Christopher Nolan was in attendance at this year’s CinemaCon at a special luncheon in his honor and he took to the mic to speak briefly about cinema as well as his upcoming movie, Interstellar, which chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
As for any additional plot details, Nolan only said it was “about wormhole travel to other places you couldn’t reach through travel through space” while also saying it will be tonally different from his other films and that theoretical physicist Kip Thorne has been heavily involved in the project and “an incredible ally” from the start.
Featuring a massive cast that includes, just to name a few, Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine and Casey Affleck, Nolan also spoke of his want to avoid CGI effects, which resulted in real set pieces, on location and closed sets, which aided the actors’ performances:
One thing I am happy to talk about briefly, we have spaceship interiors in the film. We wanted to have the real environments the actors were going to be seeing out the windows. We built closed sets of the scale that this ships would be at, we put the reality outside for the actors so we could shoot it like a documentary, like you were really there. I think it paid huge dividends for the actors in terms of performance and being able to understand what we were doing.
When it comes to his decision to stick with shooting on film and not in 3D he said, “Film is the best way to capture an image and project that image. It just is, hands down.” Nolan also added, “That’s based on my assessment of what I’m seeing as a filmmaker… As far as innovation and experimentation, I’m in favor any any technological innovation but it will always have to exceed what came before. None of the new technologies have done that.”
Interstellar will not be presented in 3D, which Nolan says is a decision he made “purely based on what I feel is right for the films I want to make” and “[j]ust as stadium seating isn’t the best thing for a comedy, 3D isn’t the best for a shared audience.” However, plenty of the picture was shot on IMAX, more than any of his previous films, notably The Dark Knight and Inception:
We shot quite a lot of the film in IMAX, more than we had ever done in the past. There will be some really beautiful IMAX film prints that will be in certain key locations. And we are really maximizing the various technical capabilities out there, particularly in the sound mix. We have very ambitious plans in how we are going to take a very big approach as to how we maximize the potential of the existing sound system in theatres.
Really what we are attempting to do is give audiences a better experience, an immersive experience. We are looking to theatre owners to really transport us and give us the best they can in how we get that out to the public. As they say, the projectionist has the final cut. I really think on this film the technical aspect of how this film is presented is really going to be more important than on any film I’ve done before, so that means getting into partnership with the studios and theatres.
In the variety of coverage from the event (all linked below) Nolan also talks about casting McConaughey — “I needed someone who is very much an everyman”, he refers to Michael Caine as his “lucky charm”, says he won’t say he’ll never do television but that he just really likes movies.
All that said, here’s the trailer for Interstellar, which hits theaters on November 7. You more excited now than you were before? [Variety, THR, The Wrap, Yahoo, Deadline and Badass Digest]
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