Elmhurst native up for cinematography Oscar

“So, what happens if I win the Oscar?”

Wally Pfister pondered his own question for a moment and said, “I think it will feel like this enormous fulfillment. Obviously, it will be a really thrilling, incredible experience. It will be absolute gratification. I can't imagine any greater professional accolade more than that hunk of metal.”

Chances are good that the 49-year-old Elmhurst-born Pfister will win the Academy Award for cinematography Sunday night for his work on Christopher Nolan's meticulously crafted thriller “Inception.”

“I know I'll have a bottle of champagne with my wife,” Pfister said. “Hans Zimmer (the Oscar-nominated composer for ‘Inception') just sent me over this beautiful bottle of champagne when I won the ASC award. Maybe that's the bottle we'll crack open if I do get the Oscar.”

The ASC is the American Society of Cinematographers. It honored Pfister with its prestigious Outstanding Achievement Award earlier this month. The ASC also gave a lifetime achievement award to “True Grit” cinematographer Roger Deakins, Pfister's chief competition for the Oscar.

“Part of me will feel terrible if I get it (the Academy Award), because Roger has been nominated nine times,” Pfister said. “I'm not looking forward to that part if it, if that happens.”

“Inception” employs a Rubik's Cube plot. It begins with reality, then delves into three levels of dream worlds, each with a story that unfolds at the same time as the stories in the other dream worlds.

Pfister designed his camera work so that it helps viewers keep the different levels of reality straight.

“We tried to give the camera a lot of life, so a lot of the film was shot hand-held,” he said. “I also tried to create those separations in layers through photography in color and contrast as well.”

Pfister shot the first dream level — with the van driving through the streets of L.A. in the rain — in grainy blue colors.

He shot the second dream level — the hotel hallway where Joseph Gordon-Levitt battles baddies in zero gravity — in warm reds, yellows and oranges.

He shot the third dream level — an assault on a mountaintop fortress in Calgary — in stark whites.

“By breaking those three environments into different colors, I was able to give Chris a color palette where he could cut back and forth between these scenes and you immediately knew where you were after a couple of cuts,” Pfister said.

Pfister probably won extra respect from his fellow shooters when he and director Nolan stood their ground against Warner Bros.' insistence that “Inception” be retro-processed as a 3-D film.

“I really felt strongly about this,” he said. “I'm not a big fan of 3-D. It makes me queasy. I consider myself a storyteller. To me, it's more about story than gimmicks.

“I equate 3-D to my View-Master. It's cool to look at, but a bit of a distraction, because to me it actually separates and flattens those dimensions. Once it separates and flattens them, then it feels less real, and that works against Chris' and my philosophy to keep things real.”

(Note: Since this interview, unconfirmed reports say Nolan has consented to let “Inception” be converted into 3-D.)

The greatest innovation in “Inception” is Nolan's concept that dreams feel utterly real while you're in them. So, he and Pfister created their dream worlds in stark realism.

“It makes all the sense in the world,” he said. “Traditionally, going back to the '30s and '40s, whenever there's a dream sequence, there's a surreality that's forced on to the film. Chris' take on it was really original.”

To project a sense of documentarylike reality in “Inception,” Pfister fell back on his early experience as a news crew cameraman in New York City — where his family moved when he was still very young — and Washington D.C.

“There's a specific scene in ‘Inception' where a van drives into a warehouse space and they jump out and they start yelling at each other,” he said.

“I covered the whole thing like I would a documentary, which is what Chris wanted. I just kind of ran around with these guys, hand-held. It's very much a documentary-style.”

“Inception” was no small project for the filmmakers.

Nolan shot it in six countries, and Pfister — the only cinematographer whom Nolan has worked with since 2000's “Memento” — shot every scene himself.

Pfister, who shot “The Dark Knight” in Chicago, is currently working on “The Dark Knight Rises” in London. Significant portions of it are being photographed in IMAX format.

“Some might consider the IMAX system a gimmick,” he said. “But we (he and Nolan) believe that puts you more into the story. It's a more immersive way to experience film.”

Pfister, the son of parents who worked for CBS News in Chicago, is friends with two other film-shooting Chicagoans: Palatine High School grad Mauro Fiore, who won the Oscar last year for James Cameron's “Avatar,” and Janusz Kaminski, who won Oscars for Steven Spielberg's “Saving Private Ryan” and “Schindler's List.”

“We all worked on Roger Corman pictures together when we first went to Los Angeles,” Pfister said.

“Janus has been very loyal to Columbia College. He's taken interns from there. He's come back and spoken there. He's been really terrific about it.

“All I can do is come back and film Batman movies.”

“The 83rd Annual Academy Awards”

Ÿ Airs at 7 p.m. today on ABC 7

Ÿ Red carpet fashion coverage begins at 5 p.m. on both E! and the TV Guide Network and at 6 p.m. on ABC