What was the basic idea for telling a period story about magic?
NOLAN: What I wanted to do was throw the audience into an extraordinary world at the turn of the a new century, but make it a contemporary story, so they aren’t thinking of it as a period film. We looked at prints of Barry Lyndon, Chinatown, Angel Heart and some other classic movies. We also shot some very early tests in my dining room and back yard, and “pushed” a 500-speed film stock two and three stops to see how it reacted. I wanted to shoot The Prestige in natural light for that period, which transitions from candles and lanterns to the earliest electric lights. We shot most of the movie with a handheld camera, and designed settings that didn’t tie the actors down to hitting marks. We want it to feel loose and spontaneous with a sense of immediacy that makes people feel connected. We choose to shoot it in 35 mm anamorphic format with traditional timing at a film lab, and that produced beautiful cinematic images. QUESTION: You also made some extraordinary use of 65 mm film in IMAX
