Why OPPENHEIMER's B&W IMAX Film is so special 

Which movie will you be going to see first on July 21, 2023: Oppenheimer or Barbie? ============================= 💭Join our Discord Channel💬 ► discord.gg/3aeNPU7GHu 🐦Twitter ► twitter.com/frame_voyager 📷Instagram ► instagram.com/framevoyager/ 🎵TikTok ► www.tiktok.com/@framevoyager

In France, if you want your movie to be shown in theatres, you have to make a film print for national archive. So every french production has a film print archived.

we live in a world where nolan has not won an oscar for best director yet 😮

My local IMAX has 15/70 prints of the dark knight trilogy, interstellar, dunkirk, tenet, and 1 of 4 prints of the 'unrestored' 2001 space odyssey that nolan supervised. They will be addin Oppenheimer to their collection and fingers crossed they rescreen everything again in summer to hype up the new film. Black and white 70mm 1.43 aspect ratio will be crazy!

Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors BUT regarding cinematography we cannot forget Hoyt Van Hoytema. The guy is a GENIUS ! I still haven't come back from NOPE. I mean, the way he shot the night scenes. So brilliant.

I love Nolan's dedication to the medium. Really makes me wish there was a film IMAX theater remotely close so I could see it as intended.

Very well done! I know a few things about how they got the BW 65mm to work for Oppenheimer: As you assumed they used 5222 Eastman Double-X and cut that in 65mm size for use in 5 and 15-perf cameras. That’s not that big of a deal since film can be cut in any size from master rolls and 5222 is available in medium format for photography from CineStill as BWXX. The lab, FotoKem had to switch their 65mm development machines from color to BW once or twice a week depending on what Nolan shot. Nolan finishes on film! No digital intermediate, only CGI shots go though a computer and even they are color corrected during the film printing with photochemical color timing. Because Oppenheimer is IMAX and 70mm the BW footage is being printed onto Kodak 2383 color print film and might have some slight coloration in the highlights or shadows because of that. The digital version of this will be made by scanning a color timed inter positive print and grading that to match the analog master print. With this process Nolan couldn’t have converted to BW in post since it would introduce another film generation into the mix and Nolan makes his IMAX prints directly from the camera negative for image maximum quality. And it’s not IMAX film really. It’s just regular 65mm film shot sideways with 3x the image area. But the film is not specifically IMAX film.

Christopher Nolan has the power to further captivate us with his crafts. His direction is something that should be consistently taken note of. He’s widely acclaimed as a storyteller of sorts. Oppenheimer already looks amazing right from the get go.

Cris Nolan is always trying to make something fresh, and that for he owns my respect.

Besides the technical aspects as in this video, shooting in black and white (or shooting a digital video/photo in black and white setting on the shoot), gives you the opportunity to compose the right contrast in colors, based on their hue. You basically have to be careful because in black and white, you may get a different contrast if you just desaturate colors, as some will look the same. So it's really a challenge and experiment to form the right contrast shooting in black and white

I think Nolan is such a special director because the story behind all the film that man is just as interesting as the films themselves.

I can't recommend 5222 enough. Every filmmaker owes it to themselves to try shooting it at least once. It's a beautiful emulsion that hasn't been changed since it was released in 1957. It has about 6-7 stops of dynamic range and renders reality as if it's a charcoal drawing. In 16mm, it is quite grainy as well. But in IMAX, it will no doubt evoke the look of mid-century portraiture taken on 6x6 and 4x5 camera which I'm sure is one of the motivations behind Nolan's decision to use it.

Fun fact about acetate cellulose, it is the material high quality frames for glasses are made of. There are cheaper injection moulded frames as well, but longer lasting frames are made from sheets of acetate cellulose!

Whatever one's feelings about Nolan as an artist, respect is due him for his recognition and honoring of celluloid film as a discrete visual medium with its own distinct qualities, and his continued commitment to working in and preserving this precious medium. I think it's great that he's expanding the technical and visual parameters of black-and-white film with this latest project, and my curiosity is certainly aroused by what I've seen (though I am admittedly not fond of the IMAX format).

Cannot wait for this movie! Nolan still makes IMAX movies like no other! Didn’t see Tenet in IMAX because of Covid but I saw Dunkirk at it was a full experience like no other.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Always happy to hear about this aspect of filmmaking and preservation.

I really enjoyed reading American Prometheus. I hope Nolan digs into the post WWII drama between Oppenheimer and the US Government.

This movie may be one of the last hurrahs for movies shot on film stock. Digital cameras for movie work from ARRI and Sony have gotten so good in the last 10 years that very few filmmakers outside of Christopher Nolan will still stick to using film in movie production.

Film is actually coated in way larger format and then just cut down to the size you need. Be it 120 stills film, 35mm, 16mm, or 70mm. So it most likely was as easy as you summarised!

I'm surprised B&W CMOS sensors aren't more popular- my understanding is the dynamic range is incredible PLUS they let in a bunch more light since there's no BAYER FILTER

Excellent work here, especially the transitions in that buttery-smooth intro. Well done.

Very well made as always, like a mini documentary. Mentioning now dangerous nitrite film was, my great grandfather had a few different jobs and one job he had was working as a projectionist in a cinema, possibly in the late 1940s-50s at least. I found out that one day one of my dad's cousins who worked with him in the cinema, after putting in the film into the projector and it started playing, it caught fire and could have burned the place down, but luckily that didn't happen.

Being that both Vision3 in 65mm and Double X have acetate film base, and that Cinestill has been selling Double x in 120 medium format for a while, I imagine it was a matter of just sending the master rolls down the 65mm cutter. I really hope that just like how E100 became available as a 35mm motion stock after it was used for that Netflix show, 65mm Double X becomes available for purchase

When I worked at Locanda Verde in NYC, they had an Italian red wine that at first taste made me think of black and white film grain. Don’t know why or how but that’s how I was able to understand it and explain it. Unfortunately can’t remember the name of the wine.

This channel is just flat out amazing.

This is the most underrated channel fr. Great job guys!

Woah, nice edits! Love it! Great job on this!

I live in a city with one of the last true 15-perf 70mm IMAX projectors. Dunkirk was amazing. I can’t wait to see this!

The Eastman Kodak Company produced that film right here in Rochester, NY, and the George Eastman museum is at the cutting edge of film preservation. *ALSO,* Eastman Kodak had a NUCLEAR REACTOR (for neutron generation/product testing) at the Kodak Park research/Production facility!

No IMAX 70MM here in the state of Oregon but we do have an only regular 70MM theater here called the Hollywood Theatre which used to be a Cinerama once upon a time. Got the premiere showing which sold out and when Nolan releases a film it’s always around my birthday so this will be a treat!

"Thanks to our sponsor, the type of thing Christopher Nolan hates with every fiber of his being"

A bit off topic, but I’m curious if you guys would be interested in making a video on quantum dot image sensors? The potential benefits of these sensors seems absolutely insane compared to CMOS. It’s also looking like they might be right around the corner of hitting the market.

Even a moment spent highlighting the vanishing history of nitrate film stocks makes this video worthwhile. Of course there is more to it - much more to it than just that. But thanks for drawing our attention to the thorny issue of archival preservation of the moving image.

I'm beyond excited to see this movie. My local theater is one of the few able to show it in 70mm IMAX and i managed to snag a ticket.

Every Frame Voyager video feels a documentary in itself

For peeps look for when he covers the question why black and white it at 11:00 .. props for stretching it out 15 min it was very informative

Kudos to Nolan for his commitment to art and technical challenges in the film industry. I believe that digital filming is also possible without postproduction manipulations and artifice, but I quite appreciate Nolan’s choice based on the quality of the results.

Wow this was a really great video 👏🏽

Just came back from a 70mm screening and it was wonderful. I can't wait for it come out on Blu-Ray so I can watch it again.

Eastman Double-X is a wonderful film stock. Contrast, tonality, luminance, and grain… just fantastic!

13:44 I remember the Line from the Hindu scripture the bhagavad-gita :- Now I become death the destroyer of worlds

I am definitely going to see this in the Massive IMAX here in NYC a the AMC Lincoln Square. Such am amazing theater, have seen Dunkirk and Dark Night here!

As someone who uses a 35mm film camera, true B&W film looks very different (and much better) than color film that’s later converted to B&W. It can capture highlights and shadows in a very unique and striking way.

I like to think Oppenheimer had that “destroyer of worlds” planned. Like, he came up with it in the shower a day before, and after the test goes off, everyone is congratulating each other, and he tries butting in “yeah, hey, now I am bec-“ but he gets cut off by other people being like “great job everyone!” and then he waits for a another moment of silence “uhh, uh, _*now I am become death…”* People are like “wait what?” and he’s all coy “yeah just a cool thing I thought of just now, nbd.”

gold info brooo!!!!

Amazing video,Very informative! Just wanted to ask if Imax claims to have 18k res on their 70mm film which is later projected at 70mm in select locations, doesn't the film get converted to digital for post-production and then back in film for the final print? That would bring the resolution back to 4k right?

Great video!

I saw it in the only 70mm film IMAX in my state, it was excellent!

one of the reason why film is still used for preservation is because if you shoot on 70mm today, in 20 years you will be able to rescanner that film in 16k or whatever resoultion will be the meta then and so on. if you shoot in 4k/8k today that file will be forever in 8k. we are 4k rescanning stuff from the 80's that was shoot on 35mm and despite is more than 40 years old that stuff now looks shoot today w a today camera.

As a photographer who has shot on BW film his entire life, this was inspiring.

I never contemplated Guy Pearce look until now. Genius in its simplicity of why it looks and feels the way it does. Digital recording leaves the same taste in my mouth, at least in medium playback. Not sure about the capturing process.

What I want to know is, what are we going to be seeing in the IMAX theaters? Will there be B&W stock in the projector either by splicing or by using two projectors at once, running the color print in one and the B&W print in the other and choreographing the handoff? I suppose they're doing that already in IMAX theaters in order to get the running time past 45 minutes?

Interesting. What about audio? Should we make an optical sound print for storage too?

I took photography and darkroom courses in the mid 80's, and used B&W film. Kodak T-Max was fairly new, and it offered high resolution and very dark "dmax". Later, my "normal" (color print film) vacation photos looked washed out and grainy in comparison. A dedicated B&W film is _much_ better than just shooting color film in shades of grey only. Now, what will the print use? Are they switching film stock based on the scene and splicing it all back together, something you never do on the distribution print? Or is it just printed on color film, losing the deep blacks and higher resolution of the true B&W footage?

Question: How is the switch from B/W to color going to be done. Remember, the thickness of the two film stocks is different and therefore refocusing is needed to compensate for the change. I remember showing films with the two stocks on the same reel, glued together. As a projectionist (and this was in 16mm) I had to be vigilant at the change to make sure the picture on the screen remained in focus.

I always wondered why BW film looked different to just turning the colour off a colour film image. Thanks for the explanation of the chemical difference. Just fascinating! Explains the sharpness difference. “Clouds” can never be as sharp as crystals.

5222 is so beautiful and unique, there is no simulation that can do what it does.

Saw the film last night and whilst not wanting to give away any spoilers, Nolan really does use the B/W elements to great effect, they help punctuate the timeline (there are three running concurrent in the movie). Can see why he wanted to use, but only pure authenticity explains why he went to such lengths to actually film in B/W rather than opting to remove colour in post production. Any other director would be told to get lost if they asked, but Nolan has the gravitas to get what he needs to make the movie he wants to make. Fair play I say...

Nice product placement!

I think another big reason why Nolan doesn't want to convert color film to bw is because he likes to finish his films photochemically. I can't see any other way to convert color film to bw than to do it in a DI process.

cool, just in time ive recently watched the Lighthouse

nolans comments about archival and media reminds me of a similar question where Steve Albini from electrical audio about digital audio and vinyl. that being, and im paraphrasing; vinyl is great for archival because there isnt a tried and true way of archiving digital and the playback method for vinyl is very basic.. Also the choice for using black and white in certain scenes i totally get what hes tried and is attempting with this new movie.. it illicits a tone and your eyeballs break react differently to a monotone palette. There are some examples of this used in the most recent david lynch's twin peaks season 3.. anyway...

IMAX film stock is identical to regular 5/70 stock physically. The areas for the sound track changes, but otherwise its entirely the same stock, so its highly likely that very little actual R&D had to be done to create black and white IMAX stock.

One small correction to your explanation of B&W. Not all Kodak nor B&W has T-Grain. That only is applicable to one kind. Other than that, thanks for the video. :)

Those soft red box chips o hoy cookies go hard!!!

You got a like from me for the Tim and Eric’s Universe clip.

I've always wanted to do a black and white IMAX with the depth of Zone System large format (i.e. Ansel Adams) purity and scale.

Work for a very old school system. 10 years back we collected every old film from 100 schools. Some started smoking the second we opened the can. We had to get a fire box in the warehouse. Some looked like the one you showed with bubbles. No fires but it would it would have not been long. S FL so very humid here too. The steel, that's why salvors are pulling up pre war wrecks from deep ocean. Pre war no radioactivity

You make it appear that there are only two options for film stock base material -- old combustible and new unworkable. Had you been around in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, experience would make you informed in substantial and nuanced ways. For many years, there were post-nitro stocks that could be operated effectively in cameras and could be spliced conveniently without resorting to using tapes. There were (are?) post-nitro camera-original negative and positive stocks designed with effective color and density latitude for generous release prints, and that would not damage a camera that jammed. If you saw a movie in a theater in the 1960s-1970s, there's a very good chance it was not polyester (well past the days of nitro) -- while other prints of the movie were kept on polyester as backup. Distributed prints became disposable in the early 1950s, because total wear-out was almost inevitable, whatever the base material. But even in those days even "B" movies had archive copies stored properly, up to a point. (If a movie saw a rapid gain in popularity, further prints could be struck from a clean print more easily than from the negative of the release edit. Those are the source of many restored films.) Far, far more film warehouses were lost to aggressive real-estate economics than to fire or other material disasters after the nitro era. That may also be partially the case in the nitro era. Even the average person on the street knew the dangerous instability of nitro stock in its day. Just as we know that refrigerated food can spoil and even become toxic. Look in every fridge you see for the next year and decide exactly what you'd do with what's in there at that moment. That's how movie storage was decided in the nitro era. If the movie was deemed past its healthy life -- in the market or for further storage -- it was, for better or worse, tossed. Neglect and mishandling were not the biggest cause of loss. Dubious-yet-thoughtful consideration could mean that the film my gr-granddad enjoyed seeing the most in 1929 was thrown away, but the one that your gr-grandma enjoyed seeing the most is still in decent storage. The ratio might be 84/16. But the decisions were made, not neglected. It's that orphans got no love at all. Judgement was brutal. Values go in cycles. People are subject to their lack of imagination about what will be valued in the future. Digital archiving was thought to mitigate by handling massive volumes of data. Archiving can be mitigated by reconciling the physical and aesthetic realities; making informed decisions. Biased uninformed discriminatory thinking reconciles nothing.

I hope I'm the one who put you onto this subject. I don't like Christopher Nolan on a personal scale, I think he's an ass, but I am thankful for him understanding the neccessity of film in movie making and preservation. The fact now that Kodak have begun working with filmmakers to create film that fits their projects instead of making their projects based around the film is a massive godsend. And not only this but making those films available for public use is another amazing thing. I recently had a peak at Kodak's order pamphlet for available film types and now they're allowing filmmakers to purchase 35mm Ektachrome for their projects after its use in Euphoria, which I find beautiful. They've also released the archival film you mentioned along with optical sound recording film that caters both to digital and analog recordings. Meaning that a preserved film can be played on a projector made in the 50s and also play on a projector made in 2020s since the film sound is compatible with both. Me thinks this is due to pressure from Mr Nolan. I think in a sense, film is like books. There rarely is a better way to keep hold of things than something physical. When you go to an archive, they'll usually keep two or more versions of something both on physical and digital. This should be the commen practice for all things related to filmmaking. Even the Internet Archive understand this and keep most of the stuff donated to them mainly books, video tapes and vinyl records. So Mr Nolan, despite often being wrong, is right about the neccessity for film preservation and to do it solely digitally is beyond a waste of resources and safety. I personally prefer using film because I can hold up the negative and say "This was there." You don't really get that feeling with digital. Digital is like acrylic paint but film feels like oil. It isn't impossible to make a great painting with acrylic and it's more than possible to make a bad painting with oil, but there's a certain essence each medium shares that'd be hard to replicate in the other. That's film. I love film. And that's why.

Xavier Dolan shot Adele music video “Hello” on IMAX film. Which was black and white

I can't wait for ther movie!

Why don't they just film it regularly and then turn on grayscale in the editing software?

Kudos to Nolan for correctly stating the truth most people are unaware of - that there is no stable digital archiving format or workflow available today, and the only truly long-term storage medium we know today is film - particularly black-and-white film stored at low to very low temperature. Color films may be separated into three RGB strips of black-and-white film and stored in the same way.

So if I understand it correctly, the film exists in two versions on IMAX prints? The colour and black&white versions?

Again - Great!

Because it's a FILM and not a long TikTok video like all the other movies today

If you want to see a serious tour of Kodak behind the scenes , Destin at _Smarter Every Day_ did a serious dive with them. there's an even longer version of the tour on his second channel, and if your seriously interest in film, that's the one to watch. The laminar flow application process for the film is WILD. And they actually talk about specialty film like this. The hard part isn't the chemistry, they do special blending for that fairly often. Nolan would be designing film like he was ordering a Porche The machine that perferates the film though... that's absolutely insane. Like a watchmaker and a machines met and made nightmare The chem is wild too. they cover everything from reaction vessels with hunderes of lbs of silver in them, to how the diet of the cow they get the bones to make the backer

So while I am glad to see Kodak finally get a win again, it would have been incredibly ironic had they worked with Fuji. I wonder how that phone call would have gone.

Film, old or new, can be re-scanned for modern digital sales. Even though one can use a BMD 12K camera to capture, once sales require more, then only film will suffice.

Very nice describe

I wonder how many people will actually see this movie as a projected film print? Nolan seems to make these technical decisions based on the viewing exoerience he will get to have, which will be far higher than the majority of people.

Christopher Nolan should direct a Mission Impossible movie. Just imagine the crazy stunts they'd put in there.

I believe it was Einstein who said "I don't know with what weapons world war 3 will be fought, but I know that world war 4 will be fought with sticks and stones." Very heavy shit.

How do they edit it like in normal digital one we have the video encoded so we edit it in software. But how will they edit this as its a film in order to put animations and visual effect

What's the name of the music playing in the background

Let's be real, for preservation digital is objectively superior since you can make identical copies without any degradation and have as much redundancy as necessary.

I remember a reddit comment saying it would be awesome if the movie was black and white first and then color after the explosion so I wouldnt be surprised if screenwriters steal ideas from online people😒

People are switching to Davinci Resolve so fast right now because Peter McKinnon & Matti Happoja switched to it. When I use to tell people they should switch, they always said no

I hope he manages to mix the dialogue track properly this time around(unlike with Tenet).

0:10...that was a zoomed footage, right?

I think it's worth voicing the fact that every time 'Nolan' was uttered, I literally heard 'no one'. So you can imagine this is immensely confusing. Otherwise really enjoyed the video.

That awkward moment when you see your face pop up in a Frame Voyager video. 10:30 To be fair I switched to Davinci Resolve before it was the cool thing to do 😎😂

Nitro-Cellulose has a more common name. Gun Cotton. For an example of use, see Battleship New Jersey. The 16" guns were bag loads of nitrocellulose propellant grains. Another common use was ping pong balls of all things. they were nitrocellulose up until the 90's early 2k's

I wish u could still wach movies on film where i live its all digital you would have to drive 10+ hours to see someting on IMAX film

Anybody know what movie the shot at 6:40 is from?

So, it's being shot on IMAX film stock, but will any IMAX theaters actually project film prints? So many went to "lie"MAX long ago. One MPEG (Motion Pictures Editors Guild) friend seems to think that all the film copies will stay with the studio and the only thing in screenings will be digital and I have little reason to doubt his expertise.

Considering Cinestill sells this film in 120 format, it can’t have been rocket science for Kodak to produce it in 65mm.

If you can I’d recommend reading The Making of The Atomic Bomb by the author and historian Richard Rhodes! He provides in rich human, political, and scientific detail all about the project. I’ve been enjoying it so far almost done with it!!

I have the Filconvert products and although I grew up with B&W (1950/60s) I just cannot bring myself to apply to my efforts. I attended many "how to" classes but still cannot develop a B&W "vision". Oh well ...