- I'm a self-taught filmmaker,
I never went to film school,
I never studied filmmaking in any way.
I am a big believer in being
sincere about your passion for something.
Pretty much every film I've ever worked on at every scale
has had massive stakes to it, one way or another.
All filmmaking is intelligent compromise,
that's the whole process we go through.
I grew up loving Hollywood blockbusters,
and for me it's really a process
of trying to recreate that magic.
It's most important to just throw yourself into
putting everything into the project you're working on.
- He's an English-American film director,
screenwriter and producer.
- He's one of the highest-grossing directors in history,
and among the most successful filmmakers
of the 21st century.
- His nine films have grossed over $4.2 billion worldwide.
- He's Christopher Nolan, and here's my take
on his top 10 rules for success.
(whoosh)
- I'm a self-taught filmmaker,
I never went to film school,
I never studied filmmaking in any way.
I started making films when I was a kid,
when I was, I think, seven years old,
making films using my dad's Super 8 camera
and little action figures,
doing stop-motion films, a little bit of animation,
and a certain amount of live action,
and I just carried on making films as I grew up.
And over the years they got bigger, hopefully better,
but more elaborate.
And there never really was a period in my life
where I completely stopped doing it.
So I was always moving up,
eventually from Super 8 to 16mm films.
And I think what Following represents
is kind of the peak of what I was able to do on my own
or just with friends,
just using our own resources and borrowing equipment
and sort of using the things around us to make a film.
I am a big believer in being
sincere about your passion for something.
And I do love all types of cinema.
But at the same time, when I come in to do a project
I never want to be doing a project to,
just, for example, to show versatility.
I wouldn't do a project for that reason.
So I think all the films I've made,
I'd like to think that they're connected in certain ways
but that they're also different from each other.
That's as best as I can put it.
So I'd like to continue working along those lines,
really with a view, first and foremost,
to being sincere in my passion for the project,
because each film you take on,
whatever scale it's played out at,
it's a couple of years of my life, sometimes more,
so you really want to be passionate
about what it is that you're doing.
- Do you ever come up with ideas
when you're writing a script
that even scare you,
in terms of not being able to pull it off?
- Yeah, I mean really that's the challenge.
As a writer, I try and take my director's hat off
and not be afraid and just say,
"I want to write the most exciting thing,
"the most unexpected thing I can think of for the story."
And then I pick up the script again,
put the director's hat back on and go,
"Okay, how the hell am I going to do that?"
And that's when you know you're in a good place
because every film you want to be challenging yourself,
you want to do something different.
What we were able to do was look back,
and this is something I like doing,
is sort of looking back
at the great achievements of the past
and avail ourselves of those techniques.
So miniature work, motion control,
things like that that they pioneered,
but then combining that with today's technology
which allows you to composite things in a particular way,
use CG in a particular way
to enhance those types of effects.
So we really tried to build on what's been done before,
but add our own techniques to it.
There are quite a few things in the film
that have never been done before
and may never be done again, I don't know.
But certainly mixing and varying our techniques
using some old, some new
I think helps really disguise
the trickery involved in the film,
because obviously it's all artificial at the end of the day.
But it felt real to us making it,
and hopefully it feels real to the audience watching it.
What inspires me?
More and more, real life inspire me,
but what inspired me to begin with
is just as some of you here are,
just a huge film fan.
The films of, I would say primarily Ridley Scott,
Blade Runner was an enormous influence on me
(audience clapping) and carrying that
into every film I make somehow.
Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick, Nicholas Roeg,
just the extraordinary work
of the body of great directors, I think primarily,
and I know that almost anybody who's sat here today
will have talked about seeing Star Wars for the first time,
because for my generation that truly was a watershed moment
and something that fed my initial enthusiasm
for making films and it's stuck with me.
But I think that as I get older
and as I've had the opportunity to make more films,
which I feel very grateful for,
more and more I find that real life
and my life inspires me more
and I try to work that more into
the material I'm working on.
It's funny, there is massive pressure
on a smaller film as well.
Pretty much every film I've ever worked on at every scale
has had massive stakes to it, one way or another.
I think for me,
I don't think very well in terms of scale.
It's all about
is there a story, a set of characters that interest me.
I think the process has been really the same process
on every film I've done.
I'd always liked film noir, crime fiction
as a way of extrapolating your own life,
your own neurosis or whatever,
and making it accessible,
making it something that people could care about.
And I really gravitated towards that genre,
and still do, frankly.
But very much at the time
I felt very young and very inexperienced,
and I felt that my own life
and the things I saw in the world
were not going to be of interest to people.
But they felt interesting to me,
and so I was looking for a language,
I was looking for a genre
in which I could take things that I was interested in
and make them accessible,
make them interesting to other people,
and I think that the crime genre, the film noir genre,
I think that's the way it works.
Its characters are defined through action and double-cross,
things they're doing to each other,
your particular fears about whatever it is,
your life, your relationships, whatever those things are,
the best film noir has always been very firmly founded
on those relatable fears
taken into the realm of,
I mean I suppose you could call it melodrama
or heightened reality or whatever it is.
And I felt, as a young filmmaker starting out
and trying to do something with very little resources,
I felt much more comfortable
working in the area of heightened reality of a crime story.
It's like, because all filmmaking is intelligent compromise.
That's the whole process we go through.
You never have enough.
I mean, Colin will be able to vouch for this,
no matter what your budget is,
you never have enough time, you never have enough money.
It's weird, when you're doing a huge film,
you're in the same position you were
when you were doing a tiny film.
And there's a good reason for that.
You're always trying to get as much on screen
as you possibly can.
And so whatever the box that's built for you
by the economics of the project,
you're always trying to push up against those walls.
And so you need help from your team
in terms of how you arrange things
and how you make that work.
I've been very fortunate
with the breadth of the audience we've managed to get
for some of our films.
Ultimately really all I can say to that was
I try not to separate the two things.
I try not to separate
my love for very sophisticated, esoteric filmmakers,
people I grew up watching like Nicholas Roeg
whose films I love,
I try not to separate that side of myself
from the side that grew up watching Star Wars and James Bond
and loving that.
You try to pitch the film
in the language that you think it should be made in.
You try and think of
what's the breadth of the audience
you're making the film for.
But I don't think that needs to involve dumbing it down
or selling it out in any way,
because I grew up loving Hollywood blockbusters
and for me it's really a process
of trying to recreate that magic,
that sense of scale, that sense of immersion in a world
that you grew up with.
If you can bring that to filmmaking
I think you have the potential to reach a wider audience.
With all the films I've made I felt that,
really trying to compliment the audience's intelligence,
trying to engage the audience
with something that's new or different
can pay great dividends.
It wasn't conscious on my part
to have another script ready to go
by the time we went to film festivals with Following.
While we were finishing up the cut on it
and doing very long, slow technical finishing,
which when you have no money takes forever
cuz you're sort of waiting for the lab
to run the (mumbles) whatever it is,
in that time, I was putting together the script for Memento
and so also in the time it took
to get Following noticed on the festival circuit
and sort of get out there,
I had actually finished the script.
And in retrospect, it was a massive advantage
because I was able to say,
"Okay, you liked that film,
"this is what I want to do next."
Because in your best-case scenario
of what can happen to you with putting a film out there
and getting distribution, for example,
you're then asked the question,
"Okay, what do you want to do next?"
And if you have an answer,
you can use that very short window of interest
that you get from people in what you've done.
But I will say that I think that was purely an accident,
and I think that if you were to try and
plan to write another script
while you were finishing a film,
you really risk taking your focus off
the project that you're doing.
And I think that it's most important
to just throw yourself into
putting everything into the project you're working on.
And that's something I've always done since.
If you can then,
cuz quite often there is a period
between finishing a project and actually people seeing it
or actually people responding to it,
if you can try and,
instead of going on holiday for six months,
use that period to try and figure out
what you would do next if somebody gave you the opportunity,
then you're going to give yourself a huge advantage.
(whoosh)
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
- We made this video because Tim Thompson asked us to.
If you'd like us to profile another entrepreneur,
leave a comment below.
- I'd also love to know which of the top 10 rules
had the biggest impact on you and why.
Leave in the comments below
and we'll join in the discussion.
Thank you again for watching,
continue to believe,
and we'll see you soon.
(whoosh)
- I enjoy the multifaceted nature of the challenge.
I enjoy having to be an expert on a lot of different things,
or having to pretend to be an expert
on a lot of different things.
One of the things I love about directing
is you don't specialize.
You have to be able to really think of
all the different aspects of film at the same time.
It's also important to surround yourself
with collaborators who can take the pressure off
certain aspects of it,
and casting's a huge part of that, finding actors.
Some of the great actors I've worked with
on the Dark Knight trilogy, for example,
they would recognize that
yes we're also having to worry about flipping this truck
or blowing this building up, whatever,
and so their process would be balanced against that.
And working with very generous performers
was a big part of that.
So I really do enjoy the challenge
of putting together a lot of different aspects
of one project
and trying to be in control of that.
It's a really fun thing.