Christopher Nolan Shot ‘The Odyssey’ Entirely With Imax Cameras by Creating New Equipment So ‘You Can Shoot a Foot’ Away From an Actor’s Face and ‘Get Usable Sound’
Christopher Nolan‘s “The Odyssey” is making film history as the first narrative feature shot entirely with Imax cameras, and it’s all thanks in part to a child and a David Bowie song. The film’s cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, revealed to Empire magazine that he shot Imax test footage of a kid reading Bowie’s “Sound And Vision” lyrics to prove whether or not Imax film cameras were advanced enough to record dialogue.
“I presented Chris with a very big close-up of a child on the IMAX screen, reciting David Bowie’s ‘Sound And Vision’ from a piece of paper,” van Hoytema said. “It was very touching: that level of intimacy in both image and sound, fused together, projected in the theatre.”
Nolan said the results were “electrifying,” adding: “We never would have been able to get those shots before.” The footage proved once and for all that Nolan could finally make an entire movie shot entirely with Imax cameras, whereas he was limited to mostly action scenes in the past since Imax cameras were too noisy to film dialogue scenes up close to the actor. A new Imax film casing called a “blimp” was created to significantly reduce the noise Imax cameras produce.
“The blimp system is a game-changer,” Nolan said. “You can be shooting a foot from [an actor’s] face while they’re whispering and get usable sound. What that opens up are intimate moments of performance on the world’s most beautiful format.”
Nolan has been building toward making a movie entirely with Imax cameras since 2008, when “The Dark Knight” became the first Hollywood movie to utilize Imax cameras to shoot select action scenes. Since then, Nolan has used Imax cameras for more scenes with every new release. His 2023 Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer” was the first movie to use Imax black-and-white 65mm film.
“The Odyssey” is being shot by van Hoytema, who has collaborated with Nolan on “Interstellar,” “Dunkirk,” “Tenet” and “Oppenheimer.” He won the best cinematography Oscar for the latter film and spoke to Variety at the time about working with Nolan and Kodak to create the first stock of Imax 65mm black-and-white film.
“Black and white film doesn’t exist for 65 millimeters, so our first challenge was starting to talk to Kodak about if they could provide us with the necessary film stock that we needed for this film,” van Hoytema said. “We needed to re-engineer the cameras as well because those cameras have these pressure plates behind the film gates that are made out of metal and the backing is much thinner than color stock. The light would bleed back into the films creating all these artifacts.”
Nolan previously revealed to Empire magazine that he “shot over 2 million feet of film” during the making of “The Odyssey,” which filmed for 91 days earlier this year. Per Kodak, a foot of 65mm film costs $1.50. This means Nolan’s film used around $3 million worth of film.
Matt Damon reunites with Nolan after “Interstellar” and “Oppenheimer” to headline “The Odyssey” in the lead role of Odysseus. Tom Holland plays his son, Telemachus. The sprawling ensemble also includes Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron and Jon Bernthal.
“As a filmmaker, you’re looking for gaps in cinematic culture, things that haven’t been done before,” Nolan told Empire about why he chose to adapt Homer’s Greek epic. “And what I saw is that all of this great mythological cinematic work that I had grown up with – Ray Harryhausen movies and other things – I’d never seen that done with the sort of weight and credibility that an A-budget and a big Hollywood, IMAX production could do.”
“The Odyssey” opens in theaters July 17, 2026, from Universal.
