7. Dont Over Rely On CGI
I watched Total Recall the other night and unbelievably this Schwarzenegger gore fest felt more realistic than anything weve got from the sci-fi genre over the intervening twenty years. The reason is simple (and its not because Arnold married to Sharon Stone is how I envision the typical every man); everything in the film is real. All the effects are made using prosthetics, miniatures and, gasp, real sets. Theres nothing inherently wrong with using CGI. Its an incredibly powerful tool and has helped many directors bring a vision to life when it would have been completely impossible before. The problem is overuse; lean on it too much and the film looks unreal. We live in the real world and can instinctively tell when something isn't textured or lit correctly. You want to strike a Jurassic Park like balance, rather than an Avatar level smorgasbord. Using only CGI to realise a world is like building a house with only a shovel. Nolan, unlike pretty much all of his contemporaries (even those who predate the computerised revolution), much prefers using genuine live action tools, using CG to enhance whats already there. To show the destruction of the hospital fortress in Inception, not only was a miniature used (seen above), but the actual full scale set was blown up to. Using computers is easier, but the results just dont compare.