Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Dark Knight - Parts of movie to be filmed in IMAX

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Topic: The Dark Knight - Parts of movie to be filmed in IMAX

Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."

Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 05-29-2007 09:50 AM

Link to News Article

quote:
First look: Enter the Joker — in the IMAX format

By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — All directors promise that their sequels will be bigger and flashier than the predecessors'. But Christopher Nolan doesn't mess around.

The director's sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, will become the first feature film to be partly shot in the IMAX format, an expensive and cumbersome process that typically is the province of documentaries and short films.

Nolan will shoot four action sequences — including the introduction of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger — on IMAX.

The move is one of Hollywood's most pronounced steps yet in its embrace of IMAX theaters, which are increasingly showing commercial fare on their giant screens.

"There's simply nothing like seeing a movie that way," Nolan says. "It's more immersive for the audience. I wish I could shoot the entire thing this way."

Typically, the feature films that play in IMAX theaters are simply stretched out to fill the enormous screens. That can dilute the picture quality and give the movie a wide, squat look.

Shooting on IMAX, Nolan says, will have a twofold effect. The four scenes will fill the IMAX screens, some of which are eight stories high. And in traditional theaters, the scenes will appear more vivid (think high-definition television over standard).

Don't expect many movies to follow suit. Only 280 IMAX theaters are in operation worldwide, and fewer than 100 show feature films.

And shooting in the format is difficult. IMAX film, which is 10 times the size of standard film stock, is costly and must be shot using bulky cameras.

And "they're loud," Nolan says. "We had to figure a way to eliminate the sound so we could shoot dialogue."

In a rarity for Hollywood, the payoff isn't primarily financial, so far. "It doesn't have a huge effect yet on the money you bring in," says Chris Aronson, a distribution chief with 20th Century Fox, which carried Night at the Museum on IMAX. "But it does help make your movie more of an event."

For Nolan, IMAX makes the moviegoing experience unique again.

"You can't do this on any home theater," Nolan says. "Batman has some of the most extraordinary characters in pop culture. We wanted the Joker to have the grandest entrance possible.

"I figured if you could take an IMAX camera to Mount Everest or outer space, you could use it in a feature movie."

I applaud Christopher Nolan for this move. It's certainly a step in the right direction. I assume the rest of the movie will be filmed in anamorphic 35mm (like Batman Begins and Nolan's other movies).

I think some of the same kind of awe and scale Nolan mentions could have been achieved if the entire movie had been shot in 5/65mm format. Cameras like the Arri 765 are much quieter and easier to use than a hulking IMAX camera. It would also make for a more seamless transition to IMAX theaters. A normal 5/70 projector could even be used instead of striking much more expensive 15/70 prints.

It should be mentioned Jean-Jacques Annaud filmed Wings of Courage in IMAX back in 1995. That wasn't a feature length movie (it ran 40 minutes in the U.S. and 50 minutes in France), but it's one of the first dramatic works to be shot in IMAX.

Facing the long term prospect of much higher resolution home video playback formats as well as the possibility of increasing resolution of theatrical digital projectors, it is in Hollywood's best interest to at least keep shooting movies on 35mm and start moving toward using large format processes again. It is very expensive to produce and market a major movie. It would only seem prudent for Hollywood to try to future proof its products.