Dreams- Inception

(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/)

Inception 2010 
A skilled extractor is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible.

in·cep·tion

noun

1.

beginning; start; commencement.

2.

British .

a.

the act of graduating or earning a university degree,usually a master's or doctor's degree, especially atCambridge University.

b.

the graduation ceremony; commencement.

3.

(in science fiction) the act of instilling an idea into someone's mind by entering his or her dreams.

Director and Writer: Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan
Nolan's films are rooted in philosophical, sociological and ethical concepts and ideas, exploring human morality, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. Experimentation with metafictive elements, temporal shifts, solipsistic perspectives, nonlinear storytelling and the analogous relationship between the visual language and narrative elements, permeate his entire body of work. Described as "one of the most innovative storytellers and image makers at work in movies today".

"I'm fascinated by our subjective perception of reality, that we are all stuck in a very singular point of view, a singular perspective on what we all agree to be an objective reality, and movies are one of the ways in which we try to see things from the same point of view".

His characters are often emotionally disturbed and morally ambiguous, facing the fears and anxieties ofloneliness, guilt, jealousy, and greed; in addition to the larger themes of corruption and conspiracy. By grounding "everyday neurosis – our everyday sort of fears and hopes for ourselves" in a heightened reality, Nolan makes them more accessible to a universal audience.

In Inception, Nolan was inspired by lucid dreaming and dream incubation. The film's characters try to embed an idea in a person's mind without their knowledge, similar to Freud's theories that the unconscious influences one's behavior without their knowledge. Most of the film takes place in interconnected dream worlds; this creates a framework where actions in the real (or dream) worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of emergence, shifting across levels as the characters navigate it.

Shortly after finishing Insomnia (2002), Nolan wrote an 80-page treatment about "dream stealers" envisioning a horror film inspired by lucid dreaming and presented the idea to Warner Bros. Feeling he needed to have more experience with large-scale film production, Nolan retired the project and instead worked on Batman Begins(2005), The Prestige (2006), and The Dark Knight (2008). He spent six months revising the script before Warner Bros. purchased it in February 2009. Inception was filmed in six countries and four continents, beginning in Tokyo on June 19, 2009, and finishing in Canada on November 22, 2009. Its official budget was US $160 million; a cost which was split between Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures. Nolan's reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film's $100 million in advertising expenditure, with most of the publicity involving viral marketing.

Cast and their Characters

	Leonardo DiCaprio	...	Cobb
	Joseph Gordon-Levitt	...	Arthur
	Ellen Page	...	Ariadne
	Tom Hardy	...	Eames
	Ken Watanabe	...	Saito
	Dileep Rao	...	Yusuf
	Cillian Murphy	...	Robert Fischer
	Tom Berenger	...	Browning
	Marion Cotillard	...	Mal
	Pete Postlethwaite	...	Maurice Fischer
	Michael Caine	...	Miles
	Lukas Haas	...	Nash

Storyline

Dom Cobb is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible-inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming.

Synopsis : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/synopsis?ref_=ttpl_pl_syn

A young man, exhausted and delirious, washes up on a beach, looking up momentarily to see two young children (Claire Geare and Magnus Nolan) playing in the sand before he passes out. An armed guard (Tohoru Masamune) discovers him and has him brought to a large, seaside palace where the proprietor, an elderly Japanese man, is told of the stranger's arrival. The only objects found on him were a handgun and a brass top. The old man allows the stranger entry. He is dragged in and given some food which he struggles to eat as the old man picks up the brass top and says, "You remind me of someone...a man I met in a half remembered dream. He was possessed of some radical notions." The stranger looks up in realization as the scene shifts...

Dreams and Reality

In Inception, Nolan wanted to explore "the idea of people sharing a dream space...That gives you the ability to access somebody's unconscious mind. What would that be used and abused for?" The majority of the film's plot takes place in these interconnected dream worlds. This structure creates a framework where actions in the real or dream worlds ripple across others. The dream is always in a state of production, and shifts across the levels as the characters navigate it.

Penrose stairs are incorporated into the film as an example of the impossible objects that can be created in lucid dream worlds.

Nolan himself said, "I tried to work that idea of manipulation and management of a conscious dream being a skill that these people have. Really the script is based on those common, very basic experiences and concepts, and where can those take you? And the only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else."

Box Office

Budget

$160,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend

$62,785,337 (USA) (18 July 2010) (3,792 Screens)
£5,912,814 (UK) (18 July 2010) (452 Screens)
PHP 21,589,780 (Philippines) (18 July 2010) (70 Screens)
RUR 215,963,613 (Russia) (25 July 2010) (895 Screens)

Trivia

Characters
Music
Director
Production
Dream Symbolism

• The name of the character Cobb references Henry N. Cobb, an American architect notable for designing skyscrapers. The world Cobb and Mal made in Limbo consists mostly of skyscrapers.
• If you take the first letters of the main characters' names - Dom, Robert, Eames, Arthur, Mal and Saito - they spell "Dreams". If you add Peter, Ariadne and Yusuf, the whole makes "Dreams Pay", which is what they do for a mind thief.
• "Yusuf" is the Arabic form of "Joseph", the Biblical figure from Genesis 37-50, who had the gift of interpreting dreams. He was sold out by his brothers to slavery. Through his gift of dream interpretation he helped Pharaoh to prepare for the disaster of the "seven lean years" and was rewarded as a result. The same story is also told in the Koran.
• In an interview with 'Entertainment Weekly', Christopher Nolan explained that he based roles of the Inception team similar to roles that are used in filmmaking - Cobb is the director, Arthur is the producer, Ariadne is the production designer, Eames is the actor, Saito is the studio, and Fischer is the audience. "In trying to write a team-based creative process, I wrote the one I know," said Nolan.
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed all but one of his own stunts during the fight scene in the spinning hallway.
• The slow, gloomy, blaring trombones in the main theme of the film score are actually based on an extremely slowed down version of the fast, high pitched trumpets in the beginning of the Édith Piaf song "Non, je ne regrette rien," which is used as a plot device in the film. Furthermore, when music is heard by someone who is currently within a dream, the music is perceived as slowed down. Thus, the main theme of the film score is almost exactly what the beginning of "Non, je ne regrette rien" would sound like to a dreamer. This thematic device is brought to its logical conclusion when the song plays at the end of the credits, signaling that the audience is about to 'wake up' from the film.
• The running time of 2 hours 28 min is a reference to the original length of Édith Piaf's song "Non, je ne regrette rien", which lasts (on its first recorded edition) 2 minutes 28 seconds.
• When Cobb gave Ariadne the puzzle test, Ariadne's final solution was a diagram of King Minos' Labyrinth. Ariadne is the name of King Minos' daughter in the same mythology.
• Marion Cotillard's character is called 'Mal', short for name 'Malorie', a name derived from French word 'malheur', meaning misfortune or unhappiness. The shorter version 'mal' means wrong/bad or evil (when a noun) in French, as well as some other Latin-based languages.
• The fifth Christopher Nolan movie (out of the seven) to enter the IMDb Top 250, along with Memento (2000), Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight(2008).
• Dom Cobb's main objective is to get Home. His name, Dom, literally means 'home' in most Slavic languages. The root word "*dom" comes from the Latin word "Domus". Words like 'Domesticated' and 'Domicile' all share the same "*dom" root.
• Christopher Nolan first pitched the film to Warner Bros. after the completion of his third feature, Insomnia (2002), and was met with approval from the studio. However, it was not yet written at the time, and Nolan determined that rather than writing it as an assignment, it would be more suitable to his working style if he wrote it as a spec script and then presented it to the studio whenever it was completed. So he went off to write it, thinking it would take "a couple of months", but it ultimately took nearly eight years.
• In spite of the films extensive surreal effects sequences, the majority special effects throughout the film, such as the Penrose stairs, rotating hallway, mountain avalanche, and zero gravity sequences, were created through practical methods, not through the use of computer generated imagery. The film only has around 500 visual effect shots, as opposed to most other visual effects epics which can have upwards of 2000 VFX shots.
• The running time of the movie INCEPTION in DVD is exactly 8888 seconds.
• During production, details of the film's plot were kept secret. Christopher Nolan, who wrote the script, cryptically described it as a contemporary sci-fi action thriller "set within the architecture of the mind."
• Just like Christopher Nolan's previous movie The Dark Knight (2008), no second unit team was hired for making the movie. All the shots were filmed by Nolan himself with his usual DP Wally Pfister.
• When explaining why he thinks implanting an idea is not possible, Arthur says "don't think about elephants" to actually make Saito think of them and thus "insert" an idea into his mind. The line is a reference to the title of a famous cognitive semantics book, 'Don't Think of an Elephant' by George Lakoff. The book describes conceptual framing, the use of certain words to literally insert certain ideas about a subject into the listener's mind in a surreptitious way, e.g. implanting the idea that taxes are a bad thing by using the phrase "tax relief."
• A series of numbers keeps appearing: the number that Fischer gives Cobb/Arthur is 528491, The two hotel rooms used are rooms 528 and 491, the number that Eames (as a woman) gives to Fischer is 528-491, the combination to the strongroom starts with 52, and the combination to the safe is 528-491. This is all to reinforce the importance of the number throughout the film.
• In the city scene on the first level of the dream with Fischer, the state motto on the license plates of the cars reads "The Alternate State".
• The exterior of Fischer's snow fortress is based on, and actually contains some elements of, the Geisel Library at the University of California, San Diego, designed by famed futurist architect William L. Pereira.
• The barrel chairs in Saito's dining room were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1937 for Wingspread, the Herbert Johnson house in Wisconsin. Saito sits at the head of the table in a copy of the Willow Chair designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1903. This further plays on the Architect theme that is prevalent throughout the movie.
• While shooting the snowmobile chase there were intermittent wind gusts. In order to preserve continuity during the takes without natural wind the camera helicopter was used to blow snow into frame.
• The "Penrose stairs" (with a woman perpetually picking up papers) that Arthur shows Ariadne is a reference to a lithograph print by the Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher. The print is usually called "Ascending and Descending" or "The Infinite Staircase", and was first printed in March 1960; Escher is well-known for his drawings exploring optical illusions and real architectural, mathematical, and philosophical principles rendered in fantastical ways.
• The character of Eames is named after Charles Eames and Ray Eames, a married couple well known in the fields of furniture design, buildings architecture and avant-garde / documentary filmmaking.
• There are 399 questions asked in the film, including "tag questions" (i.e. - "Subconscious is motivated by emotion, right?"). Cobb leads all characters with 113, followed by Ariadne (93), then Arthur (44).
• Mal's totem, a spinning top, is (probably) a reference to the Clifford D. Simak's story 'Ring Around the Sun' where the spinning top is used as a way to skip from one parallel Earth to another (by way of helping characters to concentrate).
• Not counting flashbacks, Cobb's wedding ring only appears in scenes where he is dreaming. Many times in the film, the scene cuts away just as Cobb's left hand comes into view.
• Ariadne's hair is in a tight bun in the hotel sequence so filmmakers didn't have to figure out how her hair should move in zero-gravity.

Inception's première was held in London on July 8, 2010; its wide release to both conventional and IMAX theaters began on July 16, 2010. A box office success, Inception has grossed over $800 million worldwide becoming the 40th-highest-grossing film of all time. The home video market also had strong results, with $68 million in DVD sales. Inception has received wide critical acclaim and numerous critics have praised its originality, cast, score, and visual effects. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects, and was nominated for four more: Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Screenplay.

Inception App 

http://inceptiontheapp.com

Other graphic design work surrounding Inception

http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/241/7/d/inception_infographic_by_neilmakesart-d2x5vou.png

I like the way the levels of the final dream have been visualised as it is quite confusing, I also like the icons used for the characters, and the involvement of the characters within the levels.

Visualisation of the totem's and which character they are related to. 

A Totem is an object that is used to test if oneself is in one's own reality (dream or non-dream) and not in another person's dream. A totem has a specially modified weight, balance, or feel in the real world but in a dream of someone who does not know it well, the characteristics of the totem will very likely be off. Any ordinary object which has been in some way modified to affect its balance, weight, or feel will work as a totem.

This is the single most important item in the movie.

It is a common misconception that the totem is used by the owner to figure out if he’s dreaming or not. That is not entirely accurate.

This is what the totem does: the owner uses their unique totem to find out if they’re in someone else’s dream or not.

It does not necessarily mean that they’re dreaming themselves.

The sole purpose of the totem is to avoid being trapped in someone else’s dream. This is why it’s important never to reveal the totem and how it works to anyone else. Only the owner is supposed to know exactly how the totem will function in reality and how it might react differently in a dream.

Arthur’s totem is the loaded die. Only he knows exactly how the die works. Even though he told Ariadne what his totem was, he never revealed to her how it works. In this case, if he suspects he’s in someone else’s dream he could roll the die and the result will prove to him whether or not he’s in reality.

Ariadne’s totem is a bishop that is hollowed out. It’s never explained in the film how her totem works.

The main totem in the film is Dom Cobb’s.

3ftDeep

I like the pop-up nature of this piece and the adaptation of the city skyline which is prominent within the film. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jordan_a/4838180478

The colour red is very strong in this and the lines relate to the machine that is used within the film to endure dreams. The silhouette is of the main character Cobb - (Leonardo DiCaprio) at the start of the film he is on a chair and falls back into the bath to awake himself. 

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Inception-explain-the-movie/1957699

Again another another attempt at trying to explain the levels of the dreams in the film, also involving the characters, a good way to show / explain the film by making it visual.

| Ricky Linn http://designspiration.net/image/1779806030046/

The use of the faces of the characters to represent the levels is interesting. Again the skyscrapers are present. And the saying 'your mind is the scene of the crime'

This piece again is representing the levels of the final dream. I think that this is easier to follow than the previous, you have to be carful when using 3D elements in describing- visually the levels of the dream.

I then watched the film, I had watched it before and so I knew quite a bit about the film. And this also meant I could really watch it from another perspective after doing all the research swell, I felt like I would be able to pick up on more things. I took notes on the film whilst watching. 

I found that I learnt more and understood more about the film and interpreted it differently, I also sketched some of the elements in the film so I knew what I had written.