Christopher Nolan is a contemporary filmmaker most of us are familiar with he has directed movies which are equally as intriguing as visually stunning at times however Nolan's philosophy has a lot to teach us creative people so today we're going to sit down and dive into the creative lessons we can take from filmmaker Christopher Nolan [Music] first and foremost I wanted to say that Nolan is most definitely a filmmaker I find to always be very Innovative in his approach in his use of many different Tools in film such as sound music color art Direction and other areas of film that create then an inventive and mindbending storytelling this of course couldn't be achieved without some key collaborators he has worked with very closely throughout the years namely cinematographers ho van hoima and W Fister or editor Jennifer lame and ho van HOA said something on Roger dickens's podcast that catapults us to our first lesson and he said quote a lot of people say that about Chris he has a Precision to him in storytelling but one of the biggest things that I learned when I started to work with him and one of the things I admire about him is that he is an extremely intuitive filmmaking he is extremely percept able to the energy that is being given to you so in essence our first lesson is to trust our intuition or instincts there's several examples throughout the course of his career where trusting his intuition really paid off for instance in Oppenheimer the silence during the bomb sequence really fitted that scene and made it more impactful and when casting for instance in the dark night the director made a bold Choice by casting Heath Legend as Joker which garnered quite a lot of criticism but in spite of this this performance is often recalled as one of Ledger's best performances ever and when we move this into the photography World which obviously is a main interest here on channel we have quite a lot of photographers that have talked about this and that have highlighted this important of trusting your gut in particular Lizette Modell whom we've talked about here on the channel already and she Tau photography for many many years and She always reminded her students to trust their Instincts by saying something along the lines of quote shoot when you feel it in your gut now I also found a very important quote by Nolan that links instincts with understanding quote one of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself and the way I interpret this leads us to lesson number two and that is that when we work based on instincts and when we plan things we don't always have to fully understand the logic behind every single thing that we do so by trusting our intuition which is the ability to understand something instinctively without using our reasoning that some things just will be because they have to because we Define it so by Instinct and what is Instinct a reflex or an innate response to a certain stimulation and since we're talking about understanding our third lesson is based on this quote every film should have its own world a logic and a feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing and we can take so much from this so we'll start with the need to balance reason with emotion and transporting this to photography let's think of this we can have a photo book that has the most aesthetically pleasing images but if there's no emotion being communicated it's almost as if something's missing and vice versa we can have a book or project that conveys a lot of ideas and emotions but if there's no logical sequencing behind it it might be hard for the viewers to perceive what we're trying to communicate let's talk about a specific example in Nolan's career the film Inception Inception released in 2010 Starley Ardo DiCaprio as a thief who steals information by infiltrating the dreams and subconscious of his victims Inception is an extremely complex film that constantly questions what is real and what is not that constantly weighs in on reality and the necessity to escape and dream but if the characters and story lines weren't able to convey emotion then the film would have lost a lot of its impact to the audience now on one of my recent videos um here on the channel about Ripley um I actually talked about the how important or how this show is so good at giving information to an audience or subtracting it from the audience so it's good in a sense that you know when you watch the show you're not given you're given exactly the amount of information to kind of keep you hooked um into seeing how the characters are going to react into how the plot's going to develop and one of the most important lessons as well I I believe in my opinion okay this is just my opinion here on this video is my personal perception of things and and and you know what the things that Christopher noan has said um in interviews and so on and so one of the things that he said was actually about limiting the information that we give to an audience and how that is important um and in this case he didn't call it really the information he call it um limiting our Exposition this is the Tatiana and she's a photographer and one night while sleeping Tatiana dreamt of a place no not that place no not that place either oh yes a place where she could buy all the camera gear she needed lenses tripods filters all of them with a 6-month warranty and the best part about it all is that this was a place where she could not only buy stuff but also trade or sell her own used gear so she browsed and browsed all night making lists adding to a never- ending basket until she woke up so she jumped out of bed and she was ready to type it out but what was the name of it she obsessed with it for days trying to find Clues until suddenly she began seeing the clues everywhere and then she spelled it out because she remembered it it was mppb so why is this important well let me ask you how many art pieces namely books movies Etc are ruined by an overex of a specific thing or topic I can think of Plenty but I also think that when we give too much away to viewers especially at early stages of a photo book or a movie if you will it leads to a disengagement from the story or storytelling or whatever idea we're trying to convey because one either it becomes too predictable or two it just loses interest and people stop being curious and hooked to what we're trying to say so if you're working on a photo book or visual project that involves layers that go beyond the naked eye that involves a more complex storytelling don't spend too much time explaining things or giving too many visual clues that deter you from the purpose these are actually serving images should speak for themselves and you have to trust or have a degree trust in your viewers or audience uh of your book or movie or even readers if you're a writer that they can see beyond the you know naked eye and the way they'll do this is because your visual language is ultimately going to suggest it and talking about storytelling through Nolan's movies we can understand that he is an individual that likes to take risks and experiment with storytelling in particular amongst other things of course examples of this for instance would be how Nolan has worked with several nonlinear narrative structures in his movies where he often has us jumping back and forth in time for instance momento Mory creating what I like to call Visual puzzles that we the audience are invited to participate in and trying to put the pieces together ourselves and he said something in an interview that stuck with me quote if you have an idea flip it now this might not work for everyone of course and that's fair but even by taking this as a simple exercise it can help us expand our minds exercise our critical thinking and also showcasing the possibilities for the story we want to tell which can be helpful if you ever get stuck or uninspired you can go back to where you flipped your initial idea and see the many possibilities or directions you can take now speaking of uh um you know getting stuck or uninspired this kind of infers a certain word and that word is failure and I've talked about failure extensively here on a channel how do we deal with it I made a whole video dedicated to it different types of failure so if you're stuck or you feel like you're failing or what not give that video a watch but I wanted to bring this here because Nolan has a really interesting concept I feel like it might not be applicable to everybody but I think it's an interesting concept so try and give it try and be open at least to see if that would work with you or not and what he says is quote assume it will be a failure and then start working to prevent that honestly I think this can actually be a really good lesson not just in terms of building a project but in our path as creatives flipping this and applying it to a more General perspective say my photography career for instance what if I fail okay I can fail but how can I prevent that well by practicing by studying by journaling my experiences by learning from others by remaining open as a person and as a creative most importantly so if we ask ourselves this in whatever we do it might be an interesting revers psychology exercise that can lead to motivation and some answers that we might potentially be seeking now I actually found this quote that I find super inspirational um it's for filmmakers but I think if we subtract the word film or lowbudget film as you'll see and we probably apply photography music whatever you're doing in life it makes so much sense and it actually makes sense to what the core of this channel is learning with others being inspired and whatnot so you know I'm going to thank you now for watching I'm going to thank now mpb for kindly sponsoring today's video because we're going to quote or we're going to finish the video with this quote everybody's situation is unique and the one thing I've learned is that instead of copying someone else's model for a lowbudget film you really have to look at what you've got available and see how you can tell the story you want to tell using the things that you have available and around you [Music] wanting your love to come to me feeling it slow