Christopher Nolan born 30 July 1970 is an English film director, screenwriter, and a producer. He is one of the highest directors in history, and also the most recommended filmmakers of the 21st century.
Having made his debut with Following in 1998, Nolan gained more attention for his second feature which is Memento in 2000, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for the Best Original Screenplay. His independent films gave Christopher Nolan the opportunity to make the big-budget thriller Insomnia in 2002 and the mystery drama The Prestige in 2006. He found more popular and critical success with The Dark Knight Trilogy in 2005–2012; Inception (2010), which has received eight Academy Award nominations, including for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay; Interstellar in 2014; and Dunkirk (2017). His ten films have gone over US$4.7 billion worldwide and gained a total of 26 Oscar nominations and seven wins. Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan have co-written a several amounts of his films and runs the production company Syncopy Inc.with his wife, Emma Thomas. Time named him one of the 100 most influential and popular people in the world in 2015.
An auteur is a filmmaker that has their own personal style and keeps creative control over their work. Christopher Nolan is an auteur as he writes and directs all of his films that he has produced hisself, this shows that he is an auteur as he has a his own unique creative impact on his finished project.
Christopher was inspired by Star Wars, when he was 8 years old he created a stop motion animation and called it ‘Space Wars’. His uncle that worked at NASA building guidance systems sent Christopher some launch footage, “I re-filmed them off the screen and cut them in, thinking no one would notice”. At the age 11 he aspired to become a professional filmmaker.
Christopher Nolan differs from other directors is the fact that his films are very close to reality makes him stand out, he also makes people use their brain in order to understand the movie is another talent of his that not a lot of directors use.
Three films from Christopher Nolan are ‘The Dark Knight’, ‘Inception’ and ‘Memento’. The two most important components of mine en scene are design and composition, he uses these in all of these films by showing clearly where they are all set in and the lighting in the films which is usually dark to express the themes of the movies. He chooses specific costumes and make up for the characters to make sure it goes well with the characters personality and how they are portrayed as in the movies.
One narrative technique that Christopher Nolan uses is the idea of frame narrative. It is a technique that is used to show more than one story line, he uses it to introduce a man narrative for the purpose of setting the stage. He also uses cross-cutting story lines to show the different stories that are occurring, it also helps get the audiences attention away from narrative is the key to understanding the narrative, this means the audience can be surprised with the outcome of the film. He made the transition from independent movie producing to the Hollywood mainstream.
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