2. Early Life • Nolan was born inWestminster, London in 1970.
• He began making films at age seven, borrowing his
father’s Super 8 camera and shooting short films with
his action figures. Growing up, Nolan was particularly
influenced by the work of Ridley Scott, and the science
fiction films 2001:A space odyssey(1968) and StarWars
(1977).Around the age of eight, he made a stop motion
animation homage to the latter called SpaceWars. His
uncle, who worked at NASA, sent him some launch
footage: From the age of eleven, he aspired to be a
professional filmmaker.
3. Early Career
• 1989-1997 –When Nolan’s family moved to Chicago he started to work with
Adrien and Roko Belic. He has continued his collaboration with the brothers,
receiving a credit for his editorial assistance on their Oscar-nominated
documentary Genghis Blues
• Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service college, an
independent school in Hertfordshire, and later read English Literature at
University College London. He chose UCL specifically for its filmmaking
facilities, which comprised a Steenbeck editing suite and 16mm film
cameras
• Nolan made two short films.The first was the surreal 8mm Tarantella
(1989), which was shown on ImageUnion (an independent film and video
showcase on the Public broadcasting service).The second was Larceny
(1996), filmed over a weekend in black and white with limited equipment
and a small cast and crew. Funded by Nolan and shot with the society's
equipment, it appeared at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996 and is
considered one of UCL's best shorts
• After earning his bachelor's degree in English literature in 1993, Nolan
worked as a script reader, camera operator and director of corporate videos
and industrial films. He also filmed a third short, Doodlebug(1997), about a
man chasing an insect around a flat with a shoe, only to discover when killing
it that it is a miniature of himself. Nolan had written the script while a
student at UCL. During this period in his career, Nolan had little or no success
getting his projects off the ground
4. Breakthrough
• Nolan was afforded the opportunity to make his breakthrough hit Memento
(2000). During a road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, his brother Jonathan
pitched the idea for “Memento Mori", about a man with anterograde
amnesia who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for his wife's murderer. Nolan
developed a screenplay that told the story in reverse; Aaron Ryder, an
executive for Newmarket films, said it was "perhaps the most innovative
script I had ever seen".The film was optioned and given a budget of
$4.5 million. Memento, starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss,
premiered in September 2000 at theVenice International film festival to
critical acclaim.The film was a box-office successand received a number of
accolades, including Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for its
screenplay, Independent spirit award for Best Director and Best Screenplay,
and a Directors guild of America (DGA) Award nomination. Memento was
considered by numerous critics to be one of the best films of the 2000s In
2017, the film was selected by the Library of congress for preservation in the
United States National Film Registry, being deemed "culturally, historically,
or aesthetically significant".
5. Mainstream
and critical
success
• In early 2003 Nolan approachedWarner Bros. with the
idea of making a new Batman film. Fascinated by the
character and story, he wanted to make a film
grounded in a "relatable" world more reminiscent of a
classical drama than a comic-book fantasy. Batman
Begins, the biggest project Nolan had undertaken to
that point, premiered in June 2005 to critical acclaim
and commercial success.Starring Christopher Bale in
the title role, along with MichaelCaine, Gary Oldman,
Morgan Freeman, and Liam Neeson , the film revived
the franchise, heralding a trend towards darker films
that rebooted (or retold) backstories. Batman Begins
was the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2005 in the
United States and the year's ninth-highest-grossing
film worldwide. It was nominated for the Academy
Award for best Director and three BAFTA awards
6. Film making
• Nolan's films are often grounded in existential and
epistemological themes, exploring the concepts of
time, memory, and identity.His work is characterized
by unconventional narrative structures, richly textured
imagery, and evocative use of music and sound.
