IMAX Part 2

Throughout its early and later years, IMAX supported the organizations that had given it the critical support it desperately needed. Ferguson and Kroitor also used the skills they learned at the National Film Board of Canada to expand Unit B's informative documentary styles. 

Early IMAX cinema achieved a balance between representing an event or subject and self-reflexively acknowledging cinema's activities and what was happening behind the camera. Kroitor’s filmmaking encouraged its spectators to become immersed in what was seen and heard and called on the viewer to take a more active role in determining the significance of what was said and done. These themes would echo throughout the IMAX documentaries for years to come.

In the late 1960s, Roman Kroiter briefly left IMAX to explore other filmmaking possibilities with The National Film Board. Kroiter would develop and oversee many films, including multiple award-winners. Most notable from this period was his work as executive producer on two highly regarded films: Giles Walker’s Bravery in the Field (1979) and John N. Smith’s First Winter (1981). The first was a short film about the unlikely understanding between a veteran of the Second World War and the young man who mugged him one night in the street by incorporating archival footage from World War II.  The film board appreciated Kroitor’s vision and energy, and his association with the NFB lasted decades. Krotior would return to IMAX in 1981. However, Kriotor would always run to the aid of his fellow IMAX filmmakers when he was needed.

Had he been so inclined, Kroitor could have settled in Hollywood and become part of the mainstream movie business. However, he liked being near his friends and colleagues in Montreal, where he spent most of his adult life. He also found Hollywood and the celebrity culture that swirled around it “distasteful.”

After the team's success in Japan, the next stage of their venture would be the crowning moment of their company, which would shine across an entire province of Canadians. In 1971, the first permanent IMAX theater would be revealed at the grand opening of the Cinesphere at Ontario Place in Toronto, Canada. 

Ontario Place was IMAX's saving grace. Ferguson, Kerr, Shaw, and Kroitor were running out of options to demonstrate their projector after Expo 70 in Japan. The team knew they had to install their projection system in Canada or the United States soon to reach the North American market, or their ventures would end. 

Meanwhile, Eb Zeidler, the architect of The Cinesphere, was inspired after visiting Expo 67 to create futuristic recreational complexes that the public could regularly experience.  Zeidler, who would go on to be a Canadian icon in Ontario for designing the Eaton Centre and the Health Sciences Centre for McMaster University,  unknowingly was developing a perfect theatre for IMAX technology. There was one problem with his designs. To his knowledge, no technology existed to project a film in The Cinesphere’s 1110-foot curved dome. Zeidler was unwilling to modify his designs and was stuck at an impasse.

It was pure dumb luck that Chris Chapman, a director and cinematographer currently working for IMAX, learned of the construction of Ontario Place, Zeilder’s theatre problem, and lobbied them to install the IMAX system. From there, history would be made. 

Three theatres were installed at Ontario Place, the first inside the Cinesphere. The Cinesphere had a stereophonic sound system, over two dozen slide projectors, and two to three film projectors. At this time, two presentations alternated weekly in the theatre. Professor Fric of Czechoslo’s "32 Strings" explored man's cultures and Big North Ontario over the years, featuring the sights and sounds of Ontario's northland. 

The technical specifications for the IMAX projector installed at the Cinesphere were impressive. The Cinesphere screen was massive in length and width, around 60 x 80 feet. 

The projector houses a lamphouse with a Xenon short lamp with 25,000-watt input power. Compared to most Xenon projector lamps of 6500 watts, this lamp was considered the highest-powered light source ever used in motion picture projection for the time. The lamphouse was a modified solar simulator developed for the United States aerospace program adapted by Bill Shaw for IMAX. The lamphouse would go under several redesigns in the following years and would eventually be able to run on just 10,000 watts.

The Xenon bulb was 19 inches long with a 5-inch spherical center. The bulb was made of quartz to withstand an operating pressure of 8-10 atmospheres from the Xenon gas inside. Face masks and protective clothing had to be worn during the bulb’s inspection or replacement. The heat from the Xenon bulb was so intense that the heat had to be dissipated through a "cold mirror" and coolant circulating through the lamp electrodes, collector mirror, dowser (light interrupter), and heat sink. The quartz mirror, which had 24 coatings of dielectric compounds, reflected 90 percent of the visible light while transmitting 90 percent of the infrared to a heat sink. 

The lamphouse ran at a fevering 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, producing 85,000 BTUs to heat a large house comfortably. Cooling the lamp was another ordeal. Cooling required 15 gallons of distilled, de-ionized water to be circulated through the lamp and other components at 12 gallons per minute. Water from Lake Ontario was run through a heat exchanger to maintain the coolant between temperature limits of 80-110°F.

The original projector at Ontario Place would be something of a spectacular oddity. Different from most projectors at the time. The speed at which film ran through the projectors was 24 frames per second, equaling 336 feet/minute, which was expected. What made it different was the frame size of the film passing through it, which was a massive 1.91 x 2.74 inches. This was three times the size of most formats in 70 mm. Custom made for Ontario Place. The film material was made under the name ESTAR by Kodak. It was described as virtually indestructible under regular use. Splices, if they did occur, were fused by ultra-sonic welding. The film would undergo an exhausting test of 5000 projector passes before being used by Kodak to inspect the film for damage. The sound system behind the projector boasted a six-track stereo going to five speakers behind the screen, with the sixth track feeding the surround sound. Ernst Leitz of Canada, Midland, Ontario, also designed the projector's lens. 

The Cinesphere theatre could handle 1600 people an hour in two half-hour periods and sat 800 persons per show. The only serious problem with Cinesphere was the location. If too many people came in through the West entrance to Ontario Place, a bottleneck would occur while waiting for The Cinesphere. This happened regularly when popular films were showing.  But that did not stop the Cinesphere from becoming a national landmark of the Toronto coastline and a beloved location by the city residents. 

The Cinesphere was Ontario Place's main spectacle, but two other theaters also attracted audiences. The second theater was less exciting but still provided entertainment. It is described as an environmental experience created in a series of chambers of mirrors, black and neon lights, color collages, distant soundtracks, and water flows, similar to Roman Kriotor’s second chamber in In The Labyrinth. 

The third and final theatre was a classical Greek tradition of theater-in-the-round. It had a 75-foot-diameter circular stage, 2,000 people under its vinyl canopy, and an additional 6,000 on the surrounding grassy slopes.

Before Budweiser Stage existed, Forum(the third theatre) opened with Ontario Place in 1971 as one of the original attractions. The original structure was replaced by a copper canopy roof in 1978. Its unique configuration consisted of a round stage, upgraded in 1976 to include a revolving stage that slowly rotated before the audience and surrounded it. However, the original forum would be demolished during the winter of 1994 and early 1995. 

From there, the new venue cost around CA$15,000,000 (equivalent to about $24,200,000 in 2021). Molson Amphitheater would be named and won RPM Magazine's "Best New Concert Venue" award in 1995. On January 6, 2017, it was announced that the Molson Amphitheatre would be renamed Budweiser Stage as part of a partnership between Labatt Breweries of Canada and Live Nation.

The Forum provided a setting for symphony, opera, ballet, rock, jazz, country music, and variety programs in the Toronto Area. For the 1975 season, Sunday was family night. Tuesday nights featured international and local stars. Rock bands performed on Thursday nights, and Saturday was Big Band night. 

When Ontario Place opened officially on May 22, 1971, it would be Ferguson’s classic film North of Superior to be the first film played in the Cinesphere and the first complete IMAX film series about the geography of Ontario in partnership with The National Film Board of Canada. The Ontario government had been seeking movies highlighting different parts of the province, and Ferguson was given the northwest.

“I’d been through on the train, I’d seen what a glorious part of the world it was,” he would recall in 2017 when North of Superior received a special screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, “but it was accidental that they assigned it to me.” Ferguson fell in love with the region and met a fascinating Thunder Bay resident named Phyllis Wilson, with whom he quickly fell in love. 

Phyllis Wilson was a 20-year-old native broadcaster recently graduating from Confederation College’s radio and television program. Phyllis had been hired to work on North of Superior through her roommates Lindsay and David Morgan friend, who knew the film’s production manager, David Hughes. 

Phyllis Wilson’s friends had tried to discourage her from dating Graeme Ferguson, for they saw several red flags in his character. He started with the fact that he was 41 years old and lived an incredibly different lifestyle from her. Phyllis Wilson was a status member of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation. She was born in Quetico to a single mother who abandoned her and had never explored far from her hometown. Ferguson traveled widely, was an experimental filmmaker, and was married to his wife Betty Ferguson, an avant-experimental filmmaker initially from Alaska. Not to mention, they also had a young son named Munro. 

Wilson’s life had been difficult. She had been taken in by her grandmother, Phyllis Tenniscoe, who had 19 children. She grew up poor but excelled in school. However, in a positive change of fate, a guidance counselor at her high school, Port Arthur Collegiate, steered her towards broadcasting after noticing her interest in audiovisual equipment. From there, she excelled and started to build her reputation in her community as an expert in her field. 

Authors note: In Canada, for more than 150 years, including the time during Phyllis Willson's lifetime, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Nation children were taken from their families and communities to attend schools that were often located far from their homes. More than 150,000 children attended Indian Residential Schools, and many never returned. Remarkably, Phyllis was able to excel and survive being taken in the ongoing genocide. Phyllis is one perfect example of why every child matters. 

Graeme Ferguson’s Indigenous friends and Wilson's guidance were responsible for the main focus of North of Superior and its choice to show natives growing up and their lives on reservations.  In later years, Phyllis Ferguson would also bring attention to the problems faced by First Nations communities with her film project Nishnawbe-Aski: The People and the Land(1977). Despite concerns from friends as a couple, the two were perfectly matched. Both of them were highly level-headed and methodical. Their affair continued to go strong for several years. 

North of Superior’s most notable appeal is a shot in which a camera is attached to a glider that swooped over a cliff and dropped suddenly, making the spectator feel as if they were personally experiencing the frightening plummet represented in the shot. As Ferguson recalls, he became convinced he could produce the effect when he learned that the filmmaker Robert Gaffney had made people airsick by strapping a camera to the nose of an airplane for his 1967 film Sky Over Holland. Using such aerial shots would become a hallmark of IMAX cinema. 

Filming North of Superior was a complicated process. The Imax camera was heavy and annoying, especially when navigating rough terrain in northern Ontario. But Graeme Ferguson and his assistant, Ronald Lautore, were determined to take it everywhere the shoot needed to travel.

Following North of Superior, Phyllis Wilson would build her career, starting in Whitehorse as a CBC Radio announcer and eventually becoming a production manager on news programs such as The Fifth Estate and W5. However, she and Ferguson would remain in close contact.

Imax continued to partner with Ontario Place and feature additional films at The Cineshpere. 1973, we would also see the release of “Volcano” at Ontario Place, a feature in partnership with IMAX and The National Film Board. The film's premiere would be alongside North of Superior and Catch the Sun(1973), a thrills-and-culture mix. 

Christopher Chapman filmed Volcano on the small island of Heimaey, ten miles off the coast of Iceland. When the volcano erupted, Ontario Place commissioned Chapman to film the scene of destruction, risking an IMAX camera in the process. During the filming, the lava got too close to the filmmakers, and part of the camera tripod burned off. The film followed the island's 5,000 inhabitants, who were evacuated to the mainland and confident they could rebuild their fishing village.

It was not just IMAX films that would air at Ontario Place, but also films from the local community to promote the city of Toronto. Toronto the Good, another film to air at the theatres in 1973, combined architecture, history, nature, and people to show the physical and human aspects of the city. It was created, photographed, composed, and edited in two months. The idea was to add new footage to the film monthly to show the ever-changing politics of the city. The producer-director-editor again was Christopher Chapman, and the film required  31 computerized projectors to create a multi-media show. This included one panavision motion picture projector in combination with 30 slide projectors. The facility would then crop the 35 mm Panavision through an optical printer, which allowed various motion picture sizes to be played on the screen in an arc in which still pictures were projected.

Reuben H. Fleet Space Theatre in San Diego, California, in 1973. This was the first significant innovation in IMAX technology after the standard format. OMNIMAX theatres enabled projection onto a curved screen surface that filled the spectator’s field of vision via a fish-eye lens. The OMNIMAX format can best be described as an improved version of the theaters at the Cinesphere for commercial and scientific audiences. 

The OMNIMAX curved screen was reminiscent of a planetarium’s dome, so the theatres were first marketed to natural history museums and science centers as a modern update of their planetarium facilities, by inwardly orientated seating with theatre-style seating and a screen tilted at a 25-degree angle. The films played in these theatres were typically shorter lengths of an IMAX picture than mainstream commercial cinema.

The main difference between the traditional IMAX and Omnimax format was that IMAX used a large flat screen that allowed the images to be projected straight. Omnimax used a fish-eye system and projected a picture inside a dome so that all lines appeared as curved hues. The first Omnimax film was Garden Isle(1973), followed by Capture the Sun(1973). 

Post-1973 IMAX dome screens reached up to 99 feet (30 meters) in diameter and contained a high-fidelity sound system encompassing the audience, putting them in the center of the action. To preserve the maximum number of seats, the single Rolling Loop projector was raised from the projection room below into a "doghouse" large enough to accept it. At the same time, film reels and the operator remained below.

The mid-1970s marked a period at IMAX that could best be described as the “Side Questing” era. The four friends jumped at any opportunity to continue pursuing their craft, exploring, developing, and promoting their new cameras and projectors to the mainstream world. 

Heading to Expo 74 in Spokane, Washington, with Paramount producing the show, the next venture would be The film Man Belongs to Earth (1974), clocking in at 20 minutes long, focusing on the environment, and showing inside the United States Pavilion. Roman Kroitor would pause his work as a producer at the National Film Board to assist in the production and set aside time to produce and direct  Circus World (1974) for  Ringing Brothers and Barnum and Bailey’s new theme park called "Circus World" near Orlando, Florida.

One of the main attractions at Circus World was an IMAX theatre, just like the one at Ontario Place, but with a bigger screen. The commission came about when Kroitor contacted Paul Anka (Canadian-American singer and songwriter’s former manager after he acquired Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The next side quest was one to The Final Frontier. On July 1, 1976, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, opened its doors. Among its various premiere exhibits was a film called To Fly, featured in IMAX. Phyllis Wilson and Graeme Ferguson were embarking on their most significant achievement together: shooting a series of films about astronauts aboard NASA’s space shuttles. These films would span several decades and involve the editorial and writing support of Toni Myers and cinematographer James Neihouse.

Partnering with world-renowned Greg MacGillivray and his production studio MacGillivray Freeman Films, which would become the most successful documentary production company in history, To Fly would become an instant classic and be selected for preservation and placed in the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 1995. The film was incredibly popular and caused several viewers to lose their balance.  

To Fly started a great partnership between IMAX and MacGillivray Freeman Films. MacGillivray went on to direct Dolphins (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, and 50 other IMAX films. He also developed three cameras for the IMAX format: the high-speed (slow-motion) camera, the industry's first lightweight camera, and the "all-weather" camera used during filming on Mount Everest. MacGillivray recorded more 70mm film shots than anyone in cinema history, equalling more than two million feet. 

One of Graeme Ferguson’s long-time friends and colleagues is Antoinette Myers, commonly known as Toni Myers. She is an editor, writer, producer, and director. Although Toni Myers never worked on To Fly, she quickly became a staple figurehead in developing most IMAX and NASA featurettes. 

Myers began her career with early Canadian successes, such as the television series This Hour Has Seven Days(TV Series 1964–1966), Forest Rangers and Seaway(1963-65), and the National Film Board feature Nobody Waved Goodbye(1964). Afterward, she moved to England and spent six years working on various BBC films and music projects. She returned to Canada to edit dramas for CBC-TV's For the Record series(1976 to 1985), working with directors Gilles Carle, Francis Mankiewicz, and Claude Jutra.

Myers would first collide with  Graeme Ferguson, collaborating on the film Polar Life (1967), debuting at Expo 67. Ferguson would then invite Myers to assist with editing his film North of Superior (1971), which would debut at the Cinesphere at Ontario Place. 

From here, she would continue to work as an editor for many of IMAX’s projects, including Hail Columbia! (1982), Rolling Stones: At the Max (1991), and L5: First City in Space (1996), and from there, became a director on award-winning IMAX films such as Space Station 3D (2002), Hubble 3D (2010), and A Beautiful Planet (2016).

IMAX and NASA are now synonymous in circles of scientific centers and the exhibition of scientific content. However, it was Phyllis Wilson who convinced NASA to work with IMAX. The IMAX crew had been trying to persuade the organization to partner with them for a few years, but they were wary of hiring external companies that were not American.  At a press conference, the couple snuck into the audience with space shuttle Columbia astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen on stage; Phyllis caused the pair to crack up when she tossed them an unexpected but fundamental question: “Is it fun to be an astronaut?” Young’s  reply, “The answer is yes, yes, yes!” After this, Wilson made a point of hanging out with the astronauts at the Johnson Space Center cafeteria in Houston, which created the initial bonds between the IMAX team and NASA.

Hail Columbia!, Imax’s first NASA movie, was released in 1982. That same year, Phyllis and Graeme, who had finally decided to divorce his first wife, Betty, married. They worked together on four subsequent space films: The Dream is Alive (1985), Blue Planet (1990), Destiny in Space (1994), and Mission to Mir (1997).

The 1980s began a new era of innovation for the film industry and technology sectors everywhere. Everywhere in North America, new laws, tax credits, and developments in communication technologies were being created.  For IMAX, the 1980s would stem the launch of new intergalactic partnerships.

On June 1, 1985, IMAX skyrocketed into new worlds, and The film The Dream Is Alive would record the launch of Space Shuttle mission STS-41-C. Released on June 1, 1985, and 37 minutes long, the film told the story about  NASA's Space Shuttle program. The film was narrated by Walter Cronkite and directed by Graeme Ferguson. There were fantastic views of Earth from 448 kilometers high; eerie shots of weightless, sleeping astronauts; amusing scenes of them eating food that threatened to float away; and a thrilling pilot's eye view of a high-speed space shuttle landing. Featured in the film was Canada’s own Marc Garneau, the first Canadian to ever travel to space. Most of the film was funded by the Lockheed Corp and cost $ 3.6 million. 

The Dream is Alive included scenes from numerous shuttle missions, beginning with the landing of Discovery at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility upon the conclusion of STS-51-A. The opening sequence comprised footage from Discovery's landing, radio transmissions from Challenger's 1984 landing on STS-41-B, and runway approach footage filmed from a fixed-wing aircraft.

Mission STS-41-C, the 11th mission for the Shuttle program, was featured the most heavily, beginning with the deployment of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) satellite. Other STS 41-C mission activities included a student experiment in a mid-deck locker to determine how honeybees make honeycomb cells in a microgravity environment.

The film was produced and shot 15–18 months before the January 28, 1986, Challenger disaster and included appearances by two astronauts who died in the explosion: Francis Scobee and Judith Resnik. Challenger itself was featured prominently in the film. Many of the themes and tone of the documentary regarded the normalization of travel to space using the shuttle while only mentioning the dangers and presenting the journey as a secure and riskless way to travel. The Challenger disaster would dramatically curtail this belief.

By 1992, Variety reported that the film had grossed $70 million since its debut, translating to $17 million in film rentals in the United States and Canada. Thus, it became the most successful IMAX 70mm film to date.

After the film’s release, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum would air the film ten times daily, and the film would travel to Canada to be featured at Ontario Place and the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre in Alberta. Other prints were designed for Imax and Omnimax theaters in 16 other cities in North America, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. Imax president Graeme Ferguson said at the time that between one-quarter and one-fifth of all of the footage captured by the astronauts in space was used in the movie. The Dream is Alive would become the first documentary shot in outer space.

Following their first intergalactic first beyond Earth, the following IMAX first would be the first IMAX 3D film, We Are Born of Stars, which debuted in an IMAX Dome theatre at the Tsukuba World’s Fair in 1985 in Japan—written and produced by Kroitor in anaglyph 3D, with Nelson Max directing. Anaglyph 3D is the stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by encoding each eye's image using filters of different (usually chromatically opposite) colors, typically red and cyan.

The film used computer-generated animation to tell the story of human life's evolution from the earliest molecular level to its present complexity. Nelson Max, a computer imagery specialist at Livermore Labs in California., designed the remarkable imagery.

3D filmmaking for an IMAX Dome screen was exceedingly complicated, as accounting for the screen's curvature added a high level of intricacy to the film’s geometry. Because of this, Nelson Max’s specialty in computer imaging mathematics was invaluable to the production. In addition to his work on We Are Born of Stars, Nelson Max collaborated on several subsequent IMAX projects, including Echoes of the Sun (1990). 

In 1986, IMAX was invited to the next round of EXPOs at the Canadian Pavilions in Vancouver, British Columbia. This marked a pivotal year in the company’s history. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized the IMAX system with an Academy Scientific and Engineering Award for technological innovation and excellence, increasing its credibility in filmmaking.

Expo 86 was the International Exposition on Transportation and Communication, which opened in Vancouver in May 1986. It had an estimated 50 theaters devoted to cinematic or audio-visual presentations. Some of the presentions for these theatres were Omnimax, Showscan, lmax 3D, Holography, and Trimax, all groundbreaking imaging techniques for the time.

Canadian National Railway(CNR) was the main sponsor of the Canadian Pavilion at EXPO 86’. They wanted to commission a film to showcase the various transportation methods in Canada. They decided that the National Film Board and their Centre d'animatique, NFB's French animation studio unit, would create the film's animation sequences. The resulting computer graphics would be designed and rendered to Daniel Langlois, the creator of Softimage.

The Canada Pavilion was located in Vancouver's downtown core, separated from the rest of the Expo, and promoted as "the largest pavilion ever created for a world exposition." It was part of Canada Place, the permanent federal government complex on Vancouver's inner harbor, designed by the same architect who designed The Cinesphere. The pavilion contained a cruise ship terminal and the Pan Pacific Hotel. Various theaters, arenas, presentations, and displays introduced Expo visitors to Canada. 

Norman Hay, the creative director of the pavilion, described the overall communication and transport theme. "The idea was that we would no longer linearly look at Canada, that is, coast to coast. We wanted to convey a new way of seeing Canada, which would give Canadians a sense of joy and pride. All material (in the pavilion) is intended to develop this notion of Canada's 'new dimensions.'" 

IMAX would showcase the 3D film Transitions (1986) inside the pavilion. Transitions was a joint project between IMAX and the National Film Board of Canada. It was also the first film to use 3D stereoscopic computer animation. 

Transitions, Sponsored by the Canadian National Railway and directed by Colin Low and Tony Ianzelo, depicted the evolution of transportation in Canada from the earliest settlement to the era of space exploration and satellites. The IMAX 3D presentation involved a polarized system with two cameras using 70mm film, two prints, two projectors, and an enormous 70 x 100' screen. To view the film, the audience would wear special polarized glasses. While Low and Ianzelo’s film was received enthusiastically, the IMAX Corporation’s live-action 3D did not take off until Low’s son Stephen’s film, The Last Buffalo, debuted at Expo ’90 in Osaka, Japan four l years later.

The three introductory presentations were viewed in sequence when entering the pavilion, which gave the visitor a sense of Canada from three perspectives in three different theatres, which all had their unique theme: the People, the Land, and the Future. This Is My Home was the first film in the 500-seat Canada Pavilion. The first theatre, the Celebration Theater, was an eight-minute audiovisual presentation produced by Creative House of Vancouver. As the audience leaned or sat back against padded railings, 42 computer-programmed projectors synchronized 1,500 images onto 14 screens. At the same time, an original score by Vancouver's Brian Gibson played in the semi-circular theater. The 1,500 images were selected from 30,000 shots by 33 photographers who traveled across Canada. 

Photographers were coordinated across the country, in small towns and big towns—north, south, east, west—on Canada's birthday. The presentation moved from east to west, dawn to dusk, starting at 5:03 a.m. in St. John's, Newfoundland, and ending in Victoria, B.C., with the end-of-day cannon.

Initially, the first theater was designed so the audience would slowly revolve into the second film in the Earthwatch Theater without leaving their seats. But a tragic accident in which a young girl was fatally injured has stopped this. The visitors were forced to move to the second theatre on foot through the remaining showcase of Expo 86.

After watching the introductory films for the pavilion, visitors would head to The Great Hall, which contained other captivating items such as a 108 video-monitor Videowall and two other presentations. These films would be The Taming of the Demons and Transitions. Taming of the Demons was shown in the  273-seat Teleglobe Theater. Paul Krivicky of Applause Communications in Montreal acted as producer/administrator for The Taming of the Demons, which included both the theater's construction and production of the film. Directed by Emil Radok, the founder of multi-screen audio-visual systems, the production used nine rectangular screens of varying sizes arranged against one wall of the theater, with a revolving circular hoop forming a sphere and the tenth screen in the center of the wall. Ten 35mm film projectors presented the images, while a nine-track sound system provided the ambient sound. The result was a 21-minute exploratory piece on communication methods. 

Transitions would be a defining moment in IMAX history. The timing of Transitions required the development of a new sophisticated camera assembly wherein two cameras were mounted perpendicular to each other, with one camera filming the subject directly and the other indirectly through a two-way mirror mounted at a 45-degree angle to the subject. The cinematographer viewed each shot remotely through a unique video camera/monitor system. The technology behind the filming was worked out by Ernest McNabb, director of photography and director of stereoscopy. Low and McNabb wanted nine cameras to bring their full vision to life. However, they ended up landing with two. Tony Ianzelo was brought in as co-director, and a production team was assembled.  All of these experiments at Expo 86 would set the basis for IMAX 3D and its developing technology for the foreseeable future. 

The first animated film made for IMAX was Primiti Too Taa, released in 1987.  Set to Morton reciting an excerpt from Kurt Schwitters's sound poem Ursonate, the film follows the soundtrack through the movement of letters typed on paper with a Remington typewriter. The film premiered at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto in July 1987 as part of a screening series staged by the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre to mark its 20th anniversary and later screened at the 1987 Festival of Festivals as a prelude to the feature drama Life Classes before taking a broader tour of other Canadian and international film festivals.

In the late 1980s, 3D was a subject matter taking the nation by storm as more and more experiments were flaunting the medium. New technological advances, such as HDTV, IMAX, 3D computer graphics, and increased spatial sound rendition, established the building blocks for fantastic three-dimensional sound and image quality. Canada was one of the technology leaders, gaining an advantage by understanding, applying, using, and rapidly diffusing the technology to its communications industry. One massive technological advancement during the 1980s was high-definition television (HDTV), which improved TV picture resolution. 

New film technologies, such as FutureVision and Showscan, took an evolutionary approach to enhancing the current technology and improving film using existing equipment. For example, FutureVision increased the rate of film projection from 24 to 30 frames per second to reduce flicker and increase illumination, thereby creating a sharper, brighter, and more stable image. 

IMAX had to develop and continue to grow with the technological increases of the era. 3D was a promising and lucrative avenue. In 1989, the development of the first IMAX 3D feature film, The Last Buffalo(1990), would launch and reach its groundbreaking premier at the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka, Japan, in 1990. 

The Last Buffalo was a passion project between Co-producers Sally Dundas and Roman Kroiter and director Stephen Low, son of Colin Low. Kroiter became aware of the growing interest in Canadian theatre puppetry, and this underground movement inspired the feature film. The film’s plot is simple. It immortalizes the animals and ecosystem of Alberta’s badlands and features three larger-than-life characters that Richard Lacroix of the Theatre de l'Oeil created to narrate the experience.

The story traced the movement of chemical energy through all stages, from photosynthesis to muscle function, which required over 60  artists, computer scientists, and molecular biologists to contribute to computer graphics spanning over two years with state-of-the-art computers. Using CGI and live action, the 27-minute film would be the first to present ultra-high-quality full-colour stereoscopic images in a broad field, wrap-around screen theatre featured in the Fujitsu pavilion. Only seven minutes of the film were computer graphics, and the animated segment followed the energy transfer of matter on the molecular level. The computers used were two of the fastest in the world for their time, running 24 hours daily to complete the simulation tasks. 

After the film's debut, IMAX 3D was adopted so enthusiastically that the technology started to accelerate and would push the use of 3D in most of the corporation’s existing 100 theatres. The film also changed the game for IMAX. Ferguson recalled, “Once theatre owners saw that film, they started converting to 3D just to show the film,” he recalled. “From 1991 on, Imax Corp. hardly sold 2D-only projectors.”

The Last Buffalo also helped develop the prototype for IMAX Solido, a new and improved high-fidelity full-color 3D projection system on a dome screen. IMAX Solido would expand into theatres at the Futuroscope in Poitiers, France, and the Fujitsu Dome Theatre in Chiba, Japan.

IMAX 3D and IMAX Solido led to the development of IMAX® HD, which is shot and projected at 48 frames per second, twice the standard frame rate, providing even greater depth of field, clarity of detail, and steadiness, along with developing Electronic Liquid Crystal Shutter glasses (E3D glasses) for 3D effects in film. In summary, E3D glasses work with the infrared signal from the projection system, causing the shutters to open alternately and close 48 times per second, allowing each eye to see the appropriate image. 

The development of IMAX 3D would also lead to the prospective partnership with a joint development with Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. for Four Million House Guests(1997), the premiere of Sony Pictures Classic's Wings of Courage(1995), and their following film Across The Sea of Time(1995).