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Lighting the Knight:
Wally Pfister
Page 3

It's What You Do That Defines You

That "layered" storytelling approach enriched The Dark Knight as well, leaving the story open to interpretation as a metaphor for today's global war against terrorism while also allowing itself to play out as a good, old-fashioned comic book fantasy.

And, of course, it also has that choice cast of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Heath Ledger. Put in the IMAX setting, and things were set to explode following the Prologue tease.

"You could probably equate that a little bit to the phenomenal box office success," Pfister said. "A six-minute teaser for a movie, you know, that doesn't give away anything else about the movie but is a wonderful, fun, visceral... sets the stage, establishes the character of the film. Everybody had an early look at Heath Ledger in makeup, albeit brief. It was a snowball."

Nobody could foresee how large that snowball would grow.

"We knew it was a great screenplay," Pfister said, "we knew that Chris and his brother really cracked it by the time we started rolling film and that they had really come up with something. The cast, I think, went to the next level, even from the first film.

"Did we know we were making a great film? Yes. Did we know that the movie was going to be successful? Yes. Just based on the success of Batman Begins we knew there was even a greater audience for this film than there had been.

"Did anybody think it was going to make a billion dollars? No fucking way! No way."

That global response is all the more impressive given American comic book hero movies historically don't translate into huge business abroad. Dark Knight raked in $200 million more than Iron Man internationally and a whopping $300 million more than Batman Begins, almost tripling the gross of its predecessor.

Potential for Aggressive Expansion

Following the unprecedented box office receipts of The Dark Knight in IMAX, others naturally now want to get in on the action.

Already in production, the crew on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen decided they needed to "do the thing that Nolan did" and their late-in-the-game decision to shoot some sequences in IMAX led to a conversation between Transformers' cinematographer, Ben Seresin, and Pfister.

"Ben Seresin was very hesitant to want to do it because they were already in production, and I was like, 'Well look, Ben, here's my experience with it, you know, and I think it's phenomenal, but, yeah, it takes a little bit of work and you've got to figure it out a little bit.'"

Another production is also interested in the format and they've taken the IMAX cameras to Panavision in an effort to delve into making a more integrated system.

"IMAX is its own system, the guys who use it know it, but it's not really compatible with the system that we use for 35 millimeter cameras," Pfister explained. "It's not as sophisticated as what we use in a Panavision system, for instance. So I think they're exploring the possibilities of making it a quieter camera, making it more friendly for focus pulling, and those things because it is a little trickier than shooting 35 millimeter. They're looking into that stuff."

At some point, a feature-length IMAX production is fairly inevitable, but there are plenty of kinks to work out – as well as all the financial considerations.

"The conversation did come up on Dark Knight, 'How 'bout we shoot the whole film in IMAX?' I said, 'Well, yeah, but I don't think we've got $300 million!'"

A World Without Rules

There's another benefit from The Dark Knight's IMAX experiment: It's proven that film is far from dead and the selling of digital as a superior format is still a bunch of market hype.

"I'm pretty militant on that," Pfister said. "I think the digital technology is coming and it's getting better and better, but it's far inferior to 35 millimeter negative right now and I think it's really a shame to see people forcing – and the market trying to force us – to use the digital medium when 35 millimeter film is still so much advanced. This is a technology we've been using for 100 years and to replace it with digital technology that's four or five years old is ludicrous because it's not capable of capturing the images in the same way.

"And I think that if you argue, 'Well does the public really see the difference between something shot on film?' I think The Dark Knight is a great example of how they do. People flocked to the IMAX theatres to see this film. It made nearly $70 million in IMAX theatres, broke all records in IMAX. So people really do; the movie-going public is interested in seeing those images in the best quality imaginable, the best image quality.

"That's the problem with those digital cameras. Those image capture systems are not capable of capturing dynamic range and a 10-stop latitude in exposure from brightest of brights to darkest of darks. You can't shoot something on a digital camera that's five stops overexposed and still within the same frame have something that's three stops underexposed. It doesn't work.

"Frankly, Matt, I see it as organic versus synthetic – and I'm always going to wear cotton. You know what I mean? I think there's a reason that this is still hanging in there. When you get filmmakers saying 'film is dead and we love shooting digital 'cause you can roll and roll and roll and you never have to reload, ' well maybe there's something to being able to take a pause after several takes and take a breather before you go back shooting more takes, before you move on to the next thing. Maybe there's something about that that sort of has worked in our system."

Further bearing out Pfister's staunch support of film, Tony Scott's forthcoming remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 was planned to go all-digital, but the production team did a 180 and decided to stick with film.

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