Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's latest mind-boggling epic, was shot using a combination of 35mm anamorphic and 70mm Imax film, with the latter used more so than in any of his previous films.
Nolan has been a stalwart supporter of shooting on traditional film, despite most of the industry switching to digital, and it sounds like it's something he'll continue to push in the future.
"I don't see any reason that it can't find the right place on an ongoing basis," said Nolan on the future of film at a press conference in London. This year, Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Judd Apatow, Quentin Tarantino and others banded together to convince Hollywood studio to keep Kodak alive. It worked, at least for the time being, but the future of this traditional format remains uncertain.
Speaking at the Interstellar press conference, Michael Caine jokingly added: "If you have film instead of digital, they have to cut eventually so you don't have to learn all that dialogue. If you go digital, it goes on forever. It's a nightmare.
"So I like film, they're nice short takes.I just worked with paolo tarantino and he had 4 cameras and he doesnt even rehearse because he's got digital, and you just go on and you fluff through it and he doesn't care, and you just keep going and going and going, and then you go home.
As for Imax, Nolan suggested that it's a format he'll be in love with for a very long time: "For me, the greatest thing about movies has always been the large screen, large audience experience. That's what I always hoped for. One of my oldest moviegoing memories was going to Leicester Square to see 2001 [A Space Odyssey] when I was seven years old, and I've never forgotten the scale of that experience. I saw my first Imax film when I was 15 and immediately wanted to make features that way. So for me, working on this scale on that medium is a long held dream."
