IMAX: Part 4

The second SANDDE film for IMAX, Cyberworld 3D, was a feature-length film that combined repurposed 2D computer animation converted to IMAX3D and original SANDDE content. It can also be described as an IMAX fever dream. Directed by Colin Davies and Elaine Despins and co-produced by Neishaw Ali, Sally Dundas, Steven Hoban, Roman Kroitor, Don MacBain, Hugh Murray, and Norm Stangl, the film was a highlight reel of notable work in computer graphics for popular entertainment, including segments from the Dreamworks film Ants (1998) and Matt Groening’s television series, The Simpsons. these segments were presented by a character named Phig, who functions as like a tour guide in the SANDDE-animated world while also fighting off a trio of bug-like creatures whose presence is jeopardizing the world’s computer code infrastructure. 

Before Cyberworld 3D, Hugh Murray had been with Imax Corporation for over ten years.  Murray had designed the optical chain for the first IMAX 3D camera. Before joining Imax Corporation, Murray worked as a physicist for Xerox at their Canadian research center, where he worked on various projects, from image analysis to graphical software development. A native of Scotland, Murray earned his degree in Physics from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He began his career helping to design the optics that split incoming images into the three primary colors for early color television cameras. 

Colin Davies, the director behind the original CG segments Phig and the CyberWorld 3D environment, had been an animation director for over four years and worked in film and television production for nine. He started directing animation at Mainframe Entertainment and worked on numerous episodes from Beast Wars' first and second seasons (1996). 

Norm Stangl, around the time of Cyberworld 3D, had produced animation and visual effects for over 25 years.  Spin Productions was founded in 1992 by Norm, and from there, Spin Entertainment was founded in 1999 with Neishaw Ali (formally Girdharry) and their partners, Nigel McGrath and Steven Lewis. Spin Entertainment was a sister company to Spin Productions. Spin Entertainment helped create the character designs for the film and the film's central character, Phig, and the CyberWorld 3D environment section. 

Spin Entertainment was known then for offering design, animation, and visual effects to the Broadcast and Motion Picture communities. Its core team consisted of over twenty employees based in Toronto. The editing and post-production for CyberWorld 3D were also completed in Toronto, and the filmmakers asked composer Hummie Mann to compose the film score. 

Spin Entertainment, now known as Spin VFX, used preexisting footage from other movies and shows and built an original 3D narrative around it. Some of the segments reused in the film were stock clips of computer-animated productions, such as scenes from Antz and episodes of The Simpsons, which were then post-converted to 3D.

In the CyberWorld3D Production Notes, presented by Intel, Elaine Despins described the experience of animating these segments with SANDDE for Cyberworld: "We draw in dark rooms called workstations. There is a screen in front of us, and we are positioned as if sitting in the middle seat of a mini version of an IMAX theater. This helps us to draw in the proper geometry without any distortion.”

These narrated segments helped keep the elements together in an understandable fashion. Approximately 35 percent of Phig and the Critters' portion of the film was done in Montreal, and the rest in Toronto. The Cyber Critters, Buzzed, Wired, and Frazzled were all created with SANDDE. Mark Gabbana, Spin’s Production Designer, created over 200 drawings to bring to life the concept of what it was like to exist in the virtual realm of CyberWorld 3D. 

The initial scouting for Cyberworld 3D took place at SIGGRAPH in August of 1997. The Cyberworld team spread the word amongst the industry that they were canvassing materials to consider for CyberWorld 3D. By early 1998, the team was swapped with possible footage ideas and suggestions. During pre-production, the filmmakers spent nearly a year narrowing the selection and securing the agreements for each segment. More than 250 submissions were considered, ranging from film and television to computer games.

One of the selected segments was a sequence borrowed from The Simpsons. Homer wanders out of the plane world of Springfield into a solid-geometry parallel universe. "This looks like a costly place," Homer says as cones and cubes zoom around him. "I feel like I'm wasting a lot of money just standing here.” 

To re-format the premade footage for the large-format 3D IMAX film frame, the team changed the lenses, taking in more of the environment and removing the artificial depth-of-field added to their native 35mm version. Mainframe Entertainment in Vancouver and Core Digital in Toronto were the first companies to begin early tests of this reformatting. It wasn’t as simple as taking 35mm film and transferring it to a 15 perforation/70mm film stock. Instead, the studios and their teams had to examine and compensate for numerous issues. In some cases, creating new animation and changing lighting along with the framing and lenses.

"The way we get three-dimensional films with live-action is to have two cameras shooting the sequence with the camera lenses spaced approximately 2 1/2 inches [6.3 cm] apart... the same as the average distance between our eyes," explained Hoban. "In the theatre, the two strips of film are projected simultaneously. The 3D glasses you wear let you see one eye image at a time, alternating so rapidly that it is undetectable to you as a viewer. The human brain's persistence-of-vision characteristic processes both images into the perception of three-dimensional reality." All of the animation for Cyberworld had to be formatted to fit within the IMAX 3D format.

The film was first released at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada, on October 6, 2000. It was a box office success, making over $16.7 million. Reviews of the film were mixed as the reused footage had previously been released, but it made for a fantastic viewing nonetheless. 

The experience was also described not as an unconventional moviegoing experience of the time but more like taking a trip to Space Mountain at Disney World. Visitors entered via a silver boarding area marked off by velvet ropes and received bulky black 3D goggles. To watch Cyberworld, audience members had to don headsets that resembled something you'd find in an ophthalmologist's office. 

Even though many loved the film, Some reporters were utterly unimpressed with Cyberworld 3D and described it as a high-tech workout for your eyeballs. A reporter, A.O. Scott, described it as “55 minutes of unabashed, often diverting technological overkill. Combined with the grith skull-rattling, eyeball-straining gigantism of the Imax format with the latest computer animation.”

There were issues with the final Cyberworld 3D product. As noted by the reporters. Flaws of the 3D-animation technology were too evident the first time Phig tried to speak. Her moving lips were described as a “herky-jerky dance. " Several reporters also noted that using already-made animation sequences was far cheaper than creating some from scratch. However, the SANDDE animation, when used, was still stunning. In an underwater sequence, air bubbles float from the distant screen to the surface of viewers' 3D goggles, spilling around the frames as sea life floats in every direction. 

Authors Note: Cyberworld 3D has not aged very well. Phig, a moderately attractive robotic character, is supposed to have a tongue-in-cheek personality. Steve Hoban, a Producer and Co-Screenwriter of the film, described her as “Dauntless” and “Iconoclastic”. Little quips of Phig fill the production print, which lies in the TIFF Reference Library Archives. Some are as simply confusing and flirtatious as, “Between you and me, static camera shots put me to sleep!” and “Hey, Jenna…Come down to CyberWorld 3D between shows sometimes, and I’ll give you some vortex tips that’ll leave you speechless.”  Others have even more explicit undertones, such as Phig’s intercutting line when introducing co-writer and producer Hugh Murray. Murray states, “This film allowed us an opportunity to explore very intimate 3D that is still comfortable for the audience.” Phig follows that up with, “Talk about smarts! Yikes! He knows some of my codes better than I do! Talk about your Intimate 3D!” There is a reason why this film is now lost media. 

There are no plans to release Cyberworld 3D to the public in the current era, as copyright issues from Universal Pictures and Walt Disney Studios prevent that. The film is also exclusive to IMAX theatres in its original format.

After the release of Cyberworld, the team invested a fair amount of time and energy in hopes of launching additional productions. These efforts were derailed when IMAX cut all research, development, and most in-house production after its stock value plummeted in 2000. Labute would shortly leave after SANDDE was shelved and left to program for various computer software companies. 

However, this would not mark the end of the animation system. IMAX would provide licenses to the National Film Board of Canada for use in their films, and the NFB would take advantage of this gesture. With this technology, Paul Kroitor helped to establish the stereoscopic lab at the Film Board with David Verrall and Munro Ferguson. The NFB used SANDDE in stereoscopic productions, including Falling in Love Again(2003), Moonman(2004), June(2003), The Wobble Incident(2009), Subconscious Password(2013), and Minotaur(2014). 

Kroitor would still retain his interest in the project when the sudden prevalence of 3D televisions and the renewed popularity of 3D films in the mid-2000s reaffirmed his belief in the software’s commercial potential. In 2006, he approached IMAX to ask that his invention be given a second chance at Janro Imaging Laboratory (JIL), the company he and Paul Kroitor established to oversee the use of SANDDE in Stephen Low’s 2010 film Legends of Flight. Between 2006 and 2010, the agreement between JIL and IMAX was modified to grant the former full licensing rights and the authority to commercialize the software as a standalone package. In exchange, IMAX would receive a small percentage of every license JIL sold.

In 2007, IMAX fully restarted the development of this stereoscopic technology and looked for other commercial uses in the industry. Labute was rehired in 2008. Several changes were made to improve the design when development resumed on the software. The core system remained the same, but several new features were developed that Labute felt made the software more versatile and easier to use. In 2010, the company hired Emily Pelstring to serve as the technology product manager, and she later became the vice president of product development and marketing. 

Although SANDDE never fully caught on, it was well suited to abstract or experimental work because it made creating and modifying animation on the fly easy. The animation system has been used in universities to further visual learning and by musicians for live performance visuals.  

The start of the 2000s did not bode well for IMAX, and due to cost-cutting, the company was forced to reduce sections of its film production and development. To cut costs, adopt more films into the IMAX format, and keep income streaming, IMAX teamed up with Hollywood distributors to rerelease classics. Disney’s Fantasia 2000 was one of the first and several other animated movies to undergo this process. Animated movies were generally more friendly and cheaper for Imax conversion. 

Imax would then start to attract more mainstream productions, with Warner Bros. with The Matrix Reloaded(2003) and The Matrix Revolutions(2003). These pictures hadn’t been shot in Imax, but initially on 35-mm. So, they required a Digital remastering (DRM) process before converting from 35-mm. Digital Remastering (DRM) or grading takes an analog image, in this case, film, and attempts to correct the color problems that can arise with age, poor processing, poor storage, and poor camera setup to gain the best possible image. For IMAX, this involved removing the grain to prevent the films from looking distractingly fuzzy while ensuring the process didn’t accidentally remove actual information from the original images.

In 2006, “Superman Returns” became the world’s first live-action feature to convert selected segments from 2D to IMAX 3D.

A significant breakthrough for IMAX would come from an eager director entering the mainstream Hollywood media. This director would grow up watching the influences of the foundational IMAX directors across his media screens, space dramas, and breathing in the same scientific authorities that the company worked decades beside. The person would be legendary director Christopher Nolan, who would forever change the acceptance and application of IMAX technology in Hollywood productions.

Nolan first fell in love with IMAX as a teenager after watching documentaries at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry’s five-story wraparound dome theater. After studying English literature at University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following (1998). However, it wouldn’t be until his release of Batman Begins(2005) that his career would skyrocket, and his partnership with IMAX would start to unfold. Fascinated with the projection and immersive experience, he leaped at the opportunity to involve the organization in some of his first Hollywood features. 

In January 2003, Warner Brothers hired Christopher Nolan to direct an untitled Batman film, and two months later, David S. Goyer signed on to write the script. Nolan stated his intention to reinvent the Batman film franchise by "doing the origins story of the character, which is a story that's never been told before," focusing on bringing humanity and realism to the character.

Filming began in March 2004 in the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland. The weather was problematic, with 75-mile-per-hour (120 km/h) winds, forcing some previously planned shots to be shot with handheld cameras instead of mounted equipment. Initially, Walter C. Pfister, Batman Begins’ Director of Photography, used ARRIFLEX 435 Cameras, Bell & Howell Eyemo Cameras, a Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL Camera, and a Panavision Panaflex Platinum Camera.

Visual effects co-supervisors Dan Glass and Janek Sirrs, who were also on set, realized they would tackle what Glass described as “the ultimate visual effects challenge: fitting effects shots into a very real and recognizable reality, rather than a more fantastic world.”

Batman Begins was described as a non-effects movie, even though it contained almost 600 effects shots. The visual effects aimed to use real plates, real camera moves, real locations, and massive sets. However, the blue and green screen work was kept to a minimum to give Wally Pfister freedom to light and set the shots up how Christopher Nolan intended. 

Five effects houses — three in the United Kingdom, one in France, and one in Australia — contributed to the project. In England, Double Negative handled miniature and CG aspects of Gotham City and created the CG Batman. In contrast, the Moving Picture Company created flurries of CG bats seen throughout the film. Australia’s Rising Sun Pictures and England’s The Senate handled smaller CG shots and compositing work, and France’s Buf tackled a hallucination sequence.

However, IMAX won’t get involved until late in the production process. David Keighley, a 50-year veteran of Imax, was the first person to assist Nolan in integrating his first IMAX collaboration in Batman Begins. The plan for IMAX was to do a series of higher-resolution tests in the IMAX format on the footage for the film's release in IMAX theatres when the film was released on June 15, 2005. During the DRM conversion for the Imax release, the result was a test of three minutes of footage in 6K instead of the standard Imax upconversion at the time, 4K.

The film was a resounding success, opening in 3,858 theaters in the United States and Canada, including 55 IMAX theaters, and grossing $371.9 million worldwide. It is considered one of the most influential films of the 2000s. Nolan, ecstatic that the franchise now had the green light to continue, started brewing additional plans to involve IMAX more in the upcoming sequels.

While Nolan was brainstorming his next masterpiece, James Cameron would also begin a series of collaborations with IMAX. His first was Ghosts of the Abyss (2003), which involved completing his second journey to the wreck of the RMS Titanic.

Narrated by actor Bill Paxton, who joined Cameron on the expedition and previously played Brock Lovett in the 1997 film. The film premiered for IMAX 3D and was nominated for a BFCA award for Best Documentary. 

In 2005,  Aliens of the Deep would be Camron’s next documentary, which Disney sponsored. Clocking in at 47 minutes long, Cameron's new deep-sea adventure was described as pleasant and admirable in an old-fashioned documentary format. It showed scientific and technological advances to transport filmmakers, scientists, and robotic cameras probing the ocean floor. Filmed in the IMAX 3D format, Cameron used four manned submersible craft and a remotely operated vehicle built by the director’s brother. The result was a documentary that suggested underwater organisms might help us imagine what life might look like on other planets in environments beyond our solar system.

In the summer of 2008, The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins, became the first feature film to include multiple scenes shot in IMAX—six, to be exact, totaling 28 minutes of screen time, and the first Hollywood feature film to premiere in an IMAX theatre.

Christopher Nolan had done it again, but this time in a way that had exceeded his expectations. Nolan, his wife, and longtime producer Emma Thomas had never worked on a sequel film; this was the first time they had even considered pursuing the idea. Christopher remained unsure how to continue the Batman Begins narrative while keeping it consistent and relevant, though he was interested in utilizing the Joker in Begins's grounded, realistic style.

In the sequel, Batman, With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, sets out to destroy organized crime in Gotham for good. However, the rising criminal mastermind, the Joker, would thrust Gotham into anarchy and force the Dark Knight closer to crossing the line between hero and vigilante. The public eagerly awaited the film's release because of the new IMAX technology, its precursor movie, and legendary star Heath Ledger would feature as the villain, marking his last on-screen appearance before his untimely death.

Much of The Dark Knight was filmed using Panavision's Panaflex Millennium XL and Platinum cameras, but Christopher Nolan wanted to film about 40 minutes with IMAX cameras. 

Warner Bros. was reluctant to endorse the technology because the cameras were large and unwieldy, and purchasing and processing the film stock cost up to four times as much as typical 35 mm film. In an act of stubbornness, Nolan asked if cameras could be used on Mount Everest, but they were more than capable of being used for The Dark Knight, and eventually, the studio gave in. 

After four months of testing, the Imax engineers were confident their technology could handle the task before the shoot began. Nolan and Walter C. Pfister, returning after Batman Begins, would conduct tests in Nolan’s backyard and garage with the chosen 65-pound Imax camera. Knowing that Nolan wanted to shoot car chases in Imax, Pfister placed the camera on a tripod in the back of a pickup truck in one test and sped down Sunset Boulevard to see what the footage would look like.

The first of the scenes shot included a prologue that introduced Batman’s arch-nemesis, The Joker. This sequence was shot several weeks before the actual start of principal photography. During the Imax-shot scenes, the filmmakers had to account for the film's aspect ratio to change suddenly. Imax film has a 1.43:1 aspect ratio, meaning the image would be a bit more “boxy,” with more information on the top and bottom of the frame. The film contained 15–20% IMAX footage, running for about 28 minutes. 

The crew and moviegoers were ecstatic about the resulting experience. Advance IMAX ticket sales soared over $2 million, 100 shows sold out before the film hit theatres, and some IMAX theatres in the USA screened the film nonstop for 24 hours to meet the high moviegoer demand. The Dark Knight made $6.3 million on opening weekend from 94 IMAX venues, grossing $1,003,845,358 in its original run. The film would also be released in 2019 in theatres, digitally remastered into IMAX.

Christopher Nolan would continue to become a staple director and filmmaker from this moment forward with the IMAX format. However, Nolan would also become known for another characteristic at the IMAX headquarters due to consistently breaking the camera through various films. Nolan would accidentally destroy one of only four IMAX cameras while filming The Dark Knight. While toppling a truck in the middle of Chicago, going against his usual shooting style, Nolan had a multi-camera set-up for the stunt. Still, when the truck flipped over, it landed on one of those cameras, destroying the $500,000 piece of equipment.

The release of The Dark Knight coincided with IMAX  introducing Digital IMAX into its theatre systems. This lower-cost system used 2K digital projectors to project on a 1.90:1 aspect ratio screen. This option, which allowed for the conversion of existing multiplex theater auditoriums, helped IMAX grow from 299 screens worldwide at the end of 2007 to over 1,000 screens by the end of 2015. 

However, The switch to digital projection came at a steep cost in image quality, with 2K projectors having less resolution than traditional IMAX film projectors. Maintaining the same 7-story screen size would only make this loss more noticeable, so many new theaters were built with significantly smaller screens instead. These newer theaters with much lower resolution and much smaller screens soon began to be referred to by the derogatory name "LieMAX," mainly because the company still marketed the new screens similarly to the old ones without making the significant differences clear to the public.

Digital projection changed Imax in two important ways: first, it changed the aspect ratio for 2K digitally projected Imax movies to a broader 1.90 frame, which chopped off the original Imax frame's top and bottom. Second, it significantly reduced the resolution of the projection from the estimated 12K to 18K pixels in the Imax film negative to a 2K file.

The final dramatic conclusion to the Dark Knight trilogy would be The Dark Knight Rises in July 2012.  The film would make its dramatic midnight premiere at the National Air and Space Museum’s Lockheed IMAX Theater on the National Mall, Airbus IMAX Theater at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia., and the National Museum of Natural History’s Johnson IMAX Theater. The Dark Knight Rises contained over an hour of IMAX footage, more than any feature film ever shot with IMAX.

Some of the film’s sequences to be shot in IMAX are the opening plane heist and the final fight between the Gotham Police Department and Bane's army in The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan elected not to film in 3-D but instead stated that he intended to focus on improving image quality and scale using the IMAX format. However, this final sequence would also see disaster strike, as Nolan would destroy his second IMAX camera.

One of the many new vehicles introduced in the movie was The Bat. Anne Hathaway's stuntperson was riding her bike down a building's staircase when she got too close to the camera, and the camera operators couldn't pull away fast enough. While neither the camera crew nor the stuntperson was injured, the IMAX camera was completely obliterated.

Wally Pfister had expressed interest in shooting the film entirely in IMAX. However, because IMAX cameras make considerable noise, 35 mm and 70 mm cameras had to be used for the film's dialogue scenes. Regardless of this fact, IMAX Corporation Chairman and President Greg Foster was incredibly proud of the film and stated that IMAX planned to run the film in its theatres for two months despite only being contractually committed to running it for two weeks.

Again, the conclusion to the trilogy was an instant success. It grossed over $1 billion worldwide, making it the second film in the Batman series to earn $1 billion and the highest-grossing Batman film to date. In addition to being Nolan's highest-grossing film, it became the seventh-highest-grossing film of all time at its release and the third-highest-grossing film of 2012.

Forgiving Nolan for obliterating their equipment, IMAX would partner with Nolan again on what is considered the film that would become the highlight and star-striking moment of his career. Interstellar, in 2014, would tell the story of Man’s Journey into the cosmos in scientific discovery and search for a new home. It’s a film considered the 2001: A Space Odyssey of the modern era. The film would premiere on over 240 screens in 77 markets across the U.S. and Canada, including 41 Imax screens, 10 in 70 mm and 189 in 35 mm.

Shot both on 35 mm film in the Panavision anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm photography; more IMAX cameras were used for Interstellar than for all of Nolan's previous films. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema would retool IMAX cameras to be hand-held for shooting interior scenes on the space shuttle sequences. The interiors of these sets were small, and without modification, the cameras would not fit. Some of the film's sequences were extreme and involved rigorous prep as the cameras would be mounted in untraditional places. Some were even shot with an IMAX camera installed in the nose cone of a Learjet.

The visual effects company Double Negative, which worked on Inception, another Nolan film, was brought back for Interstellar. According to visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin, Interstellar created the effects first, allowing digital projectors to display them behind the actors rather than having them perform in front of green screens. The film contained 850 visual-effect shots at a resolution of 5600 × 4000 lines: 150 shots were created in-camera using digital projectors, and another 700 were created in post-production. Of those, 620 were presented in IMAX, while the rest were anamorphic.

The Ranger, Endurance, and Lander spacecraft were created using miniature effects by Nathan Crowley in collaboration with effects company New Deal Studios. Nolan felt they offered the best way to give the ships a tangible presence in space. The Ranger and Lander miniatures spanned 14 m (46 ft) and over 15 m (49 ft), respectively, and were large enough for van Hoytema to mount IMAX cameras directly onto the spacecraft, thus mimicking the look of NASA IMAX documentaries. 

Nolan was influenced by science fiction cinema, including Metropolis (1927), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Blade Runner (1982), Star Wars (1977), and Alien (1979). For further inspiration, Nolan and his crew studied the IMAX NASA documentaries of filmmaker Toni Myers for visual reference of spacefaring missions. They strove to imitate the use of IMAX cameras in the enclosed spaces of spacecraft interiors to the similar artistic endeavors Myers had pursued. 

Interstellar debuted on November 4 with a wide release on November 7 2014, projected in 70 mm and 35 mm film in 249 theaters, including forty-one 70 mm IMAX theaters. 

Interstellar was an exception to Paramount Pictures' goal to stop releasing films on film stock and move directly to digital. According to Pamela McClintock of The Hollywood Reporter, the initiative to project Interstellar on film stock was seen as a preservation effort of an endangered format, which Christopher Nolan, J. J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Paul Thomas Anderson, and other filmmakers heavily supported protecting.

Interstellar would also coincide with IMAX releasing its 4K digital Imax projector. This higher-resolution projector used lasers as a light source to project an image twice as bright with a better contrast ratio than the 2K projectors. The increased power of this projector allowed it to show both the 1.43:1 full Imax negative on larger screens or the wider 1.90 frame on smaller screens. Movies could now be distributed to 2K Imax venues 1.90:1 and some Imax film projectors in 1.43:1. 

Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan became an unstoppable tour de force experimenting with the format. His 2017 masterpiece, Dunkirk, would break records again, and about 70 percent of the film would be filmed in IMAX. The plot was simple and depicted the Dunkirk evacuation of World War II from the perspectives of the land, sea, and air. Dunkirk had been in development for over ten years. Nolan and his wife had organically devised the idea after sailing across the English Channel, following the path of many small boats in the Dunkirk evacuation in the 1990s.

Although Dunkirk was still full of Nolan's typical trademarks, such as Hans Zimmer's music, it was a change of pace for the filmmaker, as the director had never made a war epic, instead had chosen to focus on sci-fi odysseys for most of his career, a genre he would constantly be known for. Nolan used the IMAX camera for the film's action sequences, and, as there was relatively little dialogue in the movie, the director got away with using the IMAX camera a lot more than usual. However, the director would also stick to his other trope of destroying his third $500,000 camera within five movies.

Nolan's use of the equipment was unconventional for Dunkirk. Nolan strapped an IMAX camera to a plane for a scene where the plane would crash into the ocean. This was something that had been down before in the filming. The  IMAX cameras were attached to the fighter planes using specially made snorkel and periscope lenses. However, this particular shot didn't go completely as planned. When the plane hit the water, it sunk almost instantly, and though the IMAX camera had crash housing built around it, which protected it from seawater, it sunk to the bottom of the ocean. The camera was left there for 90 minutes until retrieved, but Christopher Nolan was able to recover the footage that the camera recorded. For the first time in a feature film, IMAX cameras were used hand-held, which Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard were called in to advise.

Following it’s release, Dunkirk received a special IMAX screening at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, the first Nolan film to appear since Following, nineteen years earlier. This screening also coincided with the 50th anniversary of IMAX.

2020 was the launch of a brand new IMAX initiative. Filmed for IMAX" program.  The IMAX program was designed to encourage filmmakers to pick up a camera and certify high-quality digital cameras that could create high-quality IMAX films. The first cameras to be certified included The Arri Alexa LF (4.5K camera), Arri Alexa Mini LF (4.5K camera), Panavision Millennium DXL2 (8K camera), Red Ranger Monstro (8K camera), Red V-Raptor (8K camera), Sony CineAlta Venice (6K camera), and the Arri Alexa 65 IMAX (6.5K camera).

The use of IMAX technology presented unique challenges for filmmakers. The cameras were notoriously noisy, making them practically unusable for scenes with dialogue. The film stock was and still is expensive, and the cameras' sheer size makes them difficult to maneuver. Approving cameras near or matched the qualities of an IMAX camera that could capture dialogue was essential if IMAX continued associating itself with Hollywood. 

Although none of the cameras certified could achieve the 12K resolution of traditional IMAX film, they still offered high-resolution imaging, paving the way for more versatile and accessible IMAX filmmaking.

Movies like Top Gun: Maverick(2022) and Dune(2021) were among the first to utilize these certified cameras. Following suit, numerous projects between 2021 and 2023 used these certified cameras, including The Suicide Squad(2021), Eternals(2021), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness(2022), and Thor: Love and Thunder(2022). Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3(2023) was the first feature to use the new IMAX-certified ‘Red V-Raptor’ camera.

IMAX originally planned to select only a limited number of films to participate in the program each year. Mainly to enforce the best practice guidelines for each production to take advantage of each camera's highest possible capture qualities and assist in the continuous R&D of their production testing. 

Arguably, one of the most spectacular movies to be released in recent years was Dune(2021), not only for its visual effects and successful adaption but also for its spectacular cinemaphotography. One of the greatest Canadian filmmakers of the recent era who adopted the IMAX format, Denis Villeneuve, would be the mastermind.

Villeneuve was born on October 3, 1967, in the village of Gentilly in Bécancour, Quebec. He is known for cinematic works of art such as August 32nd on Earth (1998), Maelström (2000), Polytechnique (2009), Prisoners (2013), and Blade Runner 2049(2015), where he would have his first experience with IMAX. 

Villeneuve had already gained massive career expansion through his hits Sicario(2015), Blade Runner 2049 (2015), and Arrival(2016), but Dune would bring him into internationally renowned fame.  Based on the classic Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 novel, the film Dune(2021) follows Paul Atreides(Timothée Chalamet) as he follows the path of his prophecy. 40% of Dune(2021) was filmed in IMAX. The Dune production was part of the “Filmed In IMAX” program and used the Arri Alexa LF, a digital large-format camera. Cinematographer Greig Fraser, who worked on Rogue One: A Star Wars Stor(2016), would shoot one hour of the 2-hour 35-minute movie using the Arri Alexa camera. 

The sequel to Dune(2021), Dune Part 2(2024), would be entirely shot in IMAX 1.90:1, except for about 40 minutes in 1.43:1. Following the success of Oppenheimer (2023) in the format, Dune: Part Two would also be released in the IMAX 15-perforation 70 mm format to twelve venues worldwide, and in standard 5-perforation 70 mm format to 38 venues worldwide.

Villeneuve, now one of the highest-grossing filmmakers worldwide, believes that the future of cinema is not the inherent qualities of a movie but rather the way it’s shown. This is why he is now also one of the biggest IMAX supporters, increasing the medium's visibility and the future of its role in movies.

The latest technical achievement of IMAX would be its most significant Hollywood project taken on to date. Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, would become the second biggest blockbuster of summer 2023. Focusing on J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as he leads the United States’ desperate rush to create the atomic bomb. Living up to its subject matter, Oppenheimer was the equivalent of an atomic bomb going off for IMAX and Christopher Nolan.  After it’s release, the film would push Nolan’s releases to over $6.6 billion worldwide in profits, making him the seventh-highest-grossing film director of all time.

The film itself pushed the boundaries of the IMAX film medium. One of the critical technical aspects of Oppenheimer was Nolan’s decision to mix color and black-and-white film. This presented a unique challenge to the production because 65-millimeter black-and-white formats didn’t exist. So, the team was forced to get innovative.

The filmmakers needed to find a way to shoot black-and-white in IMAX, which had never been done before because they couldn’t buy 65mm black-and-white film stock. The emulsion used for black-and-white Imax was the same 5222 black-and-white emulsion that’s been around since the 1950s (also known as “Double X”). What made it different was its use in  Imax cameras. Christopher Nolan had it made to order, which also meant the project was the first feature in cinema history to use black-and-white IMAX film. 

“Kodak makes a film in wide rolls,” David Keighley, one of two of the IMAX consultants on the film, would explains, “and then they slit it for cameras depending on what gauge film it is, whether it’s 16-mm., 35-mm., or 65-mm.The terms 65-mm. And 70-mm. They are sometimes used interchangeably: 65-mm. It is the shooting format, while 70-mm. Is the projection format, as 5 mm. of the frame, needed for the audio track? But Imax cameras also use 70-mm. Celluloid film is run horizontally through the camera, thus further increasing the potential size of the frame — which is why celluloid Imax is sometimes referred to as Imax 70-mm., to distinguish it from digital Imax. (Yes, there are digital Imax projectors today. There are also digital Imax cameras, but that’s for another article. Those look good but don’t look as good as Imax film.). This is the first time they’ve slit black-and-white for the Imax camera.”

Black-and-white celluloid film has thicker emulsion, and running it through an Imax camera could have scratched the footage. New gates and pressure plates had to be made for the IMAX cameras. Meanwhile, FotoKem labs (which processes IMAX film) had to reconfigure their color developer to process the black-and-white negative.

The Imax cameras also posed their usual problem on set: They were way too loud. Emily Blunt, who played Kitty Oppenheimer in the film, described them as “deafening.” This made shooting sound takes with Imax nearly impossible,, and all the sound in such scenes was added later. Benny Safdie, who played Edward Teller in Oppenheimer, recalls that on his first day on set shooting with an Imax camera, the machine was so loud that he thought something had malfunctioned. 

After the film was finished, The final film prints for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer” were 11 Miles Long and Weighed over 600 Pounds. 

Authors note: Imagine the shipping fees for a single print of Oppenheimer.

For cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer was the biggest challenge of his career. Large-format film cameras were not designed for shooting in intimate settings. To shoot a close-up in Imax, you needed to stand farther away from the actor and use a longer lens, flattening out the subject.

Oppenheimer's widescreen shots were photographed with a 2.20:1 aspect ratio on a 5-perf Panavision System 65 camera, which ran 65mm film vertically through the gate. The taller shots were done on a 15-perf Imax camera, presenting the full 1.43:1 Imax negative or, in most distribution cases, cropping off the top and bottom to get to a 1.90:1 ratio. Some scenes even intercut between these two different ratios.

Oppenheimer would gross $329.8 million in the United States and Canada and $647 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $976.8 million upon its release. $190 million of which came from IMAX alone. It became the third-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time behind Joker (2019) and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). In September 2023, Oppenheimer became the highest-grossing biographical film of all time, surpassing Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).