{"id":14855,"date":"2012-04-06T16:25:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T15:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=14855"},"modified":"2012-06-18T13:39:35","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T12:39:35","slug":"film-notes-14-following-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2012\/04\/06\/film-notes-14-following-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Film Notes #14: Following (1998)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Following.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14856\" title=\"Following\" src=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Following.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"280\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Christopher Nolan&#8217;s debut film is #14 in our Film Notes series.<\/p>\n<p>For newcomers, this series of posts involves me watching a different film every day for a month, with the following rules:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It must be a film I have <em>already<\/em> seen.<\/li>\n<li>I must make notes <em>whilst<\/em> I\u2019m watching it.<\/li>\n<li>Pauses are allowed but the viewing must all be one session.<\/li>\n<li>It can\u2019t be a current cinema release.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Hopefully it will capture my instant thoughts about a movie, providing a snapshot of my film diet for 30 days and some interesting links to the film in question.<\/p>\n<p>Here are my notes on <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0154506\/\">Following<\/a><\/strong> (1998) which I watched on DVD on Friday 6th April.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The debut film of Christopher Nolan that he made for just \u00a36,000<\/li>\n<li>Originally conceived as &#8216;no budget&#8217; movie, it is just 78 minutes long<\/li>\n<li>Idea of the narrative was to not just tell a story chronologically but to construct a modular narrative that consists of three sections that pull at one another<\/li>\n<li>The plot is about a young writer in London who starts following random strangers but when he comes across a burglar named Cobb, he gradually becomes sucked into a web of deception.<\/li>\n<li>We absorb the story of the film in the fractured, fragmented way we do in real life.<\/li>\n<li>Shot in and around London &#8211; principally Central London, Southwark and Highgate<\/li>\n<li>Bolex wind up camera used to shoot Central London scenes at the beginning<\/li>\n<li>There is a shot of Hungerford Bridge by Charing Cross Station<\/li>\n<li>Nolan used a lot of natural light and real locations that he was able to get some kind of access to.<\/li>\n<li>Although he often only had a day&#8217;s notice to shoot scenes on location, his actors had done 6 months rehearsal so they could adapt pretty easily to most situations<\/li>\n<li>They shot without permits using real locations, which often included flats belonging to friends or family.<\/li>\n<li>Did they use Framestore CFC as the location for the cafe?<\/li>\n<li>Producer Emma Thomas can be seen in the background of that cafe scene early in the film.<\/li>\n<li>Nolan got the idea for the film when he lived in Central London and constructed a story around the idea of focusing on one person in the crowd.<\/li>\n<li>The story explores the barriers we put up by virtue of having to live in a city. In a sense it covers similar themes to\u00a0TAXI DRIVER (1976) and CROCODILE DUNDEE (1986).<\/li>\n<li>Note that the burglar character is called Cobb &#8211; also the name of Leonardo DiCaprio&#8217;s character in INCEPTION (2010).<\/li>\n<li>The other influence on the script was when Nolan&#8217;s flat was burgled in the early 90s and he realised that it wasn&#8217;t the lock on the door keeping them out but social convention.<\/li>\n<li>Police told Nolan after his robbery that thieves often steal a bag during the robbery to their things in. He worked this into the script.<\/li>\n<li>All the flats belonged to relatives or friends.<\/li>\n<li>Shooting on rooftops is a handy way of getting a landscape view of city without permits.<\/li>\n<li>Nightclub scenes shot at a bar called Detroit in Covent Garden.<\/li>\n<li>Only had 3 or 4 lights to use in the nightclub &#8211; although it was &#8220;murderous&#8221; lighting job, it would have been harder to do in colour.<\/li>\n<li>Note that make-up gets less severe as the film progresses<\/li>\n<li>The Batman logo <a href=\"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2010\/08\/13\/batman-logos-in-early-christopher-nolan-films-memento-following\/\">is on the door of the flat they rob<\/a>!<\/li>\n<li>Theobald&#8217;s physical appearance is a signifier of where the plot and narrative is at.<\/li>\n<li>Nolan used an ARRI BL camera to shoot<\/li>\n<li>The film plays very different on subsequent viewings &#8211; even then Nolan was very interested in the narrative possibilities of cinema.<\/li>\n<li>Cobb knows the hidden side of London, which is what Nolan used for the locations.<\/li>\n<li>Fractured narrative recalls Nic Roeg&#8217;s BAD TIMING (1980)<\/li>\n<li>The guy who has his skull smashed looks a lot like Harry Potter<\/li>\n<li>It would be interesting to know what system Nolan edited this on. It was just as digital, non-linear systems were becoming mainstream.<\/li>\n<li>Black and white lighting is used to very good effect &#8211; gives it a film noir vibe<\/li>\n<li>Typewriter and Minolta camera Theobald uses are actually Nolan&#8217;s.<\/li>\n<li>Dialogue is a bit on the nose in parts but given the unusual structure that&#8217;s perhaps intentional.<\/li>\n<li>Lucy Russell&#8217;s line on the intercom was ADR&#8217;d by Emma Thomas at the last minute as they needed it for the sound mix the next day.<\/li>\n<li>The rooftop fight sequence posed a problem for post-synching as most no-budget films can&#8217;t really afford it.<\/li>\n<li>Nolan got around this by maintaining the rough, unpolished vibe of the piece. The sound mix works within the world of the film.<\/li>\n<li>You can see the seeds of MEMENTO (2000) in this film: haunted protagonist, fractured narrative, people deceiving each other and the rug being pulled out from the audience<\/li>\n<li>Director&#8217;s uncle John Nolan is the policeman questioning Theobald at the beginning and end.<\/li>\n<li>Note the pacing and editing as the film reaches its climax.<\/li>\n<li>Final shot of the film was done at waist height so no-one could look into the camera (although if you look carefully somebody does for a split second).<\/li>\n<li>The film was written and designed for the budget it was shot on &#8211; it made very good use of it&#8217;s limitations.<\/li>\n<li>Is this the lowest budget feature film of all time?<\/li>\n<li>It\u00a0premi\u00e8red\u00a0at the San Francisco Film Festival in 1998 and Nolan got an agent and attention from other festivals including Slamdance, Amsterdam and Toronto.<\/li>\n<li>He began principal photography on MEMENTO (2000) in September 1999 and it later had its world\u00a0premi\u00e8re\u00a0at Venice in September 2000.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-14-following-1998.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><noscript>[&lt;a href=&#8221;http:\/\/storify.com\/filmdetail\/film-notes-14-following-1998&#8243; target=&#8221;_blank&#8221;&gt;View the story &#8220;Film Notes #14: Following (1998)&#8221; on Storify&lt;\/a&gt;]<\/noscript><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christopher Nolan&#8217;s debut film is #14 in our Film Notes series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[360,1499],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14855"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}