Shooting the Dark Knight With Little CGI and Massive Film Stock [Movies]

Wired recently published an excellent article on the Dark Knight (Batman Begins 2). It's a must-read for anyone who's a fan of Batman, the film's director, Christopher Nolan, or just doing things the old fashioned way. 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.

But one thing I wanted to highlight was a particularly interesting segment from Wally Pfister, the film's director of photography. He explains the relevance of using huge Imax film stock in the days of 1080p televisions and digital compression.

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 theater. And you definitely can't see it on a plasma screen at home.

Only a handful of the Dark Knight's scenes were shot with Imax film and cameras, but I'm looking forward to them all the same.

Now read it all over at Wired. Or I swear I'll blockquote the whole thing. [Wired]