Made for 20p and a pack of pork scratchings - with the scratchings offset against tax - Nolan's debut, Following, still stands up as a dark-hearted noir with a sting in the tail. If its on-the-hoof 16mm shoot is dwarfed these days by IMAX monoliths like Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, it attuned the director to the grit and guile needed to make movies. "What I took away from Following", recalls Nolan, "is how that process of getting together with your friends and shooting a film, and having to really concentrate on what exactly we can get in the frame, turned out to be exactly the same as on a 'real' film, however big the films got". This labour of love, ahem, followed on the heels of Bunuel-like short Doodlebug and was shot on Saturdays while Nolan, girlfriend/producer Emma Thomas and lead actor Jeremy Theobald held down jobs.