Nolan shooting new Batman on IMAX

[NathanCoombs]

Does anyone have any idea why Nolan is shooting 'parts' of the new Batman film in IMAX?

 

What is the point of that? Surely you either go fully IMAX or DRM from 35mm? Any the scenes he was planning to shoot on IMAX are not even wide establishing shots.

[Nate Downes]

Specific look he demands? Close-ups for detail? Not 100% sure, but I am trusting Nolan here.

 

My original theory was that he wanted to shoot it all on IMAX but the studio would not let him. 8)

[Jan Weis]

Some parts of Spider-man 3 were also shot on 65mm. It seems as though advance special effects

might need high resolution in order to look as good as they do...Thats my own little theory. Or maybe

the directors & DoP just feel like experimenting with IMAX? What do I know...

[NathanCoombs]

Some parts of Spider-man 3 were also shot on 65mm. It seems as though advance special effects

might need high resolution in order to look as good as they do...Thats my own little theory. Or maybe

the directors & DoP just feel like experimenting with IMAX? What do I know...

 

From what I have heard it is not the SFX sequences he is shooting on IMAX.

[Jeff Clegg]

From a couple or articles I have read Nolan seems to want those scenes to "pop" in traditional theaters and expand to the full IMAX size in the IMAX theaters. Here's a quote from Nolan"

 

"In continuing the story of such a great icon, I'm thrilled to be able to expand the scope of the film, not just in terms of its story, but in giving Batman and the Joker the largest possible canvas on which to face off. No existing technology compares with the Imax format in terms of its ability to throw the audience into the action, and we're very proud and excited to use this technology in a way that no one has before."

 

And I cant find the article now, but I do remember him saying he would have like to shoot the whole thing in IMAX. I am very interested to see how the scenes will look in non IMAX theaters though.

[Tom Lowe]

I have to admit I don't really understand what he's trying to do with this, but it's Nolan, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

Is he literally saying that the screen size itself will expand in the middle of the movie?

[chuck colburn]

Remember Brainstorm? The sequences depiciting the "Brainstorm" effect were shot in 65mm. An early precursor to Trumbels 65mm 60f.p.s. Showscan process.

[Matt Pacini]

It's not rocket science, guys.

The larger the format, the better the quality, even if it's downrezzed to 35mm or whatever. You can tell the difference.

And if he's planning on it being shown in IMAX, then those scenes are going to look as good as it's possible for anything shot to look.

I'm guessing the obvious reason the whole film isn't being shot IMAX is the extreme cost. He probably asked for it, and was refused, so he got this compoimise.

[John Holland]

I am sure i read somewhere he was only using IMAX for close ups of the Joker first appearance .

[Tom Lowe]

It's not rocket science, guys.

The larger the format, the better the quality, even if it's downrezzed to 35mm or whatever. You can tell the difference.

And if he's planning on it being shown in IMAX, then those scenes are going to look as good as it's possible for anything shot to look.

I'm guessing the obvious reason the whole film isn't being shot IMAX is the extreme cost. He probably asked for it, and was refused, so he got this compoimise.

 

Why not just shoot the whole picture in 70mm? It should blow up OK for IMAX. That way the picture would have consistent quality.

[Patrick Cooper]

There's also the difference in aspect ratio between the two formats. Though I guess the IMAX footage will simply be cropped top and bottom to match the 35mm.

[Jeff Clegg]

Is he literally saying that the screen size itself will expand in the middle of the movie?

 

 

From the articles I have read this seems to be exactly what will happen in IMAX theaters. This could either be great or one of the more distracting things you could do to an audience...

[Matt Pacini]

Why not just shoot the whole picture in 70mm? It should blow up OK for IMAX. That way the picture would have consistent quality.

 

 

Because that's very expensive and more cumbersome (very large cameras) than shooting 35mm with a couple scenes in IMAX. Remember, NOBODY gets an unlimited budget. There's always someone telling you how much to spend, no matter who you are, even Speilberg.

[Tom Lowe]

Because that's very expensive and more cumbersome (very large cameras) than shooting 35mm with a couple scenes in IMAX. Remember, NOBODY gets an unlimited budget. There's always someone telling you how much to spend, no matter who you are, even Speilberg.

 

Generally speaking, just how expensive is 70mm compared to 35mm, when all the costs are added up?

[David Mullen ASC]

Generally speaking, just how expensive is 70mm compared to 35mm, when all the costs are added up?

 

You pay for real estate (physical amount of film). 5-perf 65mm is a little more than 2X the cost of 4-perf 35mm, since it is twice as wide and one-perf taller. So 15-perf 65mm (IMAX) is 6X the cost of 4-perf 35mm, 3X the cost of 5-perf 65mm (stock & processing.)

 

The camera rentals are not that bad actually -- you can probably rent a 5-perf 65mm Super Panavision-70 camera for less than a 35mm Panaflex Millenium. Don't know about IMAX cameras.

 

The post issues can get expensive though, finding a place to scan 65mm at 4K, 6K, or 8K, etc.

 

Personally, I'd be willing to shoot a feature in 5-perf 65mm and use less film if I had to, to help defray the costs.

[Chris Keth]

Generally speaking, just how expensive is 70mm compared to 35mm, when all the costs are added up?

 

To a production like this, it's relatively insignificant. In more concrete terms:

 

65mm is about 2 feet per second of running time, 35mm is one-and-a-quarter feet per second of running time.

 

There's 33% more footage used right there.

 

Then you must figure that it's twice as wide as 35mm film and therefore raw stock will be twice as much and there will also be about twice the processing costs due to double the surface area.

 

So I would say it's at least 233% as expensive as regular 4-perf 35mm. I have no clue if a 65mm camera package is more expensive to rent; it probably is. Plus, if you're going to shoot 65mm you probably want a better quality transfer than for 35mm so more cash there as well. If there will be film prints each of those and associated processing will be more than 35mm as well.

 

Edit: Boy you're quick David. I'm glad you filled in the gaps in my post such as different 65 formats and rental issues. I guess I'm not too surprised that panavision keeps their 65 packages reasonable. They probably don't get much use.

Edited June 27, 2007 by Chris Keth

[Nate Downes]

You pay for real estate (physical amount of film). 5-perf 65mm is a little more than 2X the cost of 4-perf 35mm, since it is twice as wide and one-perf taller. So 15-perf 65mm (IMAX) is 6X the cost of 4-perf 35mm, 3X the cost of 5-perf 65mm (stock & processing.)

 

The camera rentals are not that bad actually -- you can probably rent a 5-perf 65mm Super Panavision-70 camera for less than a 35mm Panaflex Millenium. Don't know about IMAX cameras.

 

The post issues can get expensive though, finding a place to scan 65mm at 4K, 6K, or 8K, etc.

 

Personally, I'd be willing to shoot a feature in 5-perf 65mm and use less film if I had to, to help defray the costs.

 

My only issue with 65mm is that my new 65mm cameras are 10-perf, not 5-perf. A pair of models for Japans "Astrovision" system based on my research.

 

Hoping Anandtech can get them converted to 5-perf tho.

[Tom Lowe]

You pay for real estate (physical amount of film). 5-perf 65mm is a little more than 2X the cost of 4-perf 35mm, since it is twice as wide and one-perf taller. So 15-perf 65mm (IMAX) is 6X the cost of 4-perf 35mm, 3X the cost of 5-perf 65mm (stock & processing.)

 

The camera rentals are not that bad actually -- you can probably rent a 5-perf 65mm Super Panavision-70 camera for less than a 35mm Panaflex Millenium. Don't know about IMAX cameras.

 

The post issues can get expensive though, finding a place to scan 65mm at 4K, 6K, or 8K, etc.

 

Personally, I'd be willing to shoot a feature in 5-perf 65mm and use less film if I had to, to help defray the costs.

 

Hmmm. I wonder why more features don't go for this? You would think that someone might give it a go at 65mm. Maybe for a big epic or something. The industry is well aware of how much cash can be raked in on IMAX screens with big-ticket feature films, and 5-perf 65mm film could probably be passed off to the public as "made for IMAX" or something like that. :lol: I assume the quality would be really good compared to a 35mm blow up?

 

I do understand how a 65mm 4K, 6K, or 8K scan would be super-duper expensive, though.

 

But with a budget of $150 million or whatever Batman is budgeted at, it seems like they could do: 5-perf 65mm>6K scan>DMR>print to 15-perf IMAX

 

In that case, what resolution would the special FX in done at?

Edited June 27, 2007 by Tom Lowe

[Jan Weis]

I'm sure that its not only the cost of the film that stopped it from being shot entirely on 65mm, wouldnt the crew have to be larger? Also dont forget that itll probably take more time to shoot it on 65mm.

 

/Jan

[Chris Keth]

Hmmm. I wonder why more features don't go for this? You would think that someone might give it a go at 65mm. Maybe for a big epic or something. The industry is well aware of how much cash can be raked in on IMAX screens with big-ticket feature films, and 5-perf 65mm film could probably be passed off to the public as "made for IMAX" or something like that. :lol: I assume the quality would be really good compared to a 35mm blow up?

 

I do understand how a 65mm 4K, 6K, or 8K scan would be super-duper expensive, though.

 

But with a budget of $150 million or whatever Batman is budgeted at, it seems like they could do: 5-perf 65mm>6K scan>DMR>print to 15-perf IMAX

 

In that case, what resolution would the special FX in done at?

 

15 perf 65mm I suppose. :blink:

[Tom Lowe]

15 perf 65mm I suppose. :blink:

 

well no, it wouldn't need to be 15 perf IMAX, because the shooting resolution is only 5-perf 65mm (in the scenario I was suggesting). I guess the effects would be done at whatever resolution the 65mm scan was done at. Then again, I don't know much about effects or how high the resolution can be done at. 2K? 4k? 6k?

Edited June 27, 2007 by Tom Lowe

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm sure that its not only the cost of the film that stopped it from being shot entirely on 65mm, wouldnt the crew have to be larger? Also dont forget that itll probably take more time to shoot it on 65mm.

 

/Jan

 

If they shot in 5-perf 65mm, I don't see why it would be much harder than 4-perf 35mm anamorphic, which is what they are shooting. The depth of field is similar, the cameras are a bit larger of course, so that might impact Steadicam shots, etc. but I don't think you'd have to make the crew larger.

 

When Storaro switched from 35mm anamorphic to 5-perf 65mm during the shoot for "Little Buddha", he said there wasn't really any change other than using a beefier dolly.

[Tom Lowe]

David, why do you think it is that no one is shooting features in 5-perf 65mm these days?

[David Mullen ASC]

David, why do you think it is that no one is shooting features in 5-perf 65mm these days?

 

Not enough people are convinced that the higher quality is worth it, especially since most movies are released in 35mm, only a couple in IMAX, and none in 5-perf 70mm anymore.

 

So anyone shooting in 5-perf 65mm would be finishing the movie to 35mm anamorphic, so would have to deal with scanning the 65mm negative, doing a D.I. at 4K minimal to be worth it, and recording out to 35mm anamorphic. They might not feel the improvement in quality will be significant enough in a 35mm print.

 

For a long time, we had the bigger movies released in 70mm (usually blow-ups from 35mm.) I think "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" (1989) had a record of a couple of hundred 70mm prints made. So the fact that many of the 1st run movie palaces had 70mm projection made it feasible for a few people to consider shooting in 65mm (like Branagh's "Hamlet", Ron Howard's "Far and Away", etc.)

 

Then digital sound on 35mm prints came along. You see, before that, a 70mm print was the only way to get 6-track sound on a release print. So now with digital sound, you could get multi-track sound on a 35mm release print. And the multiplexes could show them using a platter system which reduced the need for a trained projectionist (necessary for 70mm screenings.) So the exhibitors started to prefer to rent 35mm prints over 70mm prints and the studios decided it wasn't worth the bother of blowing up movies to 70mm anymore. James Cameron was one of the last to do it -- he practically had to pay for the 70mm prints of "Titanic" himself. He said there was zero interest in the studio for releasing the movie in 70mm.

 

So the recent IMAX-DMR blow-ups are sort of the resurrection of this idea, except that they are so expensive and there are so few IMAX theaters, that there are only three or so IMAX-DMR releases a year, usually of "Harry Potter" or "Spider-Man" movies. Certainly no indie movie is going to get to do it.

 

So without 5-perf 70mm release prints as an option for releasing a movie to at least the major cities, anyone shooting in 5-perf 65mm is looking at 35mm anamorphic prints, and it's hard to get as excited about shooting in 65mm for a 35mm release.

 

I don't know if you ever saw the 65mm screen test of Brandon Routh for "Superman Returns" -- Bryan Singer wanted to shoot that movie in 65mm, but when the studio refused, he went the other direction and used the Genesis (they wanted a somewhat grainless painted look for the movie.)

 

http://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynamic/Jul...turns/page1.php

http://digitalcontentproducer.com/mil/feat...roes/index.html

[Tom Lowe]

So Singer seems to be saying that he chose not to go with 65mm because there were no labs in Australia that could process it and because it's too bulky. But with a 200 million dollar budget, would it really have been "too expensive," as he claims? Did the studio say no, or did he decide not to use it, or was it a combination of both, I wonder?

 

I did manage to see Superman Returns on an IMAX screen, and it looked decent, but it surely would have been more impressive if shot in 65mm? I remember reading that the Superman Returns IMAX 3D showings raked in huge amounts of money for the picture, and shattered IMAX per-screen revenue records wherever it played. Maybe with this in mind, and with having an eye toward archiving films at the highest possible resolution to future-proof them, some major Hollywood films might once again turn to 65mm?

 

Well... at least let me dream about it. :lol: