Christopher Nolan is regarded as one of the greatest modern directors. The director has been showered with critical and commercial success for various projects throughout his career.
Among all the qualities, one of the most prominent aspects of the legendary director is his want for practical visuals ahead of CGI. The director has embraced the practicality in his movies on various occasions and one of his most substantial ones was for the Cornfield in Interstellar.
Christopher Nolan planted a 500-acre cornfield for Cooper’s farm in Interstellar
Christopher Nolan is among the few auteurs in the industry who embraces practicality over computer graphics. All of his major filmographies resemble this idea including The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, etc. But the director exceeded his bar after growing real crops for Cooper’s farm in Interstellar.
The Director revealed that the team planted 500 acres of corn for a more immersive and authentic experience. He took the help of Zack Snyder, who previously grew 100 acres of corn for Man of Steel. The filmmaker’s $100K gamble to grow corn in Western Canada, outside Calgary did eventually pay off after the colossal success of the movie.
Nolan is known to always strive for that extra step to earn the perfect output. And even with the success of the movie at the box office, the director mentioned that they eventually earned a good amount of profit by selling the corn. He said, “In the end, we got a pretty good crop, and we made money on this.”
Christopher Nolan’s love for practical effects
In a world where CGI has taken the frontline for visuals, Christopher Nolan has been termed as a traditionalist. Even after garnering abundant love and success for his craft, the director has always been keen on practical effects instead of computer graphics.
Nolan has been very loyal to his want for practical effects even as his projects have become increasingly complex and innovative over the years. The most recent example is the flight destruction of a 747 airplane for the movie Tenet.
With Oppenheimer inching towards its release, reports claim that the director recreated the atomic explosion without any help from CGI, the explosion would be much safer than an actual nuclear blast. The director has previously expressed the challenges that appeared in completing the task, as he stated to Total Film,
“I think recreating the Trinity test without the use of computer graphics was a huge challenge to take on… Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the film practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself,”
Christopher Nolan’s love for practical visuals is undeniable and his decision to plant 500 acres of corn is just a testament to the director’s vision to attain perfection. Following the release of his upcoming movie Oppenheimer, it will be exciting to witness how the explosion unfolds in the movie.
Interstellar is available to stream on Netflix.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
