Cinematography technique · used in 5 films
Shooting vast environments, including outer space, on 70mm IMAX film. The extra size and sharpness make you feel like you are inside the image.
Examples
Christopher Nolan · 2014
Hoyte van Hoytema shot the film's space sequences on 65mm and IMAX film, and the frame expands to the full 1.43:1 IMAX ratio in space. The physical grain of the large-format negative gives the cosmos a solid, touchable presence, so space is something you feel.
Where to see it: The docking sequence above Mann's planet, as the damaged Endurance spins. It uses the full IMAX frame in extreme conditions.
Christopher Nolan · 2017
The beach sequences and the Spitfire dog-fights were shot on 65mm IMAX film, a very large film format. You only take in the full size of the evacuation and the air combat in that enormous frame.
Where to see it: The aerial combat sequences. The English Channel fills the IMAX frame, and the Spitfire cockpit feels close and vast at once.
Damien Chazelle · 2018
Chazelle saves the IMAX format, with its very large and tall image, for the lunar surface sequences. The moon's vast grey expanse is shot in a format big enough that you physically feel its scale. The contrast with the cramped capsule sequences tells you how enormous the place Armstrong has reached is.
Where to see it: The first steps on the lunar surface. In IMAX, the moon's landscape stretches to the edges of the frame. The human figure in the pressure suit is impossibly small against a grey vastness that has never been walked on before.
Denis Villeneuve · 2021
Greig Fraser's IMAX photography keeps setting imperial architecture against the desert landscape. The contrast makes the same point every time: human power structures look tiny next to geological time.
Where to see it: The Atreides ornithopters descending over Arrakeen. The IMAX frame captures the military scale of the craft and also how insignificant the city is against the desert beyond.
Denis Villeneuve · 2024
Greig Fraser shot the Harkonnen homeworld sequences in black and white with an infrared digital camera. In IMAX, they look completely different from Arrakis. The huge format is put to work on industrial horror.
Where to see it: The Harkonnen gladiatorial arena sequence. It is shot in infrared black-and-white IMAX. The crowd is one faceless mass, and the violence has no color or humanity left in it.
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