THE DARK KNIGHT Concept Art Featuring Two-Face & Joker's Bank Robbery Gang

While posting these rarely seen pieces of concept art from "The Dark Knight," that were created by Rob Bliss ("Watchmen"), I realized there was a segment of Christopher Nolan's recent Q&A session that was pertinent and that I hadn't yet posted. To catch you up, Nolan was at the Water Reade Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center as a special guest of the Film Society, he discussed working with Heath Ledger and specifically the filming of the opening scene where we are first introduced to Batman's nemesis. You can either watch the video below or just read the transcript, both are provided.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: "Well the first sequence we actually shot was the IMAX prologue, which was the bank robbery, where he has the mask on. I just really wanted him to enjoy that not worry about too much–you know the stakes weren’t too high. You see his character in that scene is like Buster Keaton or like Chaplin, it’s just a magical character through every gesture, I just loved what he did there. Then there is the moment where he pulls his mask off, which was tremendous, but it was the first time we shot with the IMAX camera and when we looked at the dailies it was all a bit out of focus. So I rescheduled it, and I got this horrified phone call from him saying, “What have I done wrong?” This was the first time he really showed us the voice and what he was going to do, and we want to reshoot it. I told him no, it was great, but I don’t think he ever quite believed me actually.

He re-shot it very graciously because he was a tremendous professional, but in the end we actually used the out of focus one because it was magic, it just had that little thing. The first thing we really did shoot on the real schedule though was the interrogation scene and we took our time shooting it and he was very grateful. We shot it in England with this very gruff British crew and they all worked with Jack Nicholson and thought, “He’s the only Joker,” and they didn’t quote know who this guy was and what he was doing and afterwards they all looked at him differently and were all in, it was a great thing for him."

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