Chapter 739: Special Effects and Practical Shooting

The soundstage was dim. Directly opposite Duke, Leonardo DiCaprio had his back to the main camera, seemingly busy with something. Then, Scarlett Johansson entered the frame. She looked at Leonardo's back and walked toward him.

"Are you planning to enter the dream alone?" she asked.

"No, no..." Leonardo turned around and immediately denied it. "I was just doing some experiments. I didn't expect anyone else to be here, so..."

"Oh, sorry." Scarlett looked down at the small trinket in her hand, then held it up for Leonardo to see. "I was actually working on my totem."

"Let me see." Leonardo walked over, his hands in his pockets.

Scarlett immediately put it away.

Leonardo just smiled. "You learn fast."

"This method of distinguishing between dreams and reality is very elegant." Scarlett nodded gently. "Was this your idea?"

"No, actually..." Leonardo stepped closer. "It was actually Sally's idea."

Since the female lead was no longer French, Duke had changed the character's name accordingly.

Leonardo pulled out a Spinning Top and placed it in the palm of his hand so Scarlett could get a clearer look. "The Spinning Top won't fall over if you spin it in a dream," he explained.

He spun the Spinning Top on the nearby table. "It'll just keep spinning."

"Arthur said she passed away?" Scarlett asked.

Leonardo changed the subject. "How is the maze design coming along?"

Duke stepped away from the camera monitor and shouted, "Cut!"

Scarlett and Leonardo both looked over. It was obvious that the first take hadn't passed, but this scene wasn't difficult. They couldn't understand what had gone wrong.

"Hannah, Kirk, John..." Duke called out the names of three department heads in one breath, then waved them over. "Come here."

The failed take had nothing to do with Scarlett and Leonardo's acting. Instead, there was an issue with the color timing. Ever since Zack Snyder left Duke's team to become a director, the crew's color timing had been handled by Kirk Lundell.

Film could be described as a photochemical dream. Its lighting requirements were incredibly complex. Although much of the illumination could be adjusted in post-production, the practical lighting on set remained absolutely crucial.

Color timing was, in layman's terms, color grading. There were two main reasons movies required color timing: first, discrepancies inevitably occurred between shots filmed at different times or under varying light sources. If developed directly without processing, the spliced footage would look disjointed. Second, creators sought to give the film's visuals a specific stylistic look in pursuit of their artistic vision.

The original English term for this process was color timing. Taken literally, many people might wonder what this procedure had to do with "time."

This traced back to the era of black-and-white films. Since color wasn't involved yet, the process only dealt with controlling the brightness and contrast of the image. Thus, the color timer's job was to adjust and record the exposure time needed for different shots—hence the word "timing." Even after the advent of color technology, the term remained, continuing to be used right into the modern digital age.

Today's color timing was done entirely in a digital environment, giving the color timer extremely high efficiency and creative freedom. Electronic color timing technology had advanced rapidly in recent years. Through the electronic circuitry of the color timing equipment, the colorist could directly preview the results and work at a fast pace.

Compared to traditional color timing, this method was far more efficient.

Duke's crew always utilized the most advanced technology in the industry. He wasn't Christopher Nolan, who was still muddling along in the independent film circle, nor would he insist on those traditional, time-consuming, and labor-intensive shooting methods.

Achieving the best results with the least amount of money in the shortest possible time was what Duke wanted. To that end, he didn't care whether the execution relied on upholding tradition or embracing new technology.

The color timing issue was easily resolved. Over the next few days of shooting, Duke utilized new technologies alongside some more traditional methods.

The first stunning sequence in the original Inception was when Dom Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, was pushed into a bathtub, triggering the first dream jump. Cobb's sensation of water in the upper world was transmitted to the lower dream layer, generating a surreal effect—an entire Japanese palace submerged by torrential floods.

Christopher Nolan actually achieved this highly impactful sensory scene through practical shooting. His crew constructed a massive interior palace set and stored a total of 5,000 gallons of water in 26 tanks meticulously positioned outside various windows. Driven by a mechanical rig, these water tanks were opened in sequence, producing the spectacle of flooding Jinshan Temple.

However, such set construction and filming consumed an immense amount of time and money. Duke only briefly considered it before abandoning the idea of a practical shoot.

When he shot the scene, Leonardo simply stood surrounded by green screens. The sequence of the palace being engulfed by torrential waters was filmed using miniatures, and the two were then composited together using CGI technology in post-production.

According to professional calculations, this would save at least half the preparation time and a third of the shooting budget.

Given Duke's style, there was no reason not to choose this method of filming.

Yet in other aspects, Duke still heavily relied on traditional practical techniques.

Take Arthur's action scene in the hallway, for example. Disrupted by the upper dream layer, gravity shifted several times in the second dream layer. In reality, these shifts were created using actual laws of physics during filming.

During the shoot, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was able to walk on the walls and ceilings of the hotel corridor because the entire hallway set was built inside a giant, rotatable Universal Ring rig.

When the whole corridor began to tilt and rotate, the wire-suspended actors simply had to naturally adjust their balance. The fixed camera made it look as though the direction of gravity itself was shifting. To ensure the actors' safety within the spinning set, many of the props, including the walls, were made of soft materials.

Many other props used for the dream sequences were also practically built by the crew.

First was the Penrose Stairs.

Anyone who had done a bit of research on optical illusions would know the famous perspective paradox of the Penrose Stairs. As a hypothetical infinite loop staircase, it could only exist in two dimensions. Once brought into three-dimensional space, it became a structurally self-contradictory object.

Drawing reference from the Penrose Stairs depicted by optical illusion master Escher, the special effects team built an actual physical set inside the Warner Studios soundstage. When viewed from a specific angle, it looked exactly like an infinitely looping enclosed staircase. Of course, viewed from any other angle, the illusion would instantly break, as it wasn't a closed loop at all.

It was precisely by utilizing this trick that Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, could clearly explain the phenomenon of dream mazes to both the audience and Ariadne, played by Scarlett.

Next was the Memory Elevator.

In his own dream, Dom Cobb constructed an elevator that could access thirteen different floors in order to store his memories. During filming, this Memory Elevator consisted of individual, independent sets. They were all real, physical props constructed by the crew.

For example, the elevator on the top-floor beach was built by digging a massive hole on Nancy Josephson's private beach during Duke's shoot.

Then there was the Subconscious Train.

The most exaggerated prop the crew prepared for the shoot was likely the train that appeared in the first dream layer. This train was, in fact, a real, tangible prop.

Driven internally by a truck and several trailers, this behemoth was clad in a fiberglass locomotive shell that looked incredibly authentic. Finally, the truck tires were replaced with train wheels using CGI, making the whole thing absolutely flawless.

In Hollywood, almost all big-budget commercial blockbusters were completed using a mix of computer graphics and practical shooting. A hundred-million-dollar VFX blockbuster that used absolutely zero CGI shots simply didn't exist.

Leaving aside the fact that Duke's version of Inception would use over 2,000 CGI shots, let's just look at the original Christopher Nolan. Many people had the impression that Nolan was an absolute film purist who fiercely resisted and even despised digital technology. From a certain angle, this was true, but it didn't reflect the whole truth.

In reality, CGI VFX were used extensively, and even crucially, in the production of the original Inception.

The folding of Paris was one of the film's signature shots. It went without saying that it was a CGI-generated scene. Beyond that, the entire movie utilized over 600 CGI shots!

The folding Paris was likewise one of the signature visuals for Duke's version of the film. In his hands, it would be a 100% digital effect.

As early as the pre-production phase, the special effects team from Industrial Light and Magic had already rushed to Paris. There, they shot a terabyte of photos for reference material, capturing everything from the exterior structures of the buildings down to the interior rooms, accurate to the last detail.

These high-res photos were eventually applied to 3D models as "baked textures," aiming to make the entire virtual environment feel undeniably real.

However, having realistic textures alone was far from enough. The whole scene required considering the changes of numerous elements, including the light source—the entire sequence took place during the day, and simulating natural daylight was exceedingly difficult—shadow projection, perspective, and more. They also had to figure out how to hide glaring errors like buildings clipping through one another.

Although Duke planned to cut the city folding sequence into several shots for the film, the initial effect completed by Industrial Light and Magic was just one continuous, unbroken shot.

Per Duke's requirements, the VFX team could have easily cheated by relying on camera cuts. Instead, they tackled the challenge head-on and handed him a beautiful result that exceeded all expectations—there were no repeating city blocks, and everything down to the streetlamps, the curtains, and even the interior layouts of the buildings was fully realized.