This past week Dallas held its annual Dallas International Film Festival. Three-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Wally Pfister was presented with the prestigious Star Award for his contribution to movies. Pfister has become Christopher Nolan’s go-to Director of Photography, working on all of Nolan’s films. Cinematical caught up with Pfister for an interview after a screening of Memento, where Pfister also gave the lucky attendees a sneak-peek at Inception; the same three-minute footage that was shown at ShoWest in Las Vegas last month.

Nolan has been openly skeptical on the current 3-D craze, as he thinks that using 65-70mm film to be the most immersive and high-quality way to make movies. As most of you know, several key sequences in The Dark Knight was shot using 70mm film via IMAX cameras. Remember that breathtaking opening shot where the camera zooms in on the downtown skyscraper before the bank robbery sequence? It was jaw-dropping.

Nolan and Pfister could only use IMAX cameras on certain scenes that had no dialog as they are notoriously loud, heavy and expensive. The Dark Knight experiment with the technology has long-been rumored to have been a test for the eventual use of IMAX cameras to film Batman 3 entirely in the format.  Here’s what Pfister had to say about that:

“What Chris and I have talked about is doing something cool and something interesting,” Pfister said. “[Director] Brad Bird was [saying] ‘you’ve got to shoot the whole thing in IMAX!’ I was like, yeah, I’ve talked to Chris about that.”

As for 3-D, Pfister and Nolan are on the same page. The cinematographer said that he had used a 3-D camera on The Dark Knight for one shot, just to try it out, but it seems that it’s not quite his style:

“I did it for one shot of The Dark Knight because he said, you have to say you did it, and literally I had this strapped to my shoulder and I was carrying it. But I think Chris is game for doing something interesting like that, Lord knows that the 3-D fad might pass by the time that summer comes around.”

With the shooting in 3-D/post-conversion controversy, and the President of Warner Bros. saying that all future DC Comics adaptations will be in 3-D, Nolan and Pfister are standing strong and staying true to the way they want to make Batman 3:

“But I know one thing about the film that Chris is adamant about is that he wants to shoot on film,” Pfister said. “He doesn’t want to shoot on video, and I’m the same way.”

So, like I exclaimed in the title of this post, THANK GOD! Even if it’s their new business model, why would Warner Bros. want to tamper with something that’s perfect the way it is? Batman 3 is going to destroy the box-office, even if it was shot with Ashton Kutcher’s Coolpix camera. Nolan has the power and clout to say “NO!” to the WB execs who desperately want Batman 3 to be in 3-D. I think it’s quite easy to guess that if they had to choose between Nolan and 3-D, they’d choose Nolan in a heartbeat.

What Do You Think? Discuss.