Nolan. A name that is familiar to everybody who has been following cinema in the 21st century. His name has, for better or worse, become synonymous with the intelligent blockbuster.
Nolanesque gets thrown around every single time a big budget movie carries any sort of thematic weight. When Man of Steel came out, people said it was like a Nolan movie. When Lucy came out, the fans said it had the intelligence of a Nolan blockbuster.
But Christopher Nolan, like any filmmaker, didn’t begin with Batman. His first feature was one of the greatest micro-budget films of all time:
Following.
This movie, made for the minuscule sum of 6,000 dollars, allowed for Nolan to get funding for Memento, the film that would catapult him to Hollywood royalty.
The hoops he had to jump through to get this first feature made is nothing but extraordinary.
The most obvious problem was the entire cast and crew (Including Nolan) had day jobs. They were only able to film on weekends as everybody had work.
He also wasn’t able to buy much lighting equipment, the film almost exclusively uses natural light.
Also, in service of the tiny budget, each scene was rehearsed to oblivion before being shot. Nolan couldn’t afford to do more than two takes as he was paying for 16mm film stock out of his salary.
Due to this intense rehearsal process, he was only able to shoot about 15 minutes a day.
Shooting ran about a year.
With all these limitations, it is amazing the film is so good. Sure, you can feel its lack of production value, but that doesn’t change the intelligent cinematography, enjoyable characters, and tense, nonlinear film-noir story.
It’s critical success at TIFF allowed it to be distributed by Momentum Pictures and paved the path for Nolan’s future two film deal that would allow him to make Memento and Insomnia.
The Inception of Christopher Nolan’s Prestigious, Stellar Career shows that with enough talent and perseverance anything is possible.
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