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Behind the Special Effects of Inception 196

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the yes-have-some dept.
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.
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Behind the Special Effects of Inception

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  • Re:Spoiler Alert (Score:3, Informative)

    by somaTh (1154199) on Monday July 26 2010, @01:59PM (#33033618) Journal
    The GP wasn't kidding. No one knows what the hell happened.

    Although, this guy [chud.com] seems to have some solid idea.
  • Re:Not much content (Score:5, Informative)

    by baturkey (55015) on Monday July 26 2010, @02:30PM (#33034210)

    There's more detail and pictures in this American Cinematographer article:

    http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/July2010/Inception/page1.php [theasc.com]

  • Re:Spoiler Alert! (Score:3, Informative)

    by somaTh (1154199) on Monday July 26 2010, @02:40PM (#33034386) Journal
  • Re:Spoiler Alert (Score:2, Informative)

    by city (1189205) on Monday July 26 2010, @03:15PM (#33035014)
    He wasn't dreaming at the end, the top wobbled. Considering the slow zoom in on the top, if the filmmaker intended anyone to interpret the ending as dream, the top wouldn't have wobbled. The wobble was just to elicit groans from the audience as it started to fall, and made us start cranking our minds to figure out what happened.

    The simple and non-ambiguous ending is that he isn't in a dream because Saito shot him, waking him up. The last scene before Cobb woke up was Saito picking up a handgun. This was Cobb's plan all along. He sent Fischer back to reality after planting the idea (inception) that Fischer would be able to break up his father's empire. This allowed Cobb to live a life with his kids. Well, his creepy motherless kids.

    There are many more complicated theories, but I think this is the intended "obvious" ending.
  • by hawks5999 (588198) on Monday July 26 2010, @04:36PM (#33036228)

    ...about kicks, limbo and sedatives. Here is all the dialog about those topics for everyone who will "remember" a character saying something they never said:

    Sedation/Kicks:

    Arthur: Three layers down, dreams are going to collapse with the slightest disturbance
    Yusuf: Sedation. For sleep stable enough to create three layers of dreaming we'll have to combine it with extremely powerful sedatives.
    [Yusuf slaps a sleeping Arthur who doesn't wake up.]
    Yusuf: The compound we'll be using to share the dream creates a very clear connection between dreamers whilst actually accelerating brain function.
    Cobb: In other words, it gives us more time on each level.
    Yusuf: Brain function in the dream will be about twenty times normal. Now when you enter a dream within that dream the effect will be compounded. There's three dreams. 10 hours to...
    Eames: I'm sorry, math was never my strong subject. So h-how much time is that?
    Cobb: It's a week the first level down. Six months, the second level down. Third level is...
    Ariadne: 10 years!
    [Cobb nods]
    Ariadne: Who'd want to be stuck in a dream for 10 years?
    Yusuf: Depends on the dream.
    Arthur: So, once we've made the plant, how do we get out? I'm hoping you have something more elegant in mind than shooting me in the head?
    Cobb: Kick.
    Ariadne: What's a kick?
    Eames: This, Ariadne, would be a kick.
    [Eames nudges Arthur's chair that is on two legs and Arthur loses balance but catches himself before he falls.]
    Cobb: It's that feeling of falling you get that jolts you awake. It snaps you out of the dream.
    Arthur: Are we going to feel a kick with this kind of sedation?
    Yusuf: Ah! That's the clever part. I customized the sedative to leave inner ear function unimpaired. That way, however deep the sleep, the sleeper still feels falling...
    [Yusuf pushes a sleeping Arthur over in a chair. Arthur awakes]
    Yusuf: or tipping...
    [Yusuf tips a sleeping Arthur over in a chair. Arthur awakes]
    Cobb: The trick is to synchronize a kick that can penetrate all three levels.
    Arthur: We could use the musical countdown to synchronize the different kicks.

    Limbo:
    Cobb: Don't do that. Don't do that!
    Eames: He's in agony, I'm waking him up.
    Cobb: No. It won't wake him up.
    Eames: What do you mean it won't wake him up...
    Cobb: It won't wake him up.
    Eames: ...if we die in a dream we wake up.
    Yusuf: Not from this. We're too heavily sedated to wake up that way.
    Eames: Right. So what happens when we die?
    Cobb: We drop into limbo.
    Arthur: Are you serious?!
    Ariadne: Limbo?!
    Arthur: Unconstructed dream space.
    Ariadne: Well, what the hell is down there?
    Arthur: Just raw, infinite subconscious. Nothing is down there. Except for whatever might have been left behind by anyone sharing the dream who's been trapped there before. Which in our case is just you.
    Ariadne: Well, how long can we be stuck there?
    Yusuf: Can't even think about trying to escape until the sedation...
    Eames: How long?!
    Yusuf: Decades. It could be infinite. I don't know. Ask him. He's the one who's been there.
    Arthur: Let's get him upstairs.
    Saito:
    Eames: Great... Thank you. So now we are trapped in Fischer's mind battling his own private army and if we get killed we'll be lost in limbo till our brains turn to scrambled egg.

    More Limbo:
    Cobb: How's he doing?
    Ariadne: He's in a lot of pain.
    Cobb: When we get down to the lower levels, his pain will be less intense.
    Ariadne: And if he dies?
    Cobb: Worst case scenario: when he wakes up his mind is completely gone.
    Saito: Cobb. I'll still honor the arrangement.
    Cobb: I appreciate that Saito, but when you wake up you won't even remember that we had an arrangement. Limbo's going to become your reality, you're gonna be lost down there so long that you're going to become an old man...
    Saito: ...filled with regret...
    Cobb: ...waiting to die alone.
    Saito: No. I'll come back. And we'll be yo

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