‘Oppenheimer’: New BTS Video Looks at the IMAX Shooting!! Check It Out!!

A new behind-the-scenes featurette for Oppenheimer explores how the IMAX format helps to elevate Christopher Nolan’s highly-anticipated biopic. Starring Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the movie will retrace the history of the atomic bomb through the eyes of the man who created it.

While a regular cinema screen and televisor work with a 16:9 aspect ratio, IMAX’s exclusive 1.90:1 aspect ratio offers approximately 26% more image. For that reason, Hollywood studios tend to shoot set pieces in IMAX to provide the audience with a more spectacular theatrical experience. However, while IMAX is frequently used as a tool for action, Oppenheimer is a biopic shot entirely in the format. In the new video, Nolan explains this decision by pointing out how “Oppenheimer’s story is one of the biggest stories imaginable.” In addition, the filmmaker underlines that “Our film tries to take you into his experience, and IMAX, for me, is a portal into a level of immersion that you can’t get from other formats.”

Nolan is not the only person to defend the use of IMAX to elevate cinema. In the new featurette, director of photography Hoyte Van Hoytema also explains that IMAX can be an “intimate format,” even though people associate the bigger screen with extensive landscapes and overcrowded scenes. For Hoytema, Oppenheimer turns the human face into a landscape that can be explored with IMAX in all its depth and complexity.

The new video also explains how Nolan and his crew had to create new technology to film Oppenheimer. That’s because the biopic is the first movie ever to shoot sections in IMAX black-and-white analog photography. So, since a black-and-white film didn’t exist in the market, they had to invent it before Oppenheimer went into production.

When Is Oppenheimer Coming to Theaters?

Oppenheimer’s star-studded cast also includes Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh Jack Quaid, Benny Safdie, Rami Malek, Dane DeHaan, Josh Hartnett, Matthew Modine, Kenneth Branagh, David Krumholtz, Michael Angarano and Alden Ehrenreich. According to Damon, the movie clocks in 3 hours, making it the longest film in Nolan’s prolific career. Considering how complex the real story of the creation of the atomic bomb is, it’s not surprising Nolan needs the extra time for his biopic.

Oppenheimer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. As with his previous films, Nolan writes and directs the biopic.

Oppenheimer is set to be released into theaters on July 21 and will go up against Barbie, which premieres on the same day. Check out the new behind-the-scenes video below.