Film stock & format

There was a chance to do science fiction stories in space. You could argue that Alien, one of the most influential, is essentially the horror film in space. It's a horror film in space, yeah. Whereas this is still a science fiction story, even if it is most focused on its character. There's one way in which Trumbull is ahead of his time, how early he adopted the technical possibilities of IMAX.

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So as we speak, the latest Christopher Nolan film, Tenet, is opening in IMAX. So IMAX appears to be here to stay. Yeah, although it's still a niche distribution mode. And I think that's the thing that... Trumbull probably envisioned a world where...

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All cinemas would be in IMAX, or it wasn't even called that when he created it. He had other technical terms for it. In the way that after 1927, all cinemas were wired for sound or they went out of business. Or in the 50s, they brought in widescreens or they went out of business. IMAX, like subsequently 3D, has not become...

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Gary Goddard

to help keep it believable. This is Barry Livingston. You may remember him from, uh, My Three Sons. I wanted to have, uh, someone behind the counter that was, uh, you know, slightly, uh, offbeat, a little bit of a, you know, 60s, 70s music nut, and so, uh, Barry came in and I thought, uh, he had a good look for that. Did a good job. Uh, so anyway, the look, the look, uh, that's another one of those 70mm shots, 65mm shots, the ones the boss does, uh,

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Gary Goddard

Here's another tight five shot, telling the story. Another plate shot, 65mm shot. One of that

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We have tons of homages. Tons of homages in the film. Homagerama. And this is one instance where we used a digital camera for the opening shot. The night establishing shot. This is all shot on film, but these high aerials are all shot on digital to allow for better light. This record store was so convincing that people were walking down the street and trying to go in to shop for vinyl.

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Yes. Brad Gray. Brad Gray. Mark Evans. Mark Evans. Rob. Liz Raposo. Rob Moore. Rob Moore. Liz Raposo. And the whole gang. Megan, all you guys. Thank you so much. Everyone at Skydance. David Ellison. Dana Goldberg. Who else are we leaving out? IMAX. IMAX. Everybody at IMAX. Guys, IMAX. We love seeing movies at IMAX and we love making movies for IMAX. Thank you so much. Great partners. And our new friends at Alibaba Pictures and China Movie Channel. Yep.

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Commentary With David Kalat

The film stock they used was exceptionally soft and vulnerable to dust. Fingerprints and hair, any kind of foreign particle could permanently mar the picture. Every time you handled the film, you increased its risk of contact to airborne contaminants. In-camera multiple exposures, basically any time Godzilla or a model are seen in the same shot as a living actor or a real patch of city, magnified the dust problem.

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Eng Commentary

Many of the director's choices in this film were dictated by budgetary constraints, for the film was produced independently. Thus, the choice of black and white film stock, which came to be associated with new wave films, was essentially a matter of economy. Similarly, the handheld camera, which permitted shooting in narrow locations and made the quick pans back and forth in this classroom scene feel natural, was less costly to operate than the bulky camera setups of studio filming.

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Commentary With Author CG Paul M. Sammon

the plates, the background plates for Robo II were shot in VistaVision, which is a special camera that was designed and used in the Ten Commandments by Cecil B. DeMille in the 1950s and were still in use and some are still in use today. And what happens is that instead of running a 35mm frame through the gate vertically, it is run through horizontally and you get a 65mm frame

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pre-digital, so the majority of the effects were all optical, not digital, which was a huge deal. So all the models, we had to build models and do it the old-fashioned way. Shot on film, cut on film. Things that people don't even know what they are now. I'm sad that the studio didn't give us more than 10 days in the theaters.

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Darren Aronofsky

I love that moment. Right when he sees God, a little light pops on in his right pupil, and it was purely by accident. Those are the moments you can never, ever prepare for. It just happened for us. The black-and-white reversal stock here is just great. Matty just had a field day with his film stock.

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Alexander Payne

of uh... the school using fluorescent lights and really capturing that and getting a sense of of omaha and not creating kind of typical motion picture pretty pictures and it's kind of a fight i mean kodak film stock you have to

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Kat Ellinger

In choosing not to light scenes, it gives the film this almost... It's like the antithesis of that very sterile, artificial world that was becoming very, very dominant in porn around this time. And I absolutely love this approach. Because of that, though, and because it's sort of shot on digital, I think there's always this tendency to try and group...

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I think in the very early draft... ...we actually started cutting her up. Yeah. And then we realized, but she's healing instantly... ...SO actually that will just be a problem. It'd be kind of comical. Cut, cut, cut. - "She's healing!" Also here we.... I remember we just had scrubs on them, but Monique... ...who did the costume, she made this Antigen Labs.... The scrubs. Yeah. - Yeah. They were special. Michael Ealy's big moment. The blooper gun. This is the first time that this gun is used on film actually. Is it? - Yeah. We're trendsetters. Yep. Yep. This big black one. - Yep. Parking Level 3. Doesn't sound menacing, though. Blooper gun. No. It sounds like a joke. - Yeah. But the gun guys, who are really cool guys in Vancouver... ...when they were talking about... ... there had been this convention in Las Vegas. A gun convention in Vegas, and I said, "I actually wanna go there." God bless America. Yeah. God bless America. Here's a shot while we're in... While editing... - Great shot. While editing, everybody hated this because it looked so silly. And James, when you came in, "I think it looks pretty bitchen." And it does. - I know. It's funny when you go through all editorial with gray-scale animation... ... approximating what people are gonna look like... ...and then you finally see it done... ... it transforms the movie. It goes from being really bad to go to very exciting. It's... Yeah. - That's a huge step. That's a nice step, though. I like it when that happens. I remember shooting this. Kate was like, "Where's the camera?" "It's right behind here." "Naughty. Naughty." And also, you know, seeing all the gray scale and stuff... That's why we didn't test the film because it's pointless. You can't see what it looks like. It does look silly and just like a bad cartoon... ...So there's no point in testing it. Because, you know, even we, who are supposed to be really good at this... ...when you see it all together... ... you know, the final product, so much happens... -.,.be@Cause... - Let's be honest. And James can speak to this better than anybody... ...but my recollection was that in the last week prior to delivery... ... there were still 200 shots you hadn't received. Easily. - Yeah. I'd walk into his office every morning and it was like... These are things... - "How is it?" What's it like?" "A hundred and forty shots left." It was Wednesday and we had to deliver it Friday. The studio was saying, "You have to deliver the film three weeks earlier... ...than you thought you had." - That was a blow. There are versions of the visual effects that are different in the IMAX version... ...to the theatrical 2D to theatrical 3D, the video master. It was all depending on what the schedule would allow for. We kept working until... ...we couldn't do any more. I'm very happy here. We never shot the reverse of the guy getting shot. And people were angry at me because I was directing this day. But it's because the effect is there. When the effect wasn't there, it didn't work. I Know. But I think that's cool. Because I think it looks very '70Os. - It's like, "Shut up. Just get out of my way." - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Shaft kind of cool. Then this is one of my favorite blood splatters. That one. - That's real, actually. That was beautiful. Real? Did we shoot those guys? - Yes. Yeah. I love them. I will now resign. Did we kill people? - They meant they had squibs. Selene has to make the choice, does she go back to her husband or lover? Or does she go after her daughter? - Yep. Or does she try to have both? - The dilemma. One of the things that we were struggling with... ...In this script was that we thought, "Can we have a good third act?" Because the second movie, it's... The setting is so beautiful... ... with its old castle and underwater and so on. And, I mean, we scouted so many parking lots, it was obscene. Yep. Another example of how we wanted to hurt her so much. Yeah, that was Alicia, our stunt double, taking that hit. She landed on it. She's insane. - Yeah, well... Here's a shot that we don't think Is silly. No. No. It works. - Works. At least we think so. I hope you guys watching this think so as well. But it was always like: "Oh, so only his hand will grow very, very large and hairy. This will look so extremely silly." But it actually worked. This is when I think homage is really in a good way. Yeah. - It's not a fucking steal. It's you take something from 7... ...and you do it... - Underworld 7. The drop through the floor, right? - Yeah. And you update it. - Invert it. It's inverted. So I think that that's... That works really good. Len's-- That was Len's idea. The whole-- It's very scripted... ...how he shoots it.

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