Nolan’s filmmaking style has stood out for his use of real locations rather than shooting in a studio, his use of experimental soundscapes, mathematically inspired images and concepts, his exploration of existential and epistemological themes, complex characters, and for preferring to shoot on film rather than digital, as do many other filmmakers. Another particularity, which might come as a surprise to some given the stunning visuals and special effects in his movies, is that Nolan isn’t really into using CGI, and chooses to minimize the amount of it in his movies, choosing practical effects instead.
Although he’s not against CGI, Nolan isn’t fond of using it in his movies and definitely doesn’t rely on it for the visual effects he wants to achieve. Nolan has chosen to minimize the use of CGI for special effects in his movies and instead uses it as a tool to enhance his use of practical effects and what he has already photographed in camera. The Dark Knight, and Inception, told Wired in 2010 that Batman Begins and Inception had only about 620 and 500 shots of visual effects, which is minor compared to most sci-fi movies with around 1500-2000 VFX shots, as their goal was to “build on the existing reality that’d already been filmed”.
Christopher Nolan’s work as there are many scenes in his movies that are truly impressive achievements with no help of CGI, and using this as an enhancer of what he already shot is an excellent approach to it.
