The studio was dimly lit. Opposite Duke, Leonardo DiCaprio stood with his back to the main camera, seemingly busy with something. Then Scarlett Johansson’s figure entered the frame. She glanced at Leonardo’s back and walked toward him. "Are you planning to enter the dream alone?" she took the initiative to ask. "No, no..." Leonardo turned around and immediately denied it. "I was just doing some experiments, didn’t expect anyone to be here, so..." Scarlett first looked down at the little gadget in her hand, then showed it to Leonardo. "I’m actually working on my totem." "Let me see," Leonardo reached into his pocket and walked over. But Scarlett quickly put it away. Leonardo just smiled, "You’re learning fast." "This way of distinguishing between dream and reality is quite elegant," Scarlett nodded lightly. "Was it your idea?" "No, actually..." Leonardo moved a bit closer. "It was Sally’s idea." Since the female lead wasn’t French, Duke had accordingly changed the name. Leonardo took out a spinning top, placed it in his palm so Scarlett could see it clearly, and explained, "In dreams, the top spins without stopping." He spun the top on the table beside him. "It just keeps spinning." "I heard from Arthur that he passed away?" Scarlett asked. Leonardo changed the subject, "How’s the maze design going?" Duke stepped away from the camera and shouted, "Cut!" Scarlett and Leonardo looked over. It was clear the first take didn’t pass, but this scene wasn’t difficult. They didn’t understand what went wrong. "Hannah, Kirk, John..." Duke called out the names of three department heads in one breath, then waved, "Come over here." The take didn’t pass, not because of Scarlett and Leonardo’s performance, but due to a lighting issue. Ever since Zack Snyder left Duke’s team to become a director, lighting for the crew had been handled by Kirk Lundell. Film can be described as a photochemical dream, with highly complex lighting demands. Although much of the brightness can be adjusted in post-production, the lighting used on set is equally crucial. Lighting commonly understood as color grading is essential for two main reasons: First, scenes shot at different times and under different lighting conditions inevitably have discrepancies. If left unprocessed and directly printed, the edited clips would look inconsistent. Second, creators often aim for a specific visual style for artistic purposes. The original English term for lighting is "Color Timing." From the literal meaning, many may wonder what this process has to do with "timing." This dates back to the black-and-white film era. Since there was no color involvement, lighting merely dealt with controlling the brightness of the image. What the color timer did was adjust and record the exposure time required for each shot—hence the term "timing." When color technology emerged, the term "timing" persisted, and even in today’s digital era, it is still used. Nowadays, lighting is done entirely in digital environments, allowing color timers to work with much higher efficiency and freedom. In recent years, electronic color timing technology has developed rapidly. Using the electronic circuits of digital color grading machines, color timers can directly preview results and work quickly. Compared to traditional lighting, this method is much more efficient. Get full chapters from 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭·𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢·𝗇𝗲𝘵 Duke’s crew has always used the most advanced technology in the industry. He is not Christopher Nolan, still lingering in the indie film circle, insisting on traditional and time-consuming methods. Spending the least amount of money and time to achieve the best effect that’s what Duke wants. He doesn’t care whether the method is traditional or involves new technology. The lighting issue was resolved quickly. In the following days of filming, Duke used both new and traditional methods. The first stunning shot in the original Inception was when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Dom Cobb, was pushed into a bathtub, triggering the first dream crossover. Cobb’s sensation of water in the upper-level world was transmitted into the dream below, creating a surreal effect the entire Japanese palace was flooded. This sensory-impacting scene was achieved through practical effects by Christopher Nolan. His crew built an enormous interior palace set and stored a total of 5,000 gallons of water in 26 water tanks carefully arranged around the windows. Driven by mechanical devices, the tanks were opened in sequence to create the "flooded palace" scene. But such set construction and filming were extremely time- and cost-consuming. Duke thought about it briefly and abandoned the idea of live-action shooting. During his filming, Leonardo stood in front of a green screen. The flooding palace scene was filmed using miniature models and later composited with CGI. According to professional calculations, this method saved at least half of the preparation time and one-third of the filming budget. With Duke’s style, there was no reason not to choose this approach. In some aspects, however, Duke did heavily rely on traditional techniques. For example, in Arthur’s corridor fight scene, interference from the upper-level dream caused gravity to shift repeatedly in the second-level dream. In fact, these effects were all created using real-world physical laws during filming. During the shoot, Joseph Gordon-Levitt walked on walls and ceilings in a hotel corridor. This was possible because the entire corridor set was built inside a massive rotating "gyroscope" structure. When the corridor rotated and tilted, actors suspended by wires only had to adjust their balance naturally, while fixed cameras made it appear as though gravity itself was shifting. To ensure actor safety in the rotating set, many props including the walls were made from soft materials. Many of the props used for the dream scenes were also built practically by the production team. First is the Penrose staircase. Anyone with some knowledge of optical illusions should be familiar with the famous perspective paradox known as the "Penrose Staircase." As a conceptual infinitely looping staircase, it only works in two dimensions; when tested in three-dimensional space, it becomes a self-contradictory structure. Inspired by illusion master Escher’s rendering of the Penrose staircase, the special effects team physically constructed a version inside a soundstage at Warner Studios that appears to be an infinitely looping enclosed staircase when viewed from a specific angle. Of course, from any other angle, the illusion breaks instantly, as the structure is not truly enclosed. It was precisely this feature that allowed Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character Arthur to clearly explain the maze phenomenon of dreams to Scarlett’s character Adrienne and to the audience. Next is the memory elevator. Dom Cobb built an elevator in his dream that could access thirteen floors, used to store his memories. In filming, this memory elevator was made up of individual sets, all of which were real props built by the crew. For example, the elevator on the beach at the top floor during Duke’s shoot was built by digging a large pit on Nancy Josephson’s private beach. Then there’s the subconscious train. Perhaps the most extravagant prop the crew prepared for filming was the train that appears in the first level of the dream. This train was a real, tangible prop. This massive beast was driven by a truck and several trailers inside, while the outside was covered with a fiberglass train shell to create the illusion of a real locomotive. Finally, computer CGI replaced the vehicle’s wheels with train wheels, leaving nothing to pick apart. In Hollywood, nearly all large-scale commercial films are shot using a combination of computer effects and practical sets. A blockbuster with an investment of over a hundred million dollars that doesn’t use CGI simply doesn’t exist. Not to mention that Duke’s version of Inception uses over 2,000 CGI effect shots take Christopher Nolan for instance. Many people think of Nolan as a complete film purist and highly resistant even disdainful towards digital technology. In a certain sense, this is true, but it’s not the full picture. In fact, CGI was extensively and even critically used in the production of Nolan’s original Inception. The folding Paris sequence is one of the film’s signature shots, and it’s clearly CGI-generated even without diving into the details. Beyond that, the film used more than 600 CGI shots! The folding Paris is also one of the signature visuals of Duke’s version of the film. In his hands, this shot would be created with 100% digital effects. As early as the pre-production phase, ILM’s special effects team arrived in Paris, where they photographed the area at T-size scale for use as visual assets capturing everything from building exteriors to interior rooms, with precise detail down to the smallest elements. These high-resolution images were ultimately used as "baked textures" applied to the 3D models, aiming to make the virtual scene appear realistic and believable. But having realistic textures alone is far from enough. The entire scene needed to account for numerous variables, including light sources the scene takes place during the day, and simulating daylight is extremely difficult—shadow casting, perspective, and also how to hide inconsistencies like building overlaps or penetration. Although Duke planned for the scene of the city folding to be split into several shots in the film, ILM’s initial version of the effect was actually a complete, unbroken shot. According to Duke’s instructions, the effects team could have "cheated" by taking advantage of the shot transitions, but instead, they rose to the challenge and delivered a stunningly better result than expected no repeated blocks, with attention paid even to small details like streetlamps and curtains, and even the interior layout of buildings.