Feb 23 2010
Who Needs a Damn Greenscreen?
(click to enlarge)
This awesome shot was filmed on location during The Dark Knight, proving that even in this modern era of film making where you can shoot an entire film in a warehouse painted green, some filmmakers want to retain the kind of shock and awe that goes into shooting an awesome movie.
Also, Christian Bale is a badass, because as far as I can tell, the dude has ONE line holding him to that roof, and it has to be pretty damn windy up there. What was the next stage direction? “Jump!”
I fully expect Inception to produce equally awe-inspiring shots. Only a few more months!
More Unreal Posts
Inception looks like it will have quite a bit of greenscreen, though they did roll a lifesize replica train down a street instead of CGI it in, so who knows.
The real master of practical effects nowadays? Definitely Guillermo del Toro. Barring the second Hellboy film, all of his stuff is generally done with limited CGI. Makes me wonder how he will attempt to do The Hobbit. Obviously there will be disagreements with this. WETA Digital (Jackson’s primary effects company) has done some award winning effects work over the last decade as well as doing every single Jackson film. I am sure that del Toro will want to do more practical stuff than digital, though.
Maybe not THAT similar, but this reminds me of the opening chase scene in Casino Royale and how refreshing it was to see some old school stunts instead of dudes on cables in front of a green screen.
This shot is awesome. They made something of a big deal about it on the Blu Ray special features. For the part where he jumps from that building, they had a stuntman do a pendulum swing from a moving helicopter. They also did the “string of pearls” stunt with the swat guys each dangling from the next as a practical effect.
I was just thinking about how rare it is to see badass stunts done for real anymore. I would love to see a movie that is like 99% practical effects and just uses CG as touch-up. Like Josh said, del Toro is good about this. TDK obviously did a good job of it, and Casino Royale did as well. I can’t think of many others off the top of my head that are very recent. It’s a shame, because practical stunts add a nice visceral edge, and a touch of real danger comes through on screen.
The Dark Knight was resoundingly satisfying for me on all levels. As a Batman nerd, as a fan of good old fashioned filmmaking, and as someone who wanted to go to the movies and be entertained. Batman Begins also deserves credit in the practical effects department. Though nothing in the film was as massive as the sequences in Dark Knight, it still had avery legitimate feel for a modern action picture.
[...] Christian Bale Scoffs at Greenscreen – Who needs special effects when you can do it for real? [...]
Oh my god…Just ONE line holding him up? WOW! That 190 pound guy is trusting his life to ONE line that can only hold thousands of pounds?
Don’t worry, his batarangs will save him should that ONE line break.