Behind the Special Effects of Inception

Lanxon writes "Wired has a behind the scenes look at how Inception's reality-distorting special effects sequences were shot, in an interview with Chris Corbould — the man 'prized for his ability to stage a real-life tank chase in St. Petersburg (GoldenEye), to flip a working juggernaut down a narrow Chicago street (The Dark Knight), and to build a working Batmobile that can do 30-metre jumps without the aid of a single post-production pixel.'" Hopefully most of you who intend to see Inception have already seen it by now, so you don't have to worry about spoilers. It's getting pretty much universal praise.

Comments

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[DIplomatic]

The "article" is only a couple of paragraphs, but it's worth the click to see the pic if nothing else.

I assumed the gravity special effects were all CG, but it's great to know they were done physically!

WHOOSH!

[Triv]

Y'all're being way too literal - whether the top fell or it didn't, the point of the last shot isn't whether the reality Cobb is in is real or not, the point is that he walked away from the top as it was spinning. He stopped trying to get home because, as far as he was concerned, he was as home as he wanted to be.

Whether the reality we, as an audience, left him in was "real" or not is completely immaterial. Home != reality, necessarily; he ended up where he needed to be.

The film rocked on plot, not SFX

[jbarr]

So many people, including my wife, said they just didn't get it. I must really be in the minority, because I thought that it had a similar "wow" factor as "The Matrix", only with plot instead of special effects. I remember watching "The Matrix", and at the scene where Neo got unplugged, I had this overwhelming feeling of "Oh, my, god! I get it! This is so absolutely innovatively cool!" I really had the same feeling when watching Inception. And maybe my delight with it has to do with the fact that I am able to have lucid dreams on occasion. I specifically remember one where I woke up from a dream, somehow realized that I was still dreaming, and then woke up from that. Having personally experienced that made the concept at least understandable.

Granted, it wasn't a perfect movie, and it was probably too long, but I really think it had an innovative depth that hasn't been seen in movies in a long time.

I also feel that though the SFX were cool, this is a movie you really don't need to see on the big screen. The plot carries it well. The wow-factor doesn't come from the SFX, it comes from the plot.