Ever since he was young, Christopher Nolan always knew he wanted to be a filmmaker.
"I was about 12 or 13 [when I decided to do this for a living] and I just became struck by the idea of a director," Nolan audience at the Tribeca Film Festival Monday night.
Like many great directors before, Nolan started making his own films on a Super 8 camera. As someone who came of age in the 1970s, one of his biggest influence was "Star Wars."
"That came out in the '70s and I'd been experimenting using Super 8 films and stuff. And then from the second I saw 'Star Wars' everything was space ships and science-fiction," Nolan said.
Nolan remarked that the "imaginatively titled" series of Super 8 films was called "Space Wars."
As a kid, Nolan felt he had achieved something great with "Space Wars." However, he recently revisited it and was surprised at what he saw.
"I actually showed a couple of them to my kids recently because I got them transferred on to DVD," said Nolan, "and I was a little disappointed at how bad it was."
During the candid conversation, Nolan described how every film he made was a stepping stone to something bigger. Without "Space Wars," he may never have been ready for his $6,000 feature film debut "Following." Without "Following," there would have been no "Memento" and with no "Memento," there would be no Nolan-helmed "Dark Knight" trilogy.
"That's the weird thing about a filmmaker's process ... or my process ... I sort of remembered it the way I wanted it to be," Nolan said, "coming back to your old films...they tend to change over time."
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