Traditionally, movies are filmed on 35mm film where the film is pulled vertically so the width of the image is the width of the film. Vistavision was a 35mm film format that pulled the film horizontally instead so the width of the frame along the length of the film, giving you a larger image. Vistavision mostly died out as fine-grain film was introduced, and the larger frame size was unnecessary (and anamorphic lenses allowed for wider aspect ratios on traditional film formats).
70mm film is just like 35mm except bigger. 65 mm wide. IMAX takes this to the extreme by taking Vistavision's strategy on the larger 70mm film stock.
Let's assume this is 15-perf 70mm IMAX film, pulled horizontally, so it has a frame width of 70mm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_mm_film_(15-70).svg.svg) (though that is a coincidence since 70mm in the name refers to the film width, which is actually 65mm).
So with a movie run time of 172 minutes, 24 frames per second we can calculate film length as
seconds = 172 * 60 = 10320s
frames/s = 24
frame length = 70mm
10320 * 24 * 70mm = 17337.6 meters or 17.33 km or 10.75 miles.
Even if you're generous and adding some width between frames, we're so far off from 400 miles it has to be wrong.
On set for Oppenheimer they actually sometimes did rehearsals right before the take, because they only have about 60-90 seconds of film in the camera and they essentially had a pit crew come in to replace the film as fast as they could for every 1-3 takes. But there were definitely takes/camera angles we did that didn’t make the Final Cut. And each take I was thinking that if I sneezed, it would cost the production $10,000+ for another take. 😂 But it was really impressive to see.
IDK if you'd have the answer but how does editing and cutting this film/any 70mm IMAX film work? i could google it but i might get a more enjoyable answer here heh
I saw a short of Christopher Nolan answering the question, couldn't find the one I saw but here's another one reposted: https://youtube.com/shorts/8dkYDpkzeMs
TLDR;
original physical film is scanned
edited digitally
original physical film is then cut and glued fallowing the digital edit references
new physical film is printed with colour correction
nolan actually finished early and underbudget. which is really one of the main things that you want for any director a studio would hire. of course it helps if the director's name is christopher nolan.
The only real IMAX in my region is a science center. They do sometimes show new movies, but Oddesey apparently isn't one of them. Oppenheimer was though.
Its crazy how many people still think there local AMC or Regal has true IMAX. I live in the Portland Metro I tell all my buddies that that have to go to Seattle or SF to get to the closet real IMAX screens. The lieMAX screens are better than nothing but not the same massive screen experience.
Its crazy how many people still think there local AMC or Regal has true IMAX
I mean, that's because theaters and imax itself purposefully distort what it means in order to cash in on the brand name. Like, I'm not gonna blame audiences for thinking a theater is imax when imax is telling them it is.
My comment wasn’t to shame people. I totally get that. It’s more to highlight the lack of education around it. I totally understand how someone culd be confused by the messaging and branding
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u/sik_dik Jul 16 '26
That’s supposed to be almost 400 miles of film?