How Did Christopher Nolan Make His First Movie?

David Senra, reading the book's account, says Christopher Nolan made his first movie on the weekends while working a full-time job, after film school turned him down.

After graduating, Nolan applied to the National Film and Television School in England and the Royal College of Art and was turned down by both. He immediately found work as a camera operator in a small video shop, making corporate videos and media training videos. The script for his own film was written for what he could do with really no resources, a camera, and money scraped together. He wrote it on a typewriter. The crew used the bonus from his cameraman job and shot only on weekends for almost a year. They rehearsed each scene carefully, almost like a play, so they could shoot it in one or two takes. They could afford to shoot and process between 10 to 15 minutes of footage a week. Every weekend everyone squeezed into the back of a taxi and headed to whatever location they had scrounged. They shot without permits, and Nolan operated the camera himself.

Weekday work paid for food when there was no money, and weekends went to the movie. A full-time schedule could finish the film in two months. Weekend shooting took a year.