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| IMAX Melbourne, Nikon F100, Nikkor AF-S 50mm f/1.4, Fujifilm Natura 1600 |
When Christopher Nolan’s space epic Interstellar returns to IMAX Melbourne for one last night this Sunday, it’ll be the end of an era. At the end of the screening, the massive IMAX GT 1570 film projector will be switched off for the last time; the 272kg platter of 1570 film Interstellar occupies packed up never to be seen on these shores again. As part of the third stage of the cinema’s “upgrade”, IMAX Melbourne is removing the film projector, along with the inferior twin-digital projection system, and replacing them both with the new 4K IMAX Laser projection system.
IMAX claims the new Laser (must...resist...urge...to “finger air quote”) system is a “quantum leap in cinema technology” that provides audiences with “the sharpest, brightest, clearest and most vivid digital images ever”. This is all, of course, marketing guff. Maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. As a film and film aficionado, my customary position is to be skeptical of IMAX’s lofty claims for the new system. After all, technology companies have been promising to make film obsolete since 1981’s Sony Mavica and its video floppy disk system (as if you'll ever need more than 490 lines of horizontal resolution!). It has taken three long decades for digital projection and capture to live up to its own rhetoric and even then, the resolution of 70mm IMAX film exceeds virtually all commercially-available digital capture devices. But I will resist the urge to critique the new system until I see it in action.
Interstellar, one of the boldest and most impressive science-fiction films this side of 2001: A Space Odyssey, is also likely to be the final feature film (partially) shot and projected in 70mm IMAX. The past few years have seen a number of films, particularly those of Christopher Nolan, utilise the format for key sequences. J.J. Abrams is continuing this trend, shooting at least one segment of Star Wars Episode VII on 70mm IMAX. Whether or not the film is released in 70mm IMAX for suitable screens is moot, Melbourne audiences will be seeing it projected via the new Laser system come December.
If there is to be a future for film, digital projection seems to be an inevitable part of it. Perhaps, for the multiplex, this is the best of both worlds: the organic nature of film capture paired with the adequate consistency of most digital projection. But for the world of IMAX and epic event cinema, the removal of capacity to project 1570 film will leave audiences all the poorer. I understand the practicalities of the situation – a projection system is only as good as the films available to present and there is a dwindling number of drawcard movies being shot and projected on 70mm IMAX film – but I still can't help feeling like something truly great is being lost.
So here's to IMAX and the crazy people who made it possible including inventors Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor, Robert Kerr, and William C. Shaw; IMAX cinematographers James Neihouse, David Breashears; IMAX director and developer Greg MacGillivray and more recent notables such as Christopher Nolan. The cinema is far richer and more powerful for your efforts and I can't wait to sit down, strap myself in and watch the fruits of your labours one last time.
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| ELCAN (Ernst Leitz Canada) IMAX projection lens. German-born know-how made in Canada – optics without compromise. Source: For the Love of Film – Interstellar IMAX® Featurette |
You are not alone to mourn the loss.
ReplyDelete....Because you are not alone in understanding how that bizarre feeling of heartbreak actually feels as it splinters there inside you when that final film finally ends...
When the very last bit of tail on the very tail end of the last film finally spins out on the platter...
When the take-up arm disengages and lets go of the film for good - and you watch the wobbly remains of what's left wrapped up with the film belt slowly puddle on the floor in black ribbons.
The rollers spin themselves out, slow down, and one-by-one become still - the hushed sound of their motion blur replaced now with undisturbed silence.
Silence followed by darkness.
The theatre finally empties, the houselights go dark, and you force yourself to douse the lamp for the last time...
The heat in it slowly dies, the lamphouse cooling into just another hunk of scrap steel before you can actually even touch it.
The memory of the light lingering on your eyes like a tattoo as it fades out from behind the rotor. A Rapid sunset of tarnished brass colors that run out fast like sand before it hits darkness.
You bleed the air tank, you flip the breakers, the humming stops, and the lights go out in all the little buttons...
Everything stops blinking, flashing, whirring - moving - and it all looks so gray once it does.
Ghostly. Empty. A shell.
Your projector isn't a projector anymore because the motion picture has finally died in it....
I worked in IMAX as a projectionist for 12 YEARS - from 2001 to 2013.
It's been 6 years since my theatre went dark....and I flat out fucking cried when it did.
Couldn't stop.
It's not the same.
Digital is not the same.
It never feels right. It's uncomfortable, Just inherently out of place.
Like something about the way it works alone in silence is intentionally misleading.
It feels deceptive.
It feels WRONG.
Because it doesn't move you.
It's soulless.
And it's soulless because it doesn't move and it doesn't move because it isn't alive.
Film always felt alive.
Because it WAS - and digital feels off because it's the EXACT opposite.
It's not offputting because it's something that's dead....it's offputting because it's never actually been alive at all....
I'm not even sure if this blog is still ACTIVE - or if you'll read this or ever see it.
Doesn't matter.
I found this post that you wrote from 4 years ago randomly at 4am on the internet tonight, and I read it, and it moved me.
Because I can tell how bad you were going to miss your projector...because I know exactly how bad I miss mine
Every.Single. Damn. Day.
The Projection Booth changes you.
And it's one of those very weird things you just can't really quantify to somebody who's never been locked inside one with an IMAX projector...