In an interview with Forbes, the Senior Vice President Head of Post at IMAX Corporation explained the logic behind developing four new IMAX cameras. “They will make for IMAX sequences with a different feel — Directors will be able to use them for more intimate, personal moments, not just for big, noisy action sequences” he said. Imagine that: Using those beasts in dialog scenes…

Shot on IMAX, but only a portion

When shooting for IMAX, most of the time he production won’t shoot the entire film on 15-perf, because it’s hard. For instance, in NOPE, ’only’ 48 minutes of footage in the two-hour movie was shot on IMAX cameras —All the film was shot on 65mm celluloid (60% 5-perf 40% 15-perf for IMAX). The IMAX cameras are larger and heavier and have shorter running times, due to the huge film stock vacuumed inside and rolled at greater speed — the mags only run about three minutes, whereas other film formats can give you a 10-minute load on a mag. So that can limit the way a director shoots. You can’t do super-long takes, and you have to reload more often. Hence, shooting on 15-perf will give you only 3 minutes per 1000 foot magazine, which will cost $1,5000. Yep, shooting 15-perf is expensive and cumbersome. But the main limitations are the noise, dimensions, and weight. However, IMAX will address these parameters with the new fleet of cameras.

More details about the new IMAXs

In an interview for Forbes, SVP Head of Post at IMAX Corporation, Bruce Markoe, has shed some intriguing light on the upcoming four brand new IMAX cameras. “What we’re doing with these new cameras is to engage with some of the filmmakers who have worked with us and shot with our film cameras before – with directors, with directors of photography – and have got their feedback. What they liked, what they didn’t like, and how we could improve them” said Markoe. Furthermore, Markoe explained: “IMAX cameras offer outstanding image quality but are known for being large, heavy, and noisy. It’s no surprise then that these are exactly the areas that IMAX is focusing on improving. What’s exciting about this from a filmmaking perspective is that if IMAX is able to deliver these features, it will make for IMAX sequences with a different feel — Directors will be able to use them for more intimate, personal moments, not just for big, noisy action sequences”.

12 IMAX cameras in total

According to Forbes, Markoe could not commit to the arrival date for the cameras though saying: “The engineering guys would hate it if he did!… It’s the prototype that takes the longest to build and, actually, once that’s done, built and approved, it will be faster to build the actual production models”. However, Markoe stated that the number of new IMAX cameras that are in development is four. That number was mentioned in the IMAX press release as well. The new cameras will be in addition to the existing fleet, which means there will be 12 IMAX film cameras in total. Markoe thinks that 12 IMAX cameras should be enough to enable two IMAX productions to take place at the same time.

Final thoughts

If so, the goal of the four new IMAX cameras is to expand the number of productions that can shoot 15-perf, plus reduce main limitations like noise and size, and more importantly, make these beasts less intimidating and more user-friendly, so filmmakers can shoot this huge format in more scenes, besides heavy action sequences. It’ll be interesting to reveal more details about these marvel machines. 

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