With Dunkirk, Interstellar, the Dark Knight movies, and Tenet, Nolan has mastered shooting action and wartime spectacle in Imax, but Oppenheimer, aside from a couple of admittedly large explosions, was a different type of movie — a historical drama filled with scientists and politicians arguing.
Oppenheimer was filmed in a combination of IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film. For the first time ever, sections were filmed in IMAX black and white analogue photography during backwards time shifting in the story.
Prints for Interstellar will include 70MM and Imax. The movie co-written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan follows a farmer and ex-NASA pilot who is tasked to pilot a spacecraft when Earth becomes uninhabitable in the future.
Regarded as an auteur filmmaker, Nolan is partial to elliptical editing, documentary-style lighting, hand-held camera work, natural settings, and real filming locations over studio work.
Robert Downey Jr. & Christopher Nolan Answer The Web's Most Searched Questions | WIRED
Why does Nolan like IMAX?
Imax was not only a lot bigger than ordinary movies, it had higher resolution. You could lose yourself in those images, which made the format ideal for immersive documentaries like Ring of Fire, The Living Sea, and, later, Blue Planet.
Using IMAX MSM 9802, Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2, and Hasselblad H5D-50c cameras alongside 35mm film, Nolan crafted awe-inspiring visuals that brought the vastness of space to life.
Nolan's dedication to practical effects and shooting on film sets him apart in an age dominated by CGI. He believes in the authenticity and visceral impact that practical elements bring to the screen, emphasizing the importance of tactile filmmaking.
Earlier in the Wired interview, Nolan explained why he doesn't use CGI in his films, which would have been problematic if he had directed The Avengers. “I find CGI, however versatile it is, it always tends to feel a little safe to me,” Nolan said.
Some of these directors are film loyalists who never switched to digital. Christopher Nolan shot all of his movies on film, including his latest movie Dunkirk (2017). Quentin Tarantino is another example of a film loyalist; he even states that he would stop making movies if he cannot shoot on film anymore.
History. A comparison between 35 mm and 15/70 mm negative areas. The IMAX film standard uses 70 mm film run through the projector horizontally. This technique produces an area that is about 8.3 times as large as the 35 mm format, and about 3.4 times as large as 70 mm film run through the projector vertically.
Although Inception was not shot using IMAX cameras (anamorphic widescreen 35mm, with occasional 65mm, stood in), the movie was later exhibited in the format. The depth of field and aspect ratio takes on an appropriately cavernous and sweeping air, even in the routine dialogue scenes.
IMAX 70mm is even bigger because film runs through the camera and projector horizontally, so each frame uses 15 perforations of the film compared to the vertical 5 perforations of regular 70mm. This makes the frames 3.4 times bigger than on 'standard' 70mm film.
In a departure from his usual filming style, Nolan employed a multi-camera setup for this stunt, using the four existing Imax cameras. However, when the truck flipped over, it unfortunately (but a bit inevitably) landed directly on one of those cameras, resulting in the complete destruction of this valuable equipment.
“Oppenheimer” was shot using some of the highest resolution film cameras that exist. Like “Dunkirk ” and “Tenet,” “Oppenheimer” was filmed entirely on large format film stock, meaning a combination of IMAX 65mm and Panavision 65mm (think David Lean/"Lawrence of Arabia"), that's then projected in 70mm.
Christopher Nolan on why he doesn't use a smartphone: "I'm easily distractible so I don't want to have access to the internet every time I'm bored. I do a lot of my best thinking in those kind of in-between moments that people now fill with online activity." There's incredible wisdom and self-restraint there.
Time is weapon. Nolan uses the concept of time inversion to showcase time itself as a powerful weapon, allowing characters to manipulate cause and effect and engage in mind-bending temporal battles that defy conventional logic.
Nolan believes that cinema has a unique ability to portray time and considers it the most fundamental part of the human experience. Nolan's films often depict time as a driving force in the literal plots and as a mortal obstacle for his characters, making time a spectacle in his work.
Nolan capitalized on the failures of the previous versions, tossing the source material and simply followed the characters and chain of events to their logical conclusions, providing a much-needed reboot with his more gritty and realistic version of Batman.
The process they developed used a single projector, a single camera, and a single large format screen. The first IMAX film was titled Tiger Child, and was shown at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan. In 1971, the first IMAX theater system was set up in Toronto at Ontario Place.
