Director Christopher Nolan has suggested that Tenet probably has fewer visual effects than a typical romantic comedy.
Collider reports that Nolan, who is renowned for his preference of using practical effects over CGI, revealed in an interview with ICG Magazine that his commitment to shooting Tenet largely in-camera resulted in a substantially low VFX shot count.
“The visual side of the film is huge in scale, but our VFX shot count is probably lower than most romantic comedies,” Nolan told the publication.
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In fact, Tenet editor Jennifer Lame estimates that Nolan’s big-budget action movie probably has “fewer than 300” VFX shots in its final cut. This figure is low even by Nolan’s standards, as Collider notes that it would place Tenet behind Batman Begins (620 VFX shots), Inception (500 VFX shots) and The Dark Knight Rises (450 VFX shots).
“Visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson was responsible for coming up with our safety net,” Nolan explained further. “We wanted it all in-camera, but if it couldn’t be done, what choices are there in post-production? I like to say Andrew kind of bid himself out of a job because he helped us achieve such an enormous amount practically.”
Alongside editor Jennifer Lame and visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson, Nolan’s behind-the-scenes creative team on Tenet comprises of production designer Nathan Crowley, costume designer Jeffrey Kurland, and director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema, who made his Nolan debut with Interstellar in 2014 and went on to earn an Oscar nomination for his cinematography work on Dunkirk.
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After using extensive practical effects to create the dogfighting sequences on Dunkirk, Nolan opted to push visual effects aside and blow up a real 747 jumbo jet on Tenet, claiming that it was actually “more efficient to buy a real plane of the real size, and perform this sequence for real in-camera, rather than build miniatures or go the CG route.”
Tenet will be released in 70 international territories including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom on August 26, and then Canada on August 27 before making ways to select North American theaters on September 3, while it will release in China on September 4, following several delays due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
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Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Tenet Probably Has Less CGI Than Most Rom-Coms, Says Christopher Nolan