IN a world where CGI is the go-to for visual effects in film, director Christopher Nolan revealed that he went in a different direction for a sequence in his upcoming movie that saw the production crew destroy a real 747 airplane.

The director behind acclaimed movies like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Dunkirk” will drop his latest film, “Tenet,” a science-fiction spy thriller, in July. The release date makes it one of the first major summer blockbuster releases since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered countless theaters across the world.

Despite the risky timing, Nolan is currently promoting the movie by revealing that he really destroyed a plane.

“I planned to do it using miniatures and set-piece builds and a combination of visual effects and all the rest,” said Nolan.

However, once the filmmaker did some scouting and found a massive array of old planes in California, he got an idea.

“We started to run the numbers. It became apparent that it would actually be moe efficient to buy a real plane of the real size, and perform this sequence for real in camera, rather than build miniatures or go the CG route,” he said.

While plot details for the film are scarce, Nolan has made a name for himself by rejecting CGI where most directors would include it. Notably, he drew praise in 2010 for constructing a full hallway that could rotate upside down in order to shoot a fight scene for “Inception” rather than relying on CGI or wires.

“It’s a kind of impulse buying, I suppose,” adds Nolan. “But we kind of did, and it worked very well, with Scott Fisher, our special-effects supervisor, and Nathan Crowley, the production designer, figuring out how to pull off this big sequence in camera. It was a very exciting thing.”(SD-Agencies)