The Dark Knight Rises Post Production

Director Christopher Nolan has established an international reputation for spectacular visual style balanced with wonderful narrative storytelling.  Nolan first came to the cinema world’s attention in 2000, with his “indie” (and award-winning) classic, Memento, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.  But it was his 2005 Batman Returns (for Warner Bros) that Nolan and his producing partner Emma Thomas clearly established that a major new talent, and team, had “arrived.”

Nolan’s talented team of “below the line” artists have set a standard for some of the greatest visuals being created today in motion pictures – while maintaining a steadfast and ardent belief in (traditional) analog film-based cinematography and lab-based photo-chemical final color-finishing.  Further, Nolan, and his Academy Award-winning cinematographer, Wally Pfister, ASC, have also clearly established an accomplished integration of “large format” (IMAX) 70mm analog photography into one of the industry’s most unique approaches to principal photography, post-production and theatrical exhibition.

And over the course of the last dozen years, Nolan has maintained a strategic relationship with Technicolor – a company while committed to furthering digital innovation has maintained its industry-leading photochemical suite of service-offerings of the first order of magnitude.  Technicolor’s analog operations in Los Angeles, London and New York all provided front-end laboratory processing and photochemical “dailies” for Nolan and Pfister, from principal photography locations in North America and the UK – including both 35mm and 65mm large format negative processing. 

Chris Nolan and Wally Pfister continue to work with Technicolor’s Glendale-based lab; staffed by a dedicated crew for around-the-clock support, helping to bring to fruition the creative expectations for their new blockbuster film.

Throughout the project, color-timer David Orr interacted with the film’s creative team, and utilizing traditional photo-chemical methods he established the look and balance of the film, blending the scene-to-scene colors into a seamless continuity.

Chris Nolan requested that David Orr supervise the timing of the 70mm version to ensure consistency and delivery of the IMAX version within the time allotted. Color Timers Mike Sanders, Lee Wimer and Terry Haggar provided outstanding support in meeting this request.

For The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan also continued to entrust our Marketing Services team out of Hollywood with the finishing of all of the much-anticipated promotional footage and trailers for the past year- including pieces for CinemaCon and CineEurope.  Colorist Chris Wagley worked exclusively on Marketing elements for Nolan and Pfister. Our team, led by Matt Bellanger, also created several of the theatrical and broadcast trailers and feature marketing needs for the studio and the filmmakers.

Further, Mr. Pfister, along with Nolan and Thomas serving as executive producers, has announced that he will shortly make his directorial debut – with a decided preference for shooting on film and finishing the project based around the model piloted and fostered around his success with the Batman franchise.