Equipment Matters

Peeling back the curtain on why Hollywood’s best invest hundreds of thousands on cameras and lenses.

If you saw a movie this summer, odds are it was Barbie. But if you saw a second movie this summer, odds are it was Oppenheimer.

And if you talked to your cinephile friends about going to see Oppenheimer, you probably sat through a lengthy conversation about which version was best. IMAX? 70 millimeter film projection? The version that’s being played at only 19 theaters across America, that is both 70 millimeter film and also IMAX? You may even have heard about diehard fans who drove hours across the country to enjoy the film in a specific format.

Most of us, however, saw Oppenheimer in a theater with digital, non-IMAX projection. So why would the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, go to such lengths to present his story in a format that so few moviegoers would actually be able to experience?

Oppenheimer had a lot of hype around its use of IMAX film cameras, but the practice of capturing images at a higher quality than they can be distributed is actually a very common practice in filmmaking. Oppenheimer’s better half, Barbie, had the same approach with digital. The film was captured with the Arri Alexa 65, a rental-only camera with a massive imaging sensor that roughly matches the fidelity of 70 millimeter film. Although Barbie was never intended to be screened on IMAX screens like Oppenhiemer, the filmmakers had the pixels on hand if they’d wanted to do large-format screenings.

We have the same approach at CMG. Our primary camera is the Alexa 65’s baby brother, the Arri Alexa Mini LF. The Mini LF is used on film sets around the world. Movies like The Batman, Dune, and West Side Story have all made use of the camera. We bring it with us for all of our shoots, even if we know the final product will end up online only.

We do that for the same reason Christopher Nolan likes to shoot on the most expensive film format ever created: We want to start with the highest-quality images possible. We want to be sure that our ads will look fantastic, even if our audience is seeing them on an old Apple iPhone. That’s not something you could confidently say if you had filmed your ad with an iPhone, even with the rapidly improving camera quality. Simply put, superior imaging platforms give you the best starting point.

An unusual quirk about the 70 millimeter IMAX format that Christopher Nolan chose for Oppenheimer is that it’s square, while every modern TV, monitor, and theater screen is wider than it is tall. There are varieties of aspect ratios, but all of them are rectangular. Not IMAX. This has led to even more confusion about which version of Oppenheimer to see. Nolan’s original compositions were square, like an Instagram post or an old TV. Everyone who saw the film in a non-IMAX theater only saw a rectangular cut out from the square master.

That is exactly what happens when a video gets delivered to multiple platforms. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all have different delivery specifications, and sometimes, even aspect ratios. No matter what you do, you’re going to be losing some imaging real estate when you deliver to different platforms. The goal is to be able to maintain the integrity of the storytelling during the process.

That’s one reason why we use different lenses with our Alexa. If we know an ad is only going on television or platforms like Hulu and YouTube, which utilize a standard 16:9 aspect ratio, we might shoot the spot with Anamorphic lenses, like our Atlas Anamorphics. Because of their unique optical designs, Anamorphic lenses have an incredibly cinematic look, but the resulting image is even wider than a normal TV screen. So, they’d be a nightmare to use on a spot that was going to show up on Instagram in vertical format.

For spots where that vertical delivery is a possibility, we might use our Sigma Cine lenses, which not only cover the full 16:9 image, but can actually take advantage of the Mini LF’s square imaging area. This means we can end up with a square imaging area similar to what Nolan’s IMAX cameras used, resulting in easier versioning.

Technology is an important part of any artistic process. It helps dictate what can and can’t be accomplished, and every time an artist brushes up against the limits of their equipment, they start thinking about ways to push beyond those limits. In that respect, there’s no difference between the talented filmmakers at CMG’s video shop and Christopher Nolan. We’re always investigating the best equipment to tell the best stories, so we can deliver stunning imagery for our clients and audience.