“We’d start hitting each other and smashing into the ice and then suddenly hear a big crack! right through the middle of the lake,” recalled Bale. “We’d all stand dead still and look around. Then the safety guys would shout, ‘Okay, get off! Get off!’ Thankfully, we got the whole thing in that one day, because by the next, there was no ice whatsoever. It had melted into a lake again.”160
The first day of shooting in the uncomfortable environment was grueling, but Nolan was pleased with the results, as was Forman, who said that fighting with Samurai swords “takes a lot of energy and Christian and Liam both put one hundred percent into their performances. They did very well, both with the Keysi and the sword fighting.”161
Although they had gotten a difficult sequence out of the way right at the start, the crew still faced a tough time in Iceland. They still had to film Bruce Wayne’s trek to the monastery, some of which was captured during a raging storm with 75-mile- per-hour winds that literally blew crewmembers off their feet.162 The crew built a facade of the monastery gate to film Bruce Wayne’s arrival at the compound. Wide shots of the monastery, including the shots of it exploding, were accomplished with a model.163 After capturing shots of Bruce Wayne rescuing Ducard from falling over an icy cliff, the crew returned to the warmer climes of Shepperton Studios.
The bedrooms and an interior corridor of Wayne Manor were constructed on stages at Shepperton, as was the massive Batcave set.164 As designed by Nathan Crowley, the hero’s headquarters was approximately 250 feet long, 120 feet wide and 40 feet high, and housed 24 water pumps used to send 12,000 gallons of water through the set every minute, bringing to life the waterfall, a river and the dank, dripping cave walls.165 “The Batcave has previously appeared to be a very elaborately and improbably constructed place,” said Nolan. “In Batman Begins, we show the Batcave as a cavern that’s damp and filthy and full of bats, and we see Bruce Wayne installing trestle tables, stringing lights and moving equipment in himself, building up the world of the Batcave that will eventually come to be.”166
When Michael Caine first walked onto the enormous Batcave set, he had a déjà vu moment. It was the same stage where, nearly fifty years earlier, he’d acted in his first film, A Hill in Korea (1956). “I had eight lines in the picture,” said Caine, “and I screwed up six of them. And it was on this stage that I said my very first line in a movie.” Looking around the set now, Caine noticed the bats nestled up above. Turning to Christopher Nolan, he said, “Those are great false bats in the ceiling.” Nolan replied, “They’re not false, Michael. They’re real. They’re asleep.” Caine said, “Well, don’t wake ‘em up, whatever you do.”167
Christian Bale was soon filming his first scenes as Batman, wearing the Batsuit. “Inevitably, after six months of being in the suit, you get used to it, but that first day, I felt like a panther, like some kind of wild animal,” said Bale. “I don’t know if anybody else was looking at me that way, and I don’t know if I appeared quite as ferocious as that, but it made me want to run and jump at people and beat the crap out of them!”168 Bale created a voice for Batman that was more gruff than his refined and suave Bruce Wayne voice. “It makes sense in terms of identity,” said Bale, “but I also saw it as a way for him to channel the clarity of mind that he must have had as a young boy when he first declared that he would get revenge. It’s difficult to maintain that throughout your life. Things become memories, and it takes a great deal of energy to maintain that sharpness of emotion. So I figured everything about Batman should be different—the look, the voice—so Bruce is able to have his own life. If he was just Bruce Wayne in a Batsuit, that would be a bit ridiculous—like any of us getting in a Batsuit and thinking we could go out on the town and intimidate people. You have to really go for it in every way, and for me that involved taking on a slightly beast-like voice.”169 Interestingly, Bale’s Batman voice is similar to the raspy voice used by actor Christopher Stapleton in the final scenes of The Death of Batman (2003), the unauthorized fan film associate-produced two years earlier by his sister, Louise.
To help him stay in character, Bale had his own special character bibles. “I would refer to the different graphic novels,” he said. “I had them on the set with me all the time just ‘cause I loved the imagery of it so much.”170
Batman Begins was the first feature film to utilize Cardington, a former airship hangar located approximately an hour north of London, as a production soundstage. The bulk of the film’s Gotham City exterior sets were built inside Cardington’s huge Hangar No. 2, a structure 812 feet long and 180 feet high at its apex, four times higher than the average soundstage.171
“Filming at Cardington gave the film a level of realism and scope that would not have been possible if we had been limited to using a normal soundstage,” said Emma Thomas. “We also had more control over the environment, so we could do stunts involving fire and high falls without having to worry about winds and weather conditions. We were able to shoot a lot of what would have been night work in the day, because of this extraordinary facility.”172
Cardington was home to Crowley’s set for the Narrows, a decrepit and treacherous slum located on an island in the center of Gotham and connected to the city by a series of bridges. Inspired by New York’s Roosevelt Island, the freeways of Tokyo and the old Kowloon city in Hong Kong, Crowley worked to create a design that felt claustrophobic, as if the Narrows is penned inside the city and “freeways are running down Fifth Avenue.”173
As opposed to previous Batman films, where computer-generated images were used to show Batman soaring through the skies of Gotham, shots of Batman using his rigid high-tech cape to fly through the Gotham skies in Batman Begins were achieved without computer trickery. “We didn’t do any green screen work at all,” said director of photography Wally Pfister.174 “The flying was done using real wires and real cameras. We put a camera on a wire and flew Batman 800 feet across the stage. That encapsulates Chris’ philosophy of filmmaking: Let’s do it for real.”175
Likewise, the Gotham cityscape was achieved through the use of miniatures rather than CGI.176 “The peak of visual effects is to produce shots that look real, and the best way you can do that is to shoot as much of it for real as possible,” said visual effects supervisor Dan Glass.177
Miniatures were used for one other flying sequence, where the Batmobile jumps from one building to another and drives across several rooftops, smashing roof tiles as it goes. Although technically a miniature, the rooftop set was still huge. “We built the miniature rooftop set at one-third scale, so the span was approximately 100 by 150 feet,” said Glass.178 “Working at that kind of scale, things behave close to reality. So when the car drives across a roof made of tiles, they break and fall like they would in real life. This enabled us to shoot the sequence as if it were a full-size action sequence.”179
Nolan wanted to set Batman Begins apart from the previous films in the franchise by filming on actual locations, grounding the film in reality as much as possible.180 Consequently, dock scenes were filmed at Canary Wharf in mid-March, followed by filming of interiors and exteriors of Wayne Manor at Mentmore Towers, an estate built north of London by the Rothschilds in the 1850s.181 At the end of April, exterior scenes of the courtroom were filmed at University College, London. Filming continued at Cardington and Shepperton through the end of July.
While shooting continued in England, Warner Bros. struck a sour note with Batfans at the July 2004 San Diego Comic Con. The company came to the annual convention to promote Batman Begins but offered no footage from the film. Suspicious fans thought the lack of a film reel meant there must be problems with the movie.182 Fans had to be content with just a video postcard from director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale, and appearances by screenwriter David Goyer and actor Cillian Murphy, who by that point had wrapped up his scenes.183
The rest of the cast and crew were soon on their way to America; on July 31, location filming began in Chicago, Illinois. Having partly inspired Gotham C
ity, Chicago proved an ideal place to shoot the film’s exteriors. The Chicago Board of Trade on 171 West Jackson became the Wayne Corp. Building, parts of the climactic monorail scene were filmed on LaSalle Street, and the car chase through the streets of Gotham where the Batmobile outmaneuvers and crushes police cars was staged on Lower Wacker Drive, just south of the Chicago River, with 30 stunt drivers participating.184 Amstutz highway, a two-mile stretch of highway that was never completed and does not flow into public traffic, was utilized for portions of the chase taking place on the Gotham freeway.185
“Chris really wanted the chase to have a loose, raw feel, something somewhere between a modern-day action-chase sequence with all the technology that we use today and something with the raw, gritty feeling of The French Connection,” said director of photography Wally Pfister. “That’s why I was determined not to use a digital Batmobile—Chicago has these amazing subterranean streets, and I really wanted to get it out there.”186
Producer Larry Franco was amazed at how receptive Chicago was to the filming. “The cooperation we got in the city of Chicago was better than any film company has probably ever had in any city,” said Franco. “We closed down city blocks and did some extraordinary work with helicopters filming the Batmobile and police cars rolling over vehicles in the middle of the street.”187
To capture the action at ground level, Wally Pfister chased the Batmobile through the streets in an innovative new camera car, the AMG Mercedes ML camera car,188 outfitted with the Ultimate Arm and Lev Head, a gyro-stabilized head on a robotically-controlled arm controlled from inside the camera car with joysticks. The Lev Head allowed the camera operator to shoot images of such clarity and stability that it was used for approximately eighty percent of the chase scene.189 Nolan and Pfister rode inside the ML, watching the built-in monitors and communicating with the stunt drivers through an open microphone, allowing them to make real-time adjustments in the speed and handling of the cars.190
“The ML was the best tool we’ve ever had for a car chase,” said stunt coordinator Paul Jennings. “It meant that we didn’t have to pull back the speed of the Batmobile, because it could keep up. It was invaluable in terms of getting shots that you couldn’t dream of doing with a normal tracking vehicle. There are shots in the film that I’m sure people will think were sped up, but they’re not—they were done for real.”191
“You very rarely drive a car more than 50 or 60 miles an hour in a chase sequence,” said Pfister. “We had the Batmobile up to 105 miles an hour. It was amazing to us, and it nearly outran a helicopter—particularly flying sideways, the helicopter couldn’t even keep up with the Batmobile.”192
“It really flies,” said Bale. “They couldn’t keep up with it, the camera cars... They were having to ask, ‘Can you please slow down a little bit? ‘Cause we just can’t keep up with the thing.’”
Maneuvering the Batmobile was no easy feat. The vehicle doesn’t provide the driver with much peripheral vision, so a video system was installed with cameras mounted on top of the vehicle facing backwards and just over the driver’s eye-line to match his viewpoint, allowing the driver, if necessary, to pilot the car using just the monitors. “It’s a handful,” said the car’s builder, Andy Smith. “It looks like it’s very responsive but there’s a lot of physical effort involved, a lot of wheel twirling in that cockpit to keep it under control.”193 Stunt driver George Cottle, who doubled for Christian Bale in most of the driving sequence, recalled, “I would spend all day driving the Batmobile and then get in my car to go home, and it would take me a while to adapt to driving a normal car. The whole body of the Batmobile rolls and flexes from side to side, making the vehicle up to six inches wider on either side because of the flexing movement.”194
Other shots were captured using the Ultimate Arm and Lev Head attached to a motorcycle sidecar, and with an additional camera mounted to the front of a police car driven by one of the stunt men and kept as close as possible to the hard-charging action.195
The unusual-looking Batmobile elicited stunned looks from gawkers. Christian Bale recalled that there were a couple of times when, instead of loading the vehicle on the truck to go from one location to another a very short distance away, it was considered more efficient to just drive the Batmobile there, through city streets. “And you see that thing just going down the street, and everybody’s stopping and looking,” said Bale. “’There was even this guy who crashed into it. This poor drunken guy who didn’t have a license, who said he got so panicked when he saw the car, he thought aliens were landing. And he put the pedal to the metal. I wasn’t in it; it was the stunt driver driving it at the time. Put the pedal to the metal and sideswiped the Batmobile. So, you know, it has this effect upon people.”
Bale was allowed to get behind the wheel for a few shots. “It is a fantastic drive,” he said. “Y’know, you get in it and—I’ve always been a fan of motorbikes and not so much of cars. You get in that and you can’t help but love cars because also you see all of the inner workings inside of it. You can see the functionality of everything that’s going on. And it screams, y’know?...It screams in your ear. And you’ve got the smell and everything inside of it. It’s elating. My heart was pounding every time I’d step out of that thing.”196
Katie Holmes, who also got to experience riding in the Batmobile, said “I finally understood men’s fascinations with cars after I saw the Batmobile in action. I thought, ‘Okay, I get it. This is awesome!’ I have the privilege of riding in it in the movie and it’s even better on the inside.”197
According to producer Emma Thomas, the amazing auto was, at one point, planned to meet its demise. “For a long time,” said Thomas, “there was actually going to be a moment at the end of the movie where we were going to destroy the Batmobile. But in the end we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do it—the Batmobile had become like a character to us.”198
Director Christopher Nolan was thrilled with the work of his special effects and stunt teams. “The challenge was really to the stunt co-coordinator and the physical effects guys,” he said. “And they rose to it admirably, and I think they actually—in a day and age where so much is done with computers—they really rose to the opportunity; they really enjoyed the opportunity of getting back to what they’re best at, which is performing amazing feats and building amazing things that can actually work in the real world. For me, once I sort of set that all in motion, it was really just a question of filming it and trying to be disciplined about not listening to the little voice in your ear that says, ‘Well, you could do this with visual effects, you can leave it for now, you can move on and not perfect it.’”199
The crew returned to England to capture final shots of Batman and Gordon from the film’s climax. Nolan filmed a teaser ending that could set up a possible sequel, though he said, “It’s also really just there, for me, to send the audience out of the theatre with a sense of possibility and a sense of excitement about where these characters could go. I certainly share that sense and have certainly talked and thought, in vague terms, about how you could follow on from this film...But at the same time, it’s very important that this film stand on its own.”200 When the 128 days of shooting were all over, Nolan felt pleased with what he had accomplished. For a director used to making films on a much smaller scale and budget, he said, “The most challenging aspect of making this film was the sheer scope of it.”201
As the film entered post-production, visual effects supervisors Dan Glass and Janek Sirrs and London-based special effects house Moving Picture Co. created computer-generated bats for the opening shot, where the massing of the bat colony momentarily suggests the Bat symbol, and created a colony to swirl around Christian Bale when Bruce Wayne faces his fear and accepts what he must become.202 Christopher Nolan wanted to use the computer effects sparingly, to enhance but not overwhelm the realism he strove to create for the film. “I’d seen a huge proliferation of computer effects in films over the last 10 years,” said Nolan. “I think the au
dience has become a little jaded. And in a weird way, this has started to make films seem smaller.” The final film had 557 special effects shots; Nolan said that most of the work done by special effects supervisor Janek Sirrs was clean-up, removing visible wires from the rigs of flying stuntmen.203
Hans Zimmer was hired to compose the score, but when he realized that he had too many other projects on his plate and had overcommitted himself, he reached out to fellow composer James Newton Howard to work with him. Christopher Nolan agreed to the unusual arrangement, saying, “For two composers of such caliber to work together was very exciting. Hans was very honest with me. He said he didn’t know what the nature of the collaboration would be. But they were clearly excited about working together.”204
Nolan did ask, however, that they not simply divide the work in half. In the end, both composers had a hand in the music for every scene. They worked in two different rooms in a London studio with a corridor in between, but kept the doors open. “I would start playing on the piano and get an idea for a tune and his hand would slip in between my arms on the keys,” said Zimmer.205
With different work habits, the composers had to adapt to each other. In the end, the very disciplined Howard conformed to Zimmer’s more chaotic method of working long hours. Howard also had to get used to Zimmer’s synthesizer-driven electronic music. “He’s a much better player than I am, while I’m a better programmer,” said Zimmer. “We didn’t give up on our own styles, but we ended up coming up with something different.” In the end, both men enjoyed the collaboration. “Our relationship is one of friends, of brothers in arms who know the weight of the unwritten tune, the desperation of not having found the great tune,” said Zimmer. “We’re passionate about music. We started off as good friends and ended up as great friends.”206
Six months before the film’s release, David Gritten in The New York Times noted that Batman Begins, even though it was set in America and had American characters, was largely a British film. The director was born in London, most of the crew were British, and eight of the ten leading roles were played by British actors. Christian Bale was Welsh, Liam Neeson and Cillian Murphy hailed from Ireland, and Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson and Linus Roache (who played Thomas Wayne, Bruce’s father) were all from Britain. Also, aside from some exteriors filmed in Chicago, Gotham City was largely recreated at Cardington in the English countryside.207
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