1. Rotating Room - Inception (2010).
While some of you might associate the words "rotating room" with
N'Sync, the rest of us see them and think
Inception. Director Christopher Nolan is famous for insisting against CGI in all of his movies, but
Inception, more than any other of his movies, showcases what the man can accomplish without its benefit. For the now infamous rotating room scene, Nolan just created the above contraption, similar to a gargantuan dryer, and sent the actors through a cycle. Not without them first going through two weeks of special training, of course. If either of the actors got behind on the rotation, they could have been in for a 25-foot drop. So, it goes without saying that it took some time to get used to, and the actors probably came out of it battered and bruised, all in the name of art. That is what this is: art. It takes a certain level of creativity and ingenuity in order to think up solutions like this, as opposed to sending the scene off to be created by some render farm. This is why Nolan's unforeseen popularity is such a boon for film. Big budget blockbusters needn't have that fresh off the render farm look to them that movies like
The Amazing Spider-Man have to be successful. Computers don't have to be the filmmaker's lifeblood; effects can be achieved without them that rival, or even beat, those that can be had with them. Now, if more directors would just take their cues from Nolan and follow suit, maybe, just maybe, overblown CGI messes, such as Transformers, could be avoided, or at least lessened. In the words of the movie
Holes: "If only, if only, the woodpecker sighs..."
