world in which it takes place.
It’s an emotionally complex, complicated film. This is to the actors: when you were first approached to appear in the film, did you understand it?
Leonardo DiCaprio: It certainly took a couple of readings, but it was really the interaction with Chris, for all of us, one-on-one. It’s an idea that’s been locked in his mind for eight years now. So for me a lot of the preparation was understanding what he wanted to accomplish and achieve. And being able to sit down with him and understand that he had this concept of doing a highly entertaining Hollywood film, that is existential, cerebral, surreal, and that delves into various states of the subconscious.
Tom Hardy: Speaking to Chris was essential for the simplification of the script.
Ellen Page: When I read the script I found it incredibly awesome experience, and even with the complexity, the emotional through-line of Leo’s character and the sincerity really made me attach to it.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Normally when you read the script for a movie it’s just so predictable that you know what’s going to happen, and it doesn’t take much thought to figure anything out. And I enjoy a challenge, a little provocation and something to think about, so the first time I read [Inception], it posed a challenge, and that’s enjoyable to me, rather than something I’ve just seen before.
What’s interesting is that, seeing the final movie, so many of these ideas in the script that I had to maybe go back and figure out, when they’re visually rendered just become visceral and much more emotional.
Cillian Murphy: The movie’s so visual, when you read it on the page it’s quite difficult to get your head around. Once you understand the rules of it, they’re actually quite simple, and they’re the tools to understanding the script.
Ken Watanabe: When I read the script it was so confusing, and I had to go back again and read it three times, as the first thirty pages were just so complicated. It was when we started shooting that I realised the huge scale of the story. The amount of baggage I needed for the travelling was a lot – six countries!
The film was kept under a very mysterious, heavy veil. Why was this, and was it difficult to maintain such secrecy?
CN: It’s difficult to keep anything fresh in movies these days, with technology being what it is. People seem to know everything there is to know before you’ve even made it.
For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I’m about to see or unfold on-screen. And every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we’re able to make the film in private, so that when it’s finished it’s up to the audience to make of it what they will.
Leonardo DiCaprio, if you could, what idea would you insert into the mind of the CEO of BP?
LD: To pay back, fool! Hopefully this is a turning point for us to realise that digging for oil in the depths of the ocean is probably not the best alternative for the future, and that we need to make a transition to cleaner, greener technologies.
What were the challenges of making this movie?
CN: For me, the underlying tone of the thing is best summed up by Leo’s character saying that dreams feel real while you’re in them. So everything we did in a production sense was an attempt to try and retain a tactile sense of reality to the world of the dreams, so they felt like possible worlds even while impossible things were happening.
This creates challenges for all departments, for example, when you have a freight train barreling down the street smashing cars and things. We wanted to do these things for real, so they would feel possible to the audience and that we wouldn’t have an obviously surreal quality to things. That’s why we went to all these locations and travelled all around the world, and shot in blizzards and so forth.
Hopefully that adds up to some greater sense of reality to the world of dreams.
Emma Thomas: I think the biggest challenge of making the movie was making it in as many different places as we did. It’s hard enough making a film when you’re dealing with one country or two countries, but six was really something else.
We talked over the years about making it at earlier points as a smaller movie, but because of the subject matter, we had to do it this way to fulfil its promise.
How long do you plan to survive in the digital realm? What are your views on the development of IMAX and 3D – I understand you’re not keen on post-production 3D?
CN: I wouldn’t want to bore everyone to death on technical things – people that know me will tell you I could talk on the subject for hours.
The film was shot and cut on film in a very traditional way, simply because it’s the best way, still, to get the finest quality in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of money. So in my opinion, by far the best way to do things. Technically, it gets better and better as fewer directors use it – people in the lab give me a lot of attention now, whereas when I started out as a 16mm filmmaker struggling, it was all I could to get the labs to process your film.
So as far as future developments go, I’d love to see IMAX develop smaller and more lightweight cameras, but at the same time, the R & D costs are extensive considering how few people shoot with those cameras.
3D is something we’re looking at, but I see at the moment significant technical limitations to the presentation format, mostly with the dimness of the image and the fact that you have to wear the glasses. The post-conversion process can be done very effectively, actually – we did tests for this film, but decided we didn’t have enough time to get it to the standard that we wanted.
But it’s perfectly possible to do it, and if you acquire a high quality enough film format, you should be able to do a good conversion with enough time.
How did you find the process of creating the rules of Inception’s dream worlds, as compared to the realism of The Dark Knight?
CN: I think with every film you take on you try to establish the rules and the tone of what you’re working with. In taking on the idea of dreams, you have a burden on the rules of the film, because dreams are infinite, and have infinite potential, which is the thing that makes them fascinating in the first place.
But it also makes them hard to address in drama, because anything can happen, and therefore how does anything matter? The rules of the world were designed to impose limits. The key thing for that, in my head, was to make it the story of a con – as soon as you take on the idea of trying to fool somebody, and creating a reality for somebody else, naturally the team have to adhere to certain rules within the dream to avoid fracturing the reality of it.
There were some incredibly intricate action sequences in Inception – which was the most challenging?
CN: What turned out to really be the hardest were the scenes scripted in heavy rain, which had to be shot in the middle of the summer in LA. And we didn’t want to do the effect digitally, so we had to put rain towers on tops of buildings, and deal with those situations that we’d imposed on ourselves. It makes everything very, very tricky, just in terms of the equipment and keeping people dry.
Can you have imagine that we’ll ever have the technology to access another person’s dream?
CN: I don’t think we will, no. While I enjoyed playing with the idea for the story, I came away with the realisation that the fact our dreams are private is very important. I came away feeling like our minds aren’t understood fully by science, and that kind of technology just couldn’t happen.
After the success of The Dark Knight, how did you go about selling Inception to the studio system?
CN: Well, having had the success of The Dark Knight, which we were very happy and surprised by, frankly, it made it much easier for us to go to the studio and get the backing. But at the same time I have to acknowledge that we approached them nine years ago with this idea and they were up for it, and it was actually me that decided to wait until I felt ready. So really a lot of things fell into place, including me growing in to the film, in a sense.
Inception is out in cinemas from 16 July
OWF at the INCEPTION press conference
Posted By Taly on July 11th, 2010
It is common to be asked where you are from on entering press events. Usually you are being asked which publication or website you are representing. They take your name, check you off the list and you are free to grab a coffee and make last minute preparations for your interview. I stepped into the plush surroundings of the Dorchester Hotel (in London’s Mayfair) to attend a press conference for Christopher Nolan’s Inception (review here) and was soon asked that familiar question: “where are you from?” I gave the usual reply, “I’m from Obsessed with Film.” How naive I was. The PR lady said, “No, I meant, which country are you from?”
Yes, this press conference was a truly international affair, which is fitting as the press notes keenly stress that this is an international story, filmed on location around the globe. Journalists had come from around Europe and beyond to catch a glimpse of the film’s international cast of stars. From Japan, Academy Award nominee Ken Watanabe, from Canada came another Academy Award nominee, Ellen Page. They were joined by the Irish actor Cillian Murphy, the English Tom Hardy as well as the American duo of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Leonardo DiCaprio – who when answering one of a few token questions about the World Cup described himself as “half-German”. We were also lucky enough to be joined by a husband and wife duo: director/writer Christopher Nolan (a dual national and citizen of the world) and his producer Emma Thomas.
After everyone had entered the room to orchestrated thunderous applause, Nolan was asked about the genesis of this unique project:
“I’d always wanted to address dreams in film-making and do something set in this world – about ten years ago – and focused in on the idea of exploring a technology that allowed people to share dreams, and the uses and abuses of that, and came up with this idea of really trying to tell this story of a heist set in the world of dreams, with a technology that would allow somebody to penetrate somebody else’s subconscious. The idea was always to tell a large-scale action film with an unusual twist to the world in which it takes place.”
But what of the technical challenges involved in making the film? Emmas Thomas revealed why the movie HAD to be a big-budget affair:
“The biggest challenge was the thing of making a film in as many different places as we were making it and it’s hard enough making a film when you’re dealing with one country or two countries, but six was something else. We had talked about, at earlier points, making it as a smaller movie, but because of the subject matter of it – dreams have infinite possibility – so we had to do it this way to fulfill the promise of what the movie could be.”
But what did the actors make of the script? Did they understand it right away? “It certainly took a couple of readings,” volunteered DiCaprio, “but it really was the interaction with Chris, I think for all of us, one-on-one”:
“For me a lot of the preparation, a lot of the understanding of what he was trying to accomplish and achieve was being able to sit down with him and understand that he had this extremely ambitious concept of doing a highly entertaining Hollywood film which is existential and cerebral and surreal, that delves into various states of the subconscious and the way he wanted to put that on screen involved us really talking with him at great length to truly understand his concepts.”
DiCaprio’s co-star, Tom “Bronson” Hardy, revealed that he modeled his performance on Nolan:
“I found myself speaking in Chris’ cadence a lot on set with Chris, I don’t know if he’s noticed that, but I sort copied things he’d say… and his mannerisms on set as much as possible… it meant I didn’t have to think too much I could practically apply this this on the floor.”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t have let that out!” said Hardy, who plays “The Forger” Eames in the film. He also agreed with his DiCaprio, adding “it was was essential to speak to Chris for the vision and to fit in and be part of the ensemble.” Indeed, like Nolan’s previous films, Inception does boast quite an impressive cast and the actors absent from the press event are just as impressive as those present and include Dileep Rao, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite, all of whom add considerable weight to their respective roles with relatively little screen time between them (especially the latter two who are barely seen).
Amongst these players, Inception finds Nolan reunited with three actors from the Batman franchise, and the two present were asked what attracted them to working with the director again. Ken Watanabe was glad to have a more substantial role in this film, saying:
“When I worked before on Batman Begins it was a really short time, something like ten days… but by this time he is one of the biggest young… young? [looks at Chris and laughs]… directors and so I had no reason to decline!”
Cillian Murphy had more to add, enthusiastically praising the man for whom he played, Batman villain, the Scarecrow back in 2005 (and again in a 2008 cameo) and leaving us in doubt as to how Nolan could get such an ensemble together:
“If you asked any actor working today “would you be in a Chris Nolan film?” they’d just drop everything and go for it right away… he has so many talents wrapped up in one, to be able to do movies of this scale that have that emotion and to be such a brilliant writer. The thing about working on Chris’ sets is they feel really intimate it doesn’t feel like a huge movie and you feel secure and safe and able to experiment. He really makes time for the performers. He allows you to find stuff and to grow the scene organically and there couldn’t be a more conducive set to trying to do your best work.”
It was important for Nolan to get such a gifted bunch of actors in, as it was essential that Inception be a human story as well as a visual effects extravaganza. Ellen Page found reading the script “an incredibly immersive experience” saying that, “even with the complexity the emotional through-line of Leo’s character and Marion’s character and the sincerity and the honest base of everything really made me attach.” For all the complexity of the ideas in Nolan’s script, Joseph Gordon-Levitt says that in the final film “so many of these idea which, when reading them in the script I maybe had to go back and figure them out, when they are visually rendered just become visceral and much more emotional.”
A few on the panel were, perhaps understandably, bored after a morning of such events. Especially Tom Hardy who hardly seemed to be awake at times and had to be encouraged to contribute by the host (“what was the question? Sorry, I was dreaming then”). The exceptions were DiCaprio and Watanabe. DiCaprio spoke at length, treated every question with respect and would come forward to fill any silences left by his co-stars, always speaking intelligently, even when asked a series of vague questions about dreams:
“I actually tried to take a very traditional approach to researching this film and read the analysis of dreams immediately and tried to pick apart the psychology of what things represented in the dreamworld. But I quickly realised that this was a whole new type of preparation and that, like I said, meant basically talking with Chris at great length about this cathartic therapy session my character goes on, the psychoanalysis – Ellen’s character is like my therapist in this movie. In doing that we created this really powerful emotional journey. As far as the dreams… how Chris was going make four different states of the human subconscious interact with each other in a cohesive plot structure, I left entirely up to him and did not want to get involved, because he is obviously very capable at pulling off complex narratives like this and making them emotionally engaging for an audience, so it’s reassuring as an actor that you’re working with someone who has a great track record for stuff like that.”
Watanabe was charismatic and very funny throughout and often had everybody laughing when he spoke, whether he was pretending not to have understood the script or playfully bemoaning all the travel involved in shooting in six different countries. He was also one of a number of the panelists to praise Nolan’s method for shooting action sequences: “Chris doesn’t want to use a green screen and he built whole sets… I was always surprised on the set.”
There is, of course, a lot of CGI in the film but where possible practical effects were used, improving the action scenes, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt explained:
“[Nolan] had built these enormous contraptions and various devices and techniques, the floor really was spinning out from under my feet and I really was ten stories up in the air with nothing beneath me and I think that makes the scenes more compelling… I think those sequences look really different than your average digitally created action scene and I think that’s why they are so good to watch.”
Nolan was asked some of the most interesting questions and responded by giving some of the most interesting answers. When quizzed about the tight veil of secrecy which was drawn over the film during its production, he had this to say:
“It’s difficult to keep anything fresh for an audience these days, with technology being what it is people seem to know everything about before we’ve even made it. For me, as a film-goer, I like nothing more than to sit in a cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I’m about to see and every time we go to make a film we do everything we can to just systematize things so we’re able to make the film in private. Once it’s finished it is for the audience to make of it what they will.”
He was also asked about the similarities between creating dreams and creating motion pictures:
“From my point of view as a director, now that I look at Inception as a finished film it is probably as close as I want to get to making a film about film-making… when I watch the scenes in the film where these guys – this team – are putting the plan together it reminds me very much of a lot of the processes we go through in film-making.”
And the film-maker, who prefers shooting on film, also gave his thoughts on the newer technologies, including one of the more positive and balanced assessments of the much derided post conversion process which turns 2D movies into 3D in post production:
I wouldn’t want to bore everyone to death, but people who know me know I could speak about this for hours passionately. The bottom line is, we made the film in a traditional way so we shot on film, we cut the negative, we photochemically timed the film. The reason I do that is it’s the best way still to get the highest quality in the shortest amount of time for the least amount of money, so it’s in my opinion by far the best way of doing things technically and it gets better and better as fewer and fewer people do it because you go to the lab and they give you a lot of attention now… As far as future developments… I’d love to see IMAX develop smaller more lightweight cameras, but at the same time the R&D costs are extensive considering how few people shoot with those cameras. 3D is something I’m looking at, but I see at the moment significant technical limitations to the presentation format: mostly the dimness of the image and the fact you have wear the glasses. The post-conversion process can be done very effectively actually, we did tests on it for this film, decided we didn’t have time to get it to the standard we wanted, but it’s perfectly possible to do it if you’re acquiring a high quality film format you should be able to do a high quality conversion with enough time.”
There were also a few cringey and uncomfortable questions, such as when DiCaprio was asked what idea he would plant in the mind of the head of BP if he had the chance: “To pay back fool!”, said the star before making an earnest go of speaking broadly on the subject of deep-sea drilling and of his concerns on our dependency on oil. These kinds of political messages are often derided when they come from Hollywood’s “self-important” stars, but it is worth remembering that they are usually answering a question rather than making an announcement (although that is how it is reported). A similar line of questioning fell to Ellen Page, who also tried her best to answer without sounding pompous. The question shouldn’t be “why do these stars give us their opinions?” But “why are journalists asking them these questions?” Of the more constructive (and film related) answers to environmental questions, Page recommended the animal cruelty documentary Earthlings, visibly shaken when talking about it, she said it was one of the most important and disturbing films she had ever seen.
If you are not looking to be disturbed by an unsettling documentary, but what to be entertained, amused and excited, you could do much worse than to check out Inception when it is released in the UK on Friday the 16th of July. The Full OWF review is here.
source: http://www.obsessedwithfilm.com/specials/owf-at-the-inception-press-conference.php#ixzz0tNvjDEPN
Inception is DiCaprio’s dream ticket
Posted By Taly on July 4th, 2010
Audiences will have to pay attention whilst watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s latest feature and not just to the US heartthrob.
The actor admits the plot for Inception, which centres on dreams, may be hard to follow.
“This is a very complex film. It’s very ambitious. It’s high concept. It’s cerebral. It’s existential at times. It’s completely insane,” said Leonardo, 35.
Written and directed by Batman filmmaker Christopher Nolan, it sees Leo playing Dom Cobb, a man who steals valuable secrets from people while they are dreaming.
“It really took me months to sort of tap into Chris Nolan’s mind and really understand what he was trying to accomplish and where my character would fit in within this Rubik’s cube,” he added.
The movie also stars Oscar winner Marion Cotillard and Ellen Page. Inception is released in the UK on July 16.
WonderCon audience gets an ‘Inception’ tease
Posted By Taly on July 4th, 2010
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‘Inception’
Credit: Warner BrothersThe early trailers have offered very narrative few hints, but a big crowd at San Francisco’s WonderCon now knows exactly what Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is about.
Oh, I kid. The extended clip package introduced by Nolan himself on Saturday (April 3) afternoon certainly provided more intellectual meat for viewers to gnaw on, but if you asked me to explain the plot of “Inception” to you, I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start.
[But I'll try to give a flavor for the clips after the break, plus a little background courtesy of Nolan's Q&A after the clips. Not that during the Q&A, Nolan didn't get a single question about possible franchise pics involving "Batman" or "Superman."]
I guess I’d begin the way Nolan does, when he told the audience that, sci fi trappings aside, “‘Inception’ really in some ways is a heist movie.”
In the clips, we finally heard Leonardo DiCaprio’s character describe himself as being in the business of “subconscious security.” The plot seems to involve people who create dreams for other people and then, when they’re in those dreams, they tape into their subconscious and steal their ideas, their intellectual property. One character in the teaser was described as “a thought extractor.”
“I’ve always been fascinated by dreams, really by the idea that when you think about what a dream is, what the mind is doing during a dream, the mind is creating a world and perceiving it almost simultaneously.”
It’s high-minded stuff and it’s stuff which, I suspect, is likely to enthrall some viewers and alienate others. While “Inception” is opening in a prime summertime spot, it’s a movie which couldn’t have been made, much less released, if “The Dark Knight” hadn’t made a billion dollars worldwide.
As Emma Thomas, Nolan’s wife and production partner put it, “It’s a much more personal film. That doesn’t have to mean that it’s small. It’s actually ginormous.”
Indeed, the sizzle reel included the now familiar image of a city folding in on itself, as well as mountain climbing, skiing, underwater footage, gunplay and explosions. And visually, it’s stunning. Cinematographer Wally Pfister has earned Oscar nominations for his past three collaborations with Nolan and based on the lighting and surfaces in some of the possibly-dream-sequences, I’m ready predict another Oscar nod.
Plus, the movie is star-studded. Trailers have concentrated on DiCaprio so far, but the sizzle reel contained lots of Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt with a gun, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard. Nobody looked out of place, including Page whose comically undersized stature next to DiCaprio caused some online fans to mock early stills from the set.
Of Cotillard’s character, Nolan would only say, “I think she plays an extremely, I would say ‘complicated,’ individual.”
What else did we learn?
“Inception” shot in six countries and while it was mostly filmed in 35 mm, some scenes were shot in 65 mm as well. None of it was shot using IMAX cameras because, as Nolan put it, “We had a camera man go skiing down the side of a camera. Even I wouldn’t ask somebody to do that with an IMAX camera.” The movie will still be retrofitted for IMAX showings, but as of now it doesn’t seem as if a 3-D version is in the cards, although Nolan acknowledged that some of the movie’s imagery would be well-suited for 3-D.
Nolan said that most of the effects were either done practically or included at least some in-camera component. He mentioned “2001″ as one inspiration, especially for some scenes with Levitt in which some of the sets “change their attitude.”
I didn’t have any major doubts before seeing the longer clips. I like Nolan’s work quite a bit and I have more faith in his ability to deliver this sort of subconscious mind-bender than, say, the Wachowski Brothers after the first “Matrix” movie. Having seen the clips, I’m even more excited. It looks like it might be the most mind-bending James Bond thriller ever. Or, at the very least, I think it might be worth catching on opening night to check out the confused teens at the multiplex try to explain it to their friends.
