Watch The Dunkirk Spirit, a behind the scenes of Dunkirk film that shows why Dunkirk has been nominated for 8 Oscars
Christopher Nolan’s movie Dunkirk has been nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director.
If you have not seen Dunkirk as yet (and why haven’t you, because it is easily the best movie of 2017), or even if you have and were suitably blown away by it, you should watch a 28-minute short film called The Dunkirk Spirit.
A film that features the director, producers, and actors of Dunkirk, and people like First Assistant Director Nilo Otero, composer Hans Zimmer and Dutch Director of Photography Hoyte van Hoytema talking about how Dunkirk was made, and what makes the film so special.
Things like the direction, the cinematography, the actors that were chosen and the music.
“To me, the Dunkirk spirit means people facing insurmountable odds and overcoming them,” starts off the film’s producer, and wife of Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas.
Thomas went on to talk about Dunkirk‘s uniqueness, and Christopher Nolan’s direction of it, “Chris could have made a completely conventional version of this film. But Chris did something truly revolutionary with it — almost an art movie, disguised as a studio movie”.
Something you will see from the opening scene of the movie. A scene that, while obviously the opening of what is going to be an utter behemoth of a blockbuster film, is still as stunningly beautifully framed and filmed as in any art movie.
To make the film that beautiful and that ‘artistic’, Dunkirk was shot using large format IMAX film, which gives the movie a much higher resolution than many modern films, as well as an immense feeling of awe, grandeur and desolation.
In The Dunkirk Spirit, Director of Photography Hoyte van Hoytema talks about the difficulty of using IMAX cameras for most of the film’s scenes, due to their enormous size and weight.
The story itself is shot from the viewpoint of the people involved. Something Nolan said he decided to do as he felt it would have so much more impact.
“The soldiers on the beach, the civilians coming over in boats to help, the Spitfire pilots in the air above. Part of that is finding the reality of what it was really like to be there, and the idea of telling the story from a very subjective part of view. Putting yourself into the mind of a person involved. That becomes key to telling the story to me”.
And the music composed by the phenomenal composer Hans Zimmer gives the film such a feeling of intensity, as Emma Thomas says, you are “exhausted” by the time it ends.
Watch The Dunkirk Spirit below for behind the scenes footage of Dunkirk, and to learn how the film was created and why.
In behind the scenes segments, you will even see a fake Spitfire plane launch off a barge, then accidentally crash into the water and sink. With an IMAX camera still attached to it.
The Dunkirk Spirit is a lovely little film that will make you desperate to watch Dunkirk if you haven’t already. And if, like me, you have seen the film, you will find yourself making sure you watch it again as soon as possible just to re-experience it all to see exactly what everyone in the short film was talking about.
- K-drama Black Knight in 3rd WEEK in Netflix Top 10 – more than 79.4 MILLION HOURS watched so far - June 3, 2023
- Listen to LIVE’s ‘Lightning Crashes’ from Deadloch, Ep 2 as Vanessa sings it at the funeral - June 3, 2023
- Dr. Romantic 3 Ep 11 ratings STEADY as drama is #1 SHOW on Korean TV on Friday - June 3, 2023