...let him be able to kneel down when necessary.

And he also really wanted Christian to be able to move his head more...

...and not do the superhero movement...

...of turning the shoulders and the head at once, you know.

It had a really high-tech inside mixed with a wet suit.

You actually saw the inner workings of this suit.

It's kind of carbon-fiber plates.

It protects the core of your body from falling below a certain temperature.

He goes into the workshop and decides to spray it with a latex black spray.

Which removes the heat signature.

So if you look with night glasses, which detect body heat...

...this refuses to allow you to see it.

And as he linkers with it, you see how he develops it from that...

...into the black Batsuit.

Once it was actually getting made for me...

...there was all sorts of interesting processes that you go through...

...where you have to have your whole body molded.

A plaster Christian Bale is then produced out of that mold.

And as soon as the concept sculpt was approved...

...then it's literally broken down and remolded...

...into the different parts of the costume.

The cowl, the torso, the legs, they all have to be sculpted individually...

...from that original one piece.

Getting the foam as black as possible was a problem...

...as that reduces the durability.

We're not painting the foam. It's kind of the foam as it is.

When those molds have been injected, they're cooked in a big oven.

And then they come out of those molds. They're wet.

It's just a very efficient way...

...is just to put it through an old Victorian housemaids mangle...

...just to extract the water.

The piece is taken out and dried. They're then prepared for trimming.

The mold doesn't produce, like, a cookie-cutter kind of effect.

There are flashings...

...these sort of waste areas on the edges of the foam that have to be trimmed back...

...before it's glued down to the suit.

And they're trimmed very patiently by our wonderful girls in Art Trimming.

It has to appear as if it's cut by laser, and not by hand.

It's not the most comfortable thing to wear. I mean, it's foam latex. It's hot.

But on the first day shooting, Christian managed to wear it all day...

...including the cowl and the gloves...

...not really wanting to take it off...

...so I think the level of comfort has improved somewhat as well.

It gives you this huge neck, you know, kind of like a panther.

This real kind of feral look, you know...

...as if you're gonna pounce on somebody all the time.

I was surprised at how intimidating he becomes...

...and how much it changes him.

He really channels this other character.

When he's confronting an individual that he wants to take down...

...he kind of ceases to be human.

There's naturally, after six months of filming...

...a kind of a love-hate relationship with the thing...

...because you get headaches in that thing, you know.

And I kind of say to myself, "Use it.“

You know, the guy's meant to be kind of fierce.

When you get a headache you feel fierce anyway, you know.

You got no time for anybody, you're impatient.

So I just said to myself, “Use it," you know.

And I just put up with it, you know. This is--

This is a hell of an honor, really, getting to wear this.

We did prototype using actual velvet fabric.

One. Go.

We got quickly bogged down because it got waterlogged...

wand, you know, became sort of too heavy.

So we invented our own fabric.

Which is the finest, finest parachute silk...

...which is a nylon, so it's waterproof, and then flocked...

...which means you shoot little tiny hairs into it...

...so it ends up as if it's a velvet pile.

So it's got the animal feeling on the outside...

...and the waterproof nature and the lightweight-mess so that it flies.

I was doing a lot of research with the Department of Defense...

...and there's something called “memory fabric" that they're experimenting with now.

It's very soft and supple, but when an electrical current is applied to it...

...it can take on a rigid shape.