Speaker 1: You're listening to playback a Variety podcast. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Variety Awards editor Chris Tappy. They had a screening last night.
Speaker 1: I was gonna try to make it, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to Imax screening. I do want to never do cure.
Speaker 1: I want to see it again in Imax before at
Speaker 1: some point hopefully maybe it'll maybe do a couple of
Speaker 1: more think of whatever, like re release or anything like that,
Speaker 1: or well they are we act sure already did an
Speaker 1: Imax re release. Um, but every now and again we
Speaker 1: can gonna play the Imax Prince on their old films. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like they could do a film film like
Speaker 1: an Imax Film Festival if they wanted to. Just like, well,
Speaker 1: if I keep films about yeah, all right, if I
Speaker 1: should be good there for you, you just get a
Speaker 1: level real fast. Yeah, so I'll be talking about like this.
Speaker 1: That's perfect, perfect though. And also I've got all my
Speaker 1: contraptions around. These are my questions. That's in the sit
Speaker 1: in front of me and a backup recorder, so we're
Speaker 1: covered on everything, hopeful on what well. I'm here today
Speaker 1: with the writer and director and producer of Dunn Kirk
Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan, the Oscar nominated director of Dunkirk. I should
Speaker 1: say thank you for doing my show, sir. I'm really apreciure.
Speaker 1: Let me start there. Actually, I'll go ahead and speak
Speaker 1: for myself, and I think a number of people that
Speaker 1: think that that particular recognition Best Director from the Academy
Speaker 1: has been a long time coming for you. So I
Speaker 1: just want to know what what did it feel like
Speaker 1: to finally get that particular slice of recognition from your peers. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's terrific. I mean, the recognition of your
Speaker 1: peers is the thing. And I've been fortunate in the
Speaker 1: past to have had you know, d g A nominations,
Speaker 1: which obviously always means a lot to me. But to
Speaker 1: get an Oscar nomination, I mean, you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up watching the Oscars on TV and grew up with
Speaker 1: the idea of that as being, you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of ultimate ultimate award in the in the filmmaking world.
Speaker 1: So it's it's really thrilling to be nominated. That actually
Speaker 1: brings a weird question. What was the first asker ceremony
Speaker 1: you remember? Watching? Wow? Gosh? I mean, I certainly remember
Speaker 1: once from the late seventies, there were different then the
Speaker 1: way they put on the show and whatnot. It's much
Speaker 1: different product now somewhat, but I mean there's still a
Speaker 1: great sense of occasion, and I think there's there's more
Speaker 1: than most things on TV or most things and studdy,
Speaker 1: there's there's quite a continuity actually with the history of movies,
Speaker 1: and I think that's it was fun when the you know,
Speaker 1: when they take that into account and they deal with
Speaker 1: the history of movies as they often do, and I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the reasons why it maintains a state.
Speaker 1: It's just such an honor for anybody involved with films
Speaker 1: because there is this sense of the people who have
Speaker 1: come before you. Yeah. Absolutely, well, congratulations on the success.
Speaker 1: There eight nominations. I believe this is your best film personally.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great culmination of everything that you've
Speaker 1: shown yourself capable of. I would love to start by
Speaker 1: talking about structure, because that's certainly the forefront when when
Speaker 1: you think about this film. Uh. One of William Goldman books,
Speaker 1: he was talking about like a remake of Grand Hotel
Speaker 1: he was going to work on, and before he sat
Speaker 1: down to write it, he kind of just sketched out
Speaker 1: just with lines representing each character, like this character will
Speaker 1: come in here and we'll be done with the character. There.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of characters and narrative threads. So he
Speaker 1: just wanted to kind of visually see what would the
Speaker 1: structure be like. And I was just curious if you
Speaker 1: did anything like that, any kind of a visual aid
Speaker 1: to to kind of help you visualize the structure of Dunker.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't have a ton of threads, but
Speaker 1: you've got three that are on different temporal planes, so
Speaker 1: certainly there's complexity there. Now. I do a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of diagrams this film, in particular, with with
Speaker 1: the different time scales that the three timelines are running at. UM,
Speaker 1: I needed to know how they would interact, how they
Speaker 1: would intersect. And I think with every project, and this
Speaker 1: one in particular, I'm always struggling to find tools for visualization. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of elusive that the screenplay format
Speaker 1: itself is pretty inadequate in a lot of ways for
Speaker 1: showing you what a finished film is going to be,
Speaker 1: or allowing you to step outside the story as a
Speaker 1: creator and sort of see how the pieces fit together. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's the best best with God in terms of
Speaker 1: how you move forward. Now you you step onto the
Speaker 1: floor to make a film, and I enjoy that format
Speaker 1: very much, But before I actually write screenplay, I do
Speaker 1: tend to look at other methods, various forms of notation,
Speaker 1: diagrams that explore the geometry of the story. I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in the geometry of stories and shape of them
Speaker 1: in different ways, um as you say, how characters come
Speaker 1: in and out, you know, and all the rest, and
Speaker 1: how the various elements of the structure will guide the
Speaker 1: audience through a set of events. And with dun Kirk,
Speaker 1: it was the first time I was dealing with real
Speaker 1: life event, set of events, and so all the research
Speaker 1: I was able to do before writing screenplay, before figuring
Speaker 1: out how to tell the story, it gives you the world,
Speaker 1: It gives you all the big geographical movements that you're
Speaker 1: going to want to deal with, and and so plotting
Speaker 1: the course through that became very much questioned point of view,
Speaker 1: very much question of structure, And so those kind of
Speaker 1: diagrams and the kind of explorations of how would a
Speaker 1: screenplay fit together actually assumed even more importance than they
Speaker 1: normally do. With why my work well, which you know,
Speaker 1: as you said, it's a very wilful structure. It's not
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you just stumble on and editing.
Speaker 1: So due to that, I feel like personally, your work
Speaker 1: as a writer on this particular project has kind of
Speaker 1: gotten some short short shrift because this was meticulously calculated
Speaker 1: on the page. Ultimately well it was. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the screenplay hasn't had short shrift in the sense
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have responded very well to
Speaker 1: the film and come to see the film, and it's
Speaker 1: the screenplay that allows that to happen. So in the
Speaker 1: in the larger scheme of things, I think it's been
Speaker 1: recognized and it has paid off in ways that are
Speaker 1: very important. Um. The reality of how people tend to
Speaker 1: think of screenplays is something I've rubbed up against different
Speaker 1: projects over the years, because everybody tends to read screenplays
Speaker 1: the same way they tend to just read the dialogue.
Speaker 1: And I was a script reader for my first year
Speaker 1: when I when I moved to Hollywood, and I, like
Speaker 1: everybody else, tended to just read the dialogue, and you
Speaker 1: you get, you get sort of lazy in that regard.
Speaker 1: The screenplays I've written have always depended as much on
Speaker 1: the stage of directions as the dialogue, and that's always
Speaker 1: been something of a source of frustration for me, and
Speaker 1: it sort of showing people screenplayers and trying to get
Speaker 1: them to sort of visualize what the film could be.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing reading about something that Stanley Cuba could
Speaker 1: experiment with over the years, of shifting the layout of
Speaker 1: the screenplay format so that the dialogue would go wider
Speaker 1: in the stage directions would be narrower, you know, different
Speaker 1: ways of getting people look at differently on the page.
Speaker 1: But I don't think he ever came up with anything
Speaker 1: that was better than the conventional screenplay format, and I
Speaker 1: think it is the best. It's the best tool we have,
Speaker 1: but you are reliant on people really taking a bit
Speaker 1: of extra care and attention to really pause the stage
Speaker 1: directions as well as a dialogue. Dunkirk, that was that
Speaker 1: was very much the case because I was interested in
Speaker 1: telling a primarily visual story. Everything had to be scripted
Speaker 1: and written up very carefully, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: carry the ideas through through dialogue primarily. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of film school. I think that that in film school,
Speaker 1: they're kind of just teaching you how to write scripts
Speaker 1: that can sell essentially, so they're telling you, you know,
Speaker 1: make sure there's a lot of white space, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of dialogue, keep your your your action to
Speaker 1: like three lines, and then move to another graph just well.
Speaker 1: And you write different screenplays for the same film, almost
Speaker 1: depending on what stage you're at. And screenplays are written
Speaker 1: to sell sometimes or they are written to attract actors
Speaker 1: or you know, find a place in the marketplace. I'm
Speaker 1: very fortunate with the success I've had that I'm able
Speaker 1: to write the screenplays for me as a director. So
Speaker 1: I'm as a writer who communicating myself as a director,
Speaker 1: and so I can try and hone a very pure
Speaker 1: approach where you don't write anything in the screenplay that
Speaker 1: you don't know how to communicate to an audience visually
Speaker 1: or cinematically, i should say. And so I'm quite you know,
Speaker 1: it could be quite disciplined about about those kind of things.
Speaker 1: And I remember when I was starting out, I got
Speaker 1: really obsessive about, you know, not naming a character until
Speaker 1: somebody actually said the name of the dialogue, which you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably taking things a bit far, but it was
Speaker 1: a useful discipline in terms of always just trying to
Speaker 1: know only what the audience is going to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that there's there's meticulous calculation in the script.
Speaker 1: Uh when action from the various thrands, are threads are
Speaker 1: gonna intersect and whatnot. I'm just curious if that's part
Speaker 1: of the fun of being a filmmaker for you, Is
Speaker 1: just this kind of precision tinkering. Yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a there's a sense of engineering about it. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun um. You're able to take advantage of
Speaker 1: the years that you have to plan and execute something
Speaker 1: that the audience will sit there for an hour and
Speaker 1: a half two hours and will flow over them in
Speaker 1: a linear way. So you have a very superior position
Speaker 1: to the audience members. You have a huge advantage, several
Speaker 1: huge advantages, and you know, utilizing those to give the
Speaker 1: audience an unexpected or slight challenging or surprising experience. It's
Speaker 1: part of the fun of it, It really is. I
Speaker 1: think like putting on a magic show. In a way,
Speaker 1: you get to be the magician. You get to plan
Speaker 1: your illusions ahead of time and then and then you
Speaker 1: get to lay them on and see the audience experienced
Speaker 1: them in real time. And that I think it has
Speaker 1: always been. It's something I've been asked about a lot,
Speaker 1: in terms of the number of layers that I try
Speaker 1: to put into the film, or certain aspects of things
Speaker 1: that are trying to get in there, where when you
Speaker 1: step back from it, you say, well, you should be
Speaker 1: doing those things, and you should be able to do
Speaker 1: those things, because I have years in which to put
Speaker 1: a film together that you're going to have two hours
Speaker 1: to watch, and so really ought to be giving you
Speaker 1: more than you can take in immediately or that you
Speaker 1: can analyze in the immediate linear moment. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: your Lanist movie, since following it kind of demanded that
Speaker 1: for what it is, this ticking clock kind of thriller.
Speaker 1: You know, as I said to you at the Governor's
Speaker 1: Awards a few months ago, I was going to lose
Speaker 1: my mind if your editor, Lee Smith was not recognized
Speaker 1: this time around. I still can't understand looking at Exception
Speaker 1: and saying no editing nomination there. But happily you're both
Speaker 1: in the mix this time around. But yeah, as I said,
Speaker 1: it's your Leanist movie. So I guess that kind of
Speaker 1: was dictated from the start, right, Like this wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be something that got big. Yeah, I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: for the screenplay. From the screenplay point of view, I
Speaker 1: wanted to it was determined to make it as short
Speaker 1: as possible and as stripped down as possible, because I
Speaker 1: knew that the imagery, the resources we were marshaling intends
Speaker 1: of what we would put in front of the camera.
Speaker 1: It would need a certain rhythm, it would need time
Speaker 1: to breathe to tell the story visually, and so I
Speaker 1: didn't want to um overburdened the running time of the script.
Speaker 1: But also everything we were doing, everything I was doing
Speaker 1: as a screenwriter and everything Lea was doing as an editor,
Speaker 1: was about suspense in the language of suspense. And I
Speaker 1: had written the screenplay and we edited the film according
Speaker 1: to this musical principle of the Shepherd term, which is
Speaker 1: a an audio illusion in music, whereby you create a
Speaker 1: piece of music that sounds like it's rising and pitched
Speaker 1: the whole time, but it never actually goes out of range,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's a sort of corkscrew effectively. And
Speaker 1: I'd use that in music and in sound effects before
Speaker 1: and when I was writing the script with it, what
Speaker 1: would be very interesting to try and apply those mathematical principles,
Speaker 1: those geometric principles to the way and which actually wrote
Speaker 1: the script. So by the time we filmed it, by
Speaker 1: the time we're in the edit suite, we have three
Speaker 1: storyline that are always continually peaking in terms of intensity
Speaker 1: or anxiety, one after the other. And that was aimed
Speaker 1: at creating a sort of tumbling forward quality to the narrative,
Speaker 1: kind of snowballing effect. And it's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I've been doing in primarily in the third acts
Speaker 1: of my longer films, and it's a form of cinematic storytelling.
Speaker 1: They're very much enjoy but it's also one that can
Speaker 1: be exhausted for an audience. And so I think Lee
Speaker 1: understood why had written the shortest script. He understood why,
Speaker 1: even though we had an amazing amount of really remarkable
Speaker 1: material and the aerial unit and stuff on the beach
Speaker 1: and on the sea, but we didn't want to exhaust
Speaker 1: the audience unnecessarily. We didn't want to push it too
Speaker 1: far in a sense, we wanted to pitch it just right.
Speaker 1: And I think Lee showed an amazing amount of well restraint, really,
Speaker 1: I suppose, in a sense of not not pushing things
Speaker 1: too far and really trying to to find exactly the
Speaker 1: right balance between you know, productive tension and exhaustion on
Speaker 1: the part of the audience. Let's talk about hoyt Van
Speaker 1: Hoytima spoken to him a number of times over the years.
Speaker 1: I have a top ten Shots of the Year column
Speaker 1: that he's like a mainstay on at this point. Uh,
Speaker 1: your previous DP was while he fister, he moved on
Speaker 1: to be a director himself. Um. But you're obviously someone
Speaker 1: who sticks with your cinematographer. So whenever you went out
Speaker 1: looking for someone on Interstellar, what was it about Hoyta
Speaker 1: that collect Why is it? Why is this the guy? Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of your choices about who
Speaker 1: to work with a very instinctive. They're about getting in
Speaker 1: the room with somebody and seeing if there's a creative
Speaker 1: spark between you. Um. You know, I'd seen the work
Speaker 1: he'd done on other films. Let the right one in
Speaker 1: in particular, made quit an impression on me. Um. But
Speaker 1: really it was about a meeting the minds creatively, just
Speaker 1: in in talking about cinematography, me and his approach to
Speaker 1: it and what I what I wanted in in terms
Speaker 1: of the photography and Interstellar, because it's more than that
Speaker 1: relationship is about more than just lighting or camera work.
Speaker 1: It's about storytelling, and you have to find somebody who
Speaker 1: will really be pulling in the same direction as you
Speaker 1: in terms of how to tell that story and what
Speaker 1: the role of the photography will be in it. And
Speaker 1: so one of the more interesting things I think about
Speaker 1: what Hoiter did in Dunkirk, which is deceptively simple, is
Speaker 1: he didn't ever want to discuss the look of the film.
Speaker 1: He didn't ever want to talk about it as any
Speaker 1: kind of stylization. He had the confidence to let it
Speaker 1: emerge from the material and what we were actually going
Speaker 1: to stage and let that define the look, which I
Speaker 1: think for for myself as a director, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of experience with large scale films, you know. I
Speaker 1: for me that wasn't maybe such a leap, but for
Speaker 1: the for a cinematographer to sort of say, we're going
Speaker 1: to put thousands of people on the beach, We're going
Speaker 1: to get these airplanes, we're gonna get these boots, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to see how that informs the creative
Speaker 1: process of the photography. Um So all of our conversations
Speaker 1: in pre production, rather than being aesthetic, they were technical.
Speaker 1: It was Okay, this is the format was shooting, this
Speaker 1: is the type of lens we need, this is how
Speaker 1: we're going to move the camera around. Um And I
Speaker 1: think that one of the things that I'm happiest about
Speaker 1: with Hoy's work on the film is the sincerity and
Speaker 1: the naturalness of the way in which he achieved these
Speaker 1: remarkable images there from the heart. I mean, they're just
Speaker 1: somebody with a brilliant eye watching what's going on in
Speaker 1: front of us and finding a way to capture that.
Speaker 1: There's no imposed style on the photography in the film,
Speaker 1: and in the case of Imax photography is what how
Speaker 1: it has done in the Imax format in this film
Speaker 1: was really unique and groundbreaking in my opinion. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's the best use of the format you've
Speaker 1: had so far. I mean, certainly, I saw one of
Speaker 1: the early screenings at the Universal City was felt like
Speaker 1: I was just falling into the screen from the opening frame. Well,
Speaker 1: we had had a bit of practice by this time,
Speaker 1: We've been doing it for ten years, and Hoyt on
Speaker 1: Interstellar finally broke that barrier that we hadn't been able
Speaker 1: to of how to hand hold the camera basically about
Speaker 1: just picking it up and toughing it. But he was
Speaker 1: able then suddenly to give me access to the Imax
Speaker 1: format as a spontaneous format, as an intimate format, and
Speaker 1: so coming to Dunkirk, where my aspiration for the film
Speaker 1: was an intimate epic, he is then able to put
Speaker 1: that lens right where the thirty five mill or go
Speaker 1: pro would be, you know, and and really give you
Speaker 1: that that intimacy with the characters, but on this incredible
Speaker 1: format that is so it's transparent in a sense, it's
Speaker 1: not stylized. It doesn't have to tell him to look.
Speaker 1: It just lets the screen disappear and immerses the audience
Speaker 1: in the action. And so I think always really trusted
Speaker 1: the format and trusted his eye to just be there,
Speaker 1: follow the characters through and find the the look of
Speaker 1: the thing that way, rather than imposing a style on it.
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's it's remarkable work that
Speaker 1: that answers my next question, which was I was curious
Speaker 1: if you guys pulled any references, if you looked at
Speaker 1: photography or any artwork, but obviously not, but in general,
Speaker 1: was that just for this movie or is that something
Speaker 1: that you're typically interested in coming into pre production? I
Speaker 1: think it depends on the on the project. I've often
Speaker 1: done films where in the case of Inception, you know,
Speaker 1: working with Whalley, with different storylines that intersect or interact,
Speaker 1: you know, there is perhaps a temptation to say, well,
Speaker 1: we could do you know, this one in this particular
Speaker 1: color or this process, or put this look to it.
Speaker 1: I've always come down on the side of naturalism, and
Speaker 1: that's why it works so well with Molly Fister, It's
Speaker 1: why I think it works so well with Hot They're
Speaker 1: naturalistic photographers. They sort of trust the material in front
Speaker 1: of them in a way, and so you trust that
Speaker 1: the reality of the physical differences of the different timelines
Speaker 1: will start to naturally achieve some kind of a look.
Speaker 1: And I've always tried to shoot on the highest quality format,
Speaker 1: the most transparent medium possible, so that you are really
Speaker 1: just giving the audience access to the look and feel
Speaker 1: of the world that you want them to respond to.
Speaker 1: The tactile quality that you want people to watch Dunkirk
Speaker 1: in such a way that they know what everything would
Speaker 1: smell like. You know that that kind of tacticality that
Speaker 1: that's very important. Did you leave any cameras, any imax
Speaker 1: cameras at the bottom of the English channel. Temporarily we
Speaker 1: fished them out again and now we did we There
Speaker 1: is a shot in the film where we when we
Speaker 1: crash landed a spitfire with an Imax camera mounted and
Speaker 1: a barrel on the side, and the things sunk much
Speaker 1: more quickly than we expected, and the housing for the camera,
Speaker 1: which we put together a bit ad hoc, it fractured
Speaker 1: and the entire camera submergen seawater for hours before we
Speaker 1: can actually get it back up. But we sent the
Speaker 1: film to the lab in Los Angeles, kept it moist
Speaker 1: in the cans, you know. We called them uposite what
Speaker 1: do we do and they told us to, you know,
Speaker 1: put some damp rags in there with it in the
Speaker 1: in the cans we sent the film, They processed it,
Speaker 1: cleaned it and processed it, and the shots in the
Speaker 1: film it came out absolute perfectly, which you can't do it.
Speaker 1: You can't do that with a digital camera. Probably couldn't
Speaker 1: have planned that either. If you, if that's what you wanted,
Speaker 1: set out to do. Um and I just saw this
Speaker 1: feature it actually it's half hour they put together that
Speaker 1: shows all of these like Imax cameras bolted onto spitfires
Speaker 1: and they just liked a lot of fun. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Yeah, it was like a lot
Speaker 1: of things in filmmaking. It was a lot of work,
Speaker 1: a lot of planning. But then you have that moment
Speaker 1: where you know, you get your first dailies of you know,
Speaker 1: Jack loud and in a plane for real flying information
Speaker 1: with spitfires, and you just think, wow, we actually managed
Speaker 1: to do that. We actually managed to get that done.
Speaker 1: And there were a lot of moments, a lot of
Speaker 1: things like that on this film. The biggest one, I
Speaker 1: think for me being standing on the beach at Dunkirk
Speaker 1: on the anniversary of the real evacuation and seeing the
Speaker 1: real little ships who'd actually been there in seeing them
Speaker 1: come back to recreate their journey for us on that anniversary.
Speaker 1: That was a really, really remarkable thing to be a
Speaker 1: part of professional connection to Dunkirk. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you that, like, is there something in your family
Speaker 1: had anything to do with the evacuation. No, I mean
Speaker 1: I had a great uncle who was evacuated a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks after that, and I had known of his experiences.
Speaker 1: But my connection with what WHTI is my grandfather was
Speaker 1: in the Royal Air Force and died a couple of
Speaker 1: years after that. But like most well like all British people,
Speaker 1: it's a huge part of our culture. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a history that everybody there knows. And we talked about
Speaker 1: the Dunka Expirit for example. You know, it's just a
Speaker 1: very very well known part of British culture. Having said which,
Speaker 1: the version we grew up with is very very simplified.
Speaker 1: Um and finding out about the real history and and
Speaker 1: sort of delving into that and really looking at examining
Speaker 1: the reality of the events in nineteen forty your respect
Speaker 1: for what really happened is really in heart's greatly magnified,
Speaker 1: even even over the kind of if you like the
Speaker 1: fairy tale version whatever, you'd cool up. Yeah, Uh, it's
Speaker 1: going back to the imagery here. I think, perhaps more
Speaker 1: than anything else you've made, I feel like this film
Speaker 1: has a notable silent cinema hallmark or debt to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of the movies you've made, a
Speaker 1: number of them anyway, and Prestige, Inception, Interstellar dealing sort
Speaker 1: of heady narrative material where you're sort of forced at
Speaker 1: some point to present exposition with this movie, you could
Speaker 1: be a little more abstract. It seemed like you could
Speaker 1: have more fun, more fun but with with images and
Speaker 1: just letting them play over silence. I'm thinking about a
Speaker 1: man waiting into the channel, presumably to his death as
Speaker 1: they watch the shore, or even just like the cut
Speaker 1: too hard, Ease, spitfire after he shoots the German playing
Speaker 1: down the propellers stopped, and just just that cut over
Speaker 1: quiet just felt like a silent film moment in a way.
Speaker 1: I just wondered about that. I mean, I know you've
Speaker 1: talked in the past about you go back to silent
Speaker 1: cinema a lot to inform what you do I do,
Speaker 1: but well, it's interesting as you, as I think about
Speaker 1: your question, sort to realize that. And it's something I've
Speaker 1: noticed about editing about other things, is I have always
Speaker 1: been influenced by silent cinema. But I think what I
Speaker 1: hadn't realized in the sense is that the creative tyranny
Speaker 1: of dialogue and how that works, because when you edit
Speaker 1: a film, when you shoot a film, a conventional film,
Speaker 1: dialogue is everything you based your entire day around. Have
Speaker 1: we covered this line on camera? Did we get that
Speaker 1: line you get in the edit suite, and you control
Speaker 1: the time and the intensity of the film entirely with
Speaker 1: dialogue as the backbone, and then the images kind of
Speaker 1: filling around that. And so this is the first time
Speaker 1: where I really thought it's one thing to be influenced
Speaker 1: by silent cinema, but to actually remove the dialogue and
Speaker 1: try and tell significant parts of the story without it
Speaker 1: really opens up that side of cinema in a way
Speaker 1: that you can't do just by being influenced by silence
Speaker 1: about if you have. In other words, dialogue tends to
Speaker 1: trump everything. And I've had complaints in the past and
Speaker 1: my films where I've mixed the dialogue as a sound effect,
Speaker 1: so you can't necessarily hear it with great clarity, but
Speaker 1: it's part of an overall feel of things, And that too,
Speaker 1: is indicative of this idea that modern cinema, modern Hollywood cinema,
Speaker 1: dialogue tends to be the spines of running and defining everything.
Speaker 1: And I've been creatively very invigorated by removing that, and
Speaker 1: it shifts everything in your process and and how you
Speaker 1: deal with things, and that immediately forces you. It forces
Speaker 1: you to not only find different solutions to things, but
Speaker 1: it also opens up some of those devices and solutions
Speaker 1: for the audience that when the dialogue isn't there, they're
Speaker 1: free to watch it in a slightly different way, just
Speaker 1: as we're free to make it in a slightly different way.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that thing where if you know
Speaker 1: someone who's blind, maybe there are other senses are more
Speaker 1: high and yeah, so if you take away an element
Speaker 1: that you used to in the cinema, it allows for
Speaker 1: you to really key into this other stuff. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you tend to as an audience member, you you cling
Speaker 1: to dialogue in the soma that there is a writer.
Speaker 1: You're cling to it to just get something across that
Speaker 1: you can't figure out another way to communicate. And I've
Speaker 1: done films in the past that have required a lot
Speaker 1: of heavy exposition because I've been dealing with complicated structures,
Speaker 1: are complicated conceits. The wonderful thing about the story of
Speaker 1: done Kirk to me is how simple it is. It's
Speaker 1: an incredibly simple geography that you can explain and then
Speaker 1: you know, deal with the situation. It really is a
Speaker 1: very primal kind of ticking clock surrounded on all sides,
Speaker 1: backs to the sea situation. It's very easy to get
Speaker 1: that across, so you don't have to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time talking about it, you can just experience it absolutely.
Speaker 1: You started to talk about mixing there. I'd love to
Speaker 1: talk about the sonic quality of this film, and not
Speaker 1: just the score, which is amazing and as you say,
Speaker 1: builds on this idea of the Shepherd tone auditory illusion
Speaker 1: at a looser re sense of ascension. But I want
Speaker 1: to hear your philosophies on sound mixing, uh in general,
Speaker 1: because as you as you mentioned, you know, with with Interstellar,
Speaker 1: there were questions about what were you doing with sound,
Speaker 1: what was the creativity behind it? And something I find
Speaker 1: interesting and correcting me if I'm wrong, you don't do
Speaker 1: Delby at most mixes. I haven't yet. No, I'm I
Speaker 1: quite like a tight sound coming off the screen. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry to just just you know. When it comes to imagery,
Speaker 1: you're very keen on the immersive experience as it pertains
Speaker 1: to enveloping an audience with sound or multiple channels, not
Speaker 1: so much. Well, it's more about using the sound to
Speaker 1: enhance the most equality of the image, and so the
Speaker 1: images are creating the screens that we try to project
Speaker 1: them on as significantly as possible our prime UH exhibition locations.
Speaker 1: They're massive screens and the sound behind them can therefore
Speaker 1: be massive. The problem with any kind of UM surround sound,
Speaker 1: and you know, atmoster is obviously the newest and more
Speaker 1: sophisticated version of that, but the sounds come off the screen,
Speaker 1: and there are ways in which to draw the sounds
Speaker 1: off the screen that helped with the immersive quality, particularly
Speaker 1: with certain aspects of the music and things. But there
Speaker 1: are a lot of times in which spot effects, particularly
Speaker 1: you know, particularly sharp sound or knock or something, if
Speaker 1: it's placed off the screen, it becomes a distraction or
Speaker 1: it inherently tells you that the screen is smaller than
Speaker 1: you wanted to feel, because the sound is bigger than
Speaker 1: the screen. And so it really depends on which frequencies
Speaker 1: you're you're talking about. With low end frequencies, they tend
Speaker 1: to not have specific imaging, which is why you can
Speaker 1: put your sub different places in your room and it
Speaker 1: won't make that much difference. Um So with these low
Speaker 1: end frequent is you can do a lot in terms
Speaker 1: of immersing the audience. When it comes to higher end
Speaker 1: spot frequencies, even in the music, you have to be
Speaker 1: very careful about the imaging. For me, the most powerful
Speaker 1: form is a very tight, powerful sound coming from behind
Speaker 1: the screen and reinforcing the images that you're actually seeing
Speaker 1: there on screen. And if you look at the history
Speaker 1: of sound mixing, and you look at every time there's
Speaker 1: been a new innovation, um, you know, six tracks sound
Speaker 1: and seventy mil prints and the surround sound, you know,
Speaker 1: these kind of things, that tends to be a very
Speaker 1: pronounced and obvious use of those technologies for the first
Speaker 1: couple of years that they're around, and then ultimately filmmakers
Speaker 1: tend to then sort of received somewhat let that let
Speaker 1: that more obvious or flashier use of it come back
Speaker 1: to something that's a little more behind the screen. And
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of great mixing options. At
Speaker 1: my particular favorite is Imax because it has a a
Speaker 1: filtered sub and that has a really interesting set of
Speaker 1: low frequencies that you can you can play with in
Speaker 1: the relationship between the means of the sub is really
Speaker 1: really fascinating to play with. Um Ultimately, I want the
Speaker 1: image to be primary, and I want the power and
Speaker 1: the force of that image to be bolstered by the sound,
Speaker 1: and so sometimes wide imaging or very very deep imaging
Speaker 1: fights out of it. Yeah, I'm glad you touched on
Speaker 1: the IMAX mix because I just I've always wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you this is such a sort of gearhead question,
Speaker 1: But you know, is there anything problematic about the idea
Speaker 1: of the sub the low frequency information, not having a
Speaker 1: dedicated discrete channel and all kind of pumping through the
Speaker 1: other channels, Because to me as someone just as a
Speaker 1: listener and a viewer, and with someone like you who
Speaker 1: can be creative with your sound usage, stuff feels like
Speaker 1: an get lost in that soup. Sometimes I think the
Speaker 1: reverse is true. I think when you have a yeah,
Speaker 1: when you have a filtered sub, we have a derived
Speaker 1: up a part of me um as you do in IMAX.
Speaker 1: You get more of low and information contained in the
Speaker 1: mains as well, and so there isn't this absolute cut
Speaker 1: off between your sort of higher end information in the
Speaker 1: mains and then there's kind of down below. There's more
Speaker 1: of a sliding scale. It's more of a spectrum, and
Speaker 1: I actually prefer it as a as a sound. And
Speaker 1: indeed the way we mix for thirty five mile and
Speaker 1: for DCP and stuff, we actually somewhat take that philosophy
Speaker 1: over to that mix as well, and try not to
Speaker 1: put stuff we tend to for example, will switch the
Speaker 1: subs off and listen to the mix. Sometimes you just
Speaker 1: check that we've got enough of the low end information
Speaker 1: contained in the mains, and that's a sort of important
Speaker 1: part of our process. Um. There was a tendency when
Speaker 1: when five one first came out for the sub to
Speaker 1: be treated very you, very separately from the rest of
Speaker 1: the mix. And I think that that is a less
Speaker 1: realistic type of sound. So what what that derived some
Speaker 1: allows you to do is have have a slightly more
Speaker 1: realistic spectrum down from the mains into the sub. Interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: while I'm here and talking about immersive qualities, let me
Speaker 1: ask you about virtual reality. Actually you've called dunker virtual
Speaker 1: reality without the headset, so I know where your head
Speaker 1: is at. You want to make movies that people feel
Speaker 1: like they're actually experiencing. Uh. But is this is the
Speaker 1: idea of the proscenium still a fixture for you in
Speaker 1: that light? I mean, is virtual reality something you would
Speaker 1: ever dabble in because of that? You know? I mean
Speaker 1: I would never say never. But there is a particular form,
Speaker 1: this particular medium to what what a motion picture is
Speaker 1: that has a very particular relationship with the audience. And
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I don't like three D for example,
Speaker 1: or stereoscopic imaging in movies is it tends to shift
Speaker 1: your sense of empathy with the rest of the audience.
Speaker 1: So I mean to get technical about it, but it's
Speaker 1: like when you're wearing three D glasses, your brain can't
Speaker 1: understand that the person if you're at the back of
Speaker 1: the theater, can't understand that the person on the front
Speaker 1: of the theater is seeing the same thing as you,
Speaker 1: because the stereoscopic imaging is putting the image behind their
Speaker 1: their head effectively. Um, it's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: they don't tend to do comedies in three D because
Speaker 1: the sense of audience empathy is so important. But I
Speaker 1: think it's important for any film and so individual. A
Speaker 1: sense of individual and isolated immersion gives you a different
Speaker 1: empathetic relationship with the rest of the audience than a
Speaker 1: large scale image that you share with the rest of
Speaker 1: the audience. So whatever I want to do in the future,
Speaker 1: and I would never say never, I'm interested in all
Speaker 1: types of sentiment, all types of storytelling, But I very
Speaker 1: much value A four or me hum like IMAX two
Speaker 1: D that can give you a tremendous sense of subjective
Speaker 1: emotion without in any way compromising the empathetic relationship you
Speaker 1: have with the rest of the audience. There's something of
Speaker 1: a sweet spot there that I think is really really
Speaker 1: powerful and important. Did you happen to check out the
Speaker 1: Carnate Arena? And I haven't had a chance to yet,
Speaker 1: but people in the accademy we're telling me, I've got
Speaker 1: to got to go. It looks gonna It's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to see, like what you'll do in
Speaker 1: the moment, because for me, I just kind of stood
Speaker 1: back and forced a percentium, like I wanted to just observe.
Speaker 1: I'd like to go back because maybe I could be
Speaker 1: more participatory about it, But just that first instinct was,
Speaker 1: let me just stand back and make a movie out
Speaker 1: of this. Yeah, just different things I'll be interested to see. Uh,
Speaker 1: just a couple of last things here. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever made it out of an interview without
Speaker 1: someone bringing up Batman. But I had Christian Bale on
Speaker 1: the show a few weeks ago. I had Gary Oldman
Speaker 1: on the show. We've had a bit of a Batman
Speaker 1: reunion and Christian. One of the things that he and
Speaker 1: I talked about, which was interesting, was, you know, he's
Speaker 1: such a private person and just the idea of tackling
Speaker 1: those movies as a bit of a mixed blessing, you know,
Speaker 1: it opened a ton of doors, but it also exposed
Speaker 1: him a little bit. And I've always been curious, given
Speaker 1: that you're someone who's so guarded about what you're making
Speaker 1: and how you're making it, yet those movies were about
Speaker 1: the most popular pop cultural figure in many ways. Uh,
Speaker 1: do you feel similarly to Christian that it was a
Speaker 1: bit of a mixed blessing that it kind of exposed
Speaker 1: because now fans are just desperate to know exactly what
Speaker 1: you're doing. You know, what are you making, what does
Speaker 1: the script? All of this stuff? So now I think
Speaker 1: it's very different if you're behind the camera than if
Speaker 1: you're in front of the camera. You're not you're not
Speaker 1: dealing with that that um loss of anonymity if you
Speaker 1: like that For an actor, a serious actor like Christian
Speaker 1: is so important actually to this process to be amongst
Speaker 1: people and absorbing what people do. UM for filmmaker's very
Speaker 1: different and your biggest struggle as an independent filmmaker is
Speaker 1: getting an audience, just getting your work seen and knowing
Speaker 1: that it's getting out there and so um, success on
Speaker 1: the scale that we had with the Don't Right trilogy
Speaker 1: is just a massive advantage to me. And it's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I'm able to take on a
Speaker 1: British story like dun Kirk that wouldn't be a traditional
Speaker 1: fit for a studio summer temple release, um, and and
Speaker 1: get that done and get that scene and have people
Speaker 1: be interested in it. So for a filmmaker, it's really
Speaker 1: all about about eyeballs in a sense, about about anything
Speaker 1: they can get you attention, and so people being interested
Speaker 1: in what I do, I would never begrudge that. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a fantastic privilege to have. It's very different
Speaker 1: for a director than it is for an actor. And
Speaker 1: then just to wrap it up with Dunkirk, here is there?
Speaker 1: You know, it's obviously a timeless theme. What's going on
Speaker 1: with Dunkirk. It's about pulling together in the face of
Speaker 1: insurmountable odds and you know, surviving the torrent Essentially just curious,
Speaker 1: is there anything about that story of Dunkirk that particularly
Speaker 1: resonates in the modern climate for you. I think for
Speaker 1: me that the residents have fine. I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 1: really something I was self conscious about it making the film,
Speaker 1: but when we finished the film, we put it out.
Speaker 1: It's really a question of what does the Dunka experience mean.
Speaker 1: And what it means to me is the possibilities of
Speaker 1: what can be achieved when people pull together as opposed
Speaker 1: to what we can achieve individually. And I think that
Speaker 1: movies traditionally have celebrated individuality and individual acts of heroism.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that's fit the narrative paradigm of
Speaker 1: of movies, and so a lot of what we've done editorially, photographically,
Speaker 1: and all these things we've been talking about that they're
Speaker 1: all aimed at trying to drawl the audience, I mean
Speaker 1: into a different type of heroism, of communal heroism. And
Speaker 1: I think we live in times that possibly over value
Speaker 1: you know, individual achievement at the expense of what we
Speaker 1: can do, you know, together, So I think I think
Speaker 1: for me, that's that's the relevance of of Dunkirk, and
Speaker 1: I think it's the reason that the story itself will
Speaker 1: always be this incredible shining example of what society can
Speaker 1: achieve working together. Ye well, well put. The movie is
Speaker 1: called dun Kirk. You should see it if you haven't,
Speaker 1: hopefully on the biggest screen possible. I think Mr Nolan
Speaker 1: would prefer. And good luck at the Bathtoor Awards this weekend.
Speaker 1: It's thank You're certainly a source of pride over there,
Speaker 1: so hopefully you have good luck there, and thank you
Speaker 1: again for doing my show. I really appreciate it. Sure,
Speaker 1: thanks very much. What has happened to the colossal military disaster?
Speaker 1: You shall go on to the end. You should never surrender.
Speaker 1: The cool went out. We have to go to dun Kirk.
Speaker 1: Ready on the stern line. We do it here where
Speaker 1: we're going into ward George, I'll be useful, sir. Or
Speaker 1: about he's on me. I'm on l it's about to me.
Speaker 1: They need to send more ships every nine the only
Speaker 1: British contract covactivated the civilian boats. We need to destroy it.
Speaker 1: Where were you going down, Kirk? I'm not gonna bay.
Speaker 1: We know they will die your weekend, sayous of the
Speaker 1: bloody Navy told be at home. There's no hiding from
Speaker 1: this sun. We have a job to do. Turning around
Speaker 1: for fighting beaches, to fight from the landing ground which
Speaker 1: will never surrenders. Where is the bloody airport