DOP Wally Pfister Talks Shooting 'Batman 3' In IMAX....Again

Longtime Christopher Nolan director of photography Wally Pfister is talking up shooting “Batman 3” in IMAX. Again.

Speaking with MTV, Pfister enthuses, “I can’t say until I read the script, but it would certainly be my preferred, amazing goal to shoot the whole movie in IMAX.”
“I must say I’m a huge IMAX fan. I like IMAX more than I like 3-D,” he elaborated. “Chris’ films are so densely layered and have so much going on visually in every way that IMAX helps enhance that because of the scope and the scale of it — it becomes a much larger canvas to paint on. That’s what we found on ‘Dark Knight.'”And to drive the nail in the coffin of the next film shooting in 3D, Pfister continues by saying “I’m not a big fan of 3-D. I liken it to my View-Master I had 40 years ago. Are you really getting more out of the story with 3-D? When you separate those different planes and you’re creating artificial depth, it looks phony to me.” And though Nolan did do tests on 3D conversion for “Inception” — and may even run “Batman 3” through the process should he have the time and it meets his standards — Nolan will unlikely shoot in 3D as it requires shooting digitally, and the director is an avowed fan of celluloid.
But this isn’t the first time Pfister has talked IMAX and ‘Batman.’ Back in April, in an interview with Cinematical, Pfister revealed he and Christopher Nolan had already started batting the the idea around saying, “What Chris and I have talked about is doing something cool and something interesting. Brad Bird was [saying] ‘you’ve got to shoot the whole thing in IMAX!’ I was like, yeah, I’ve talked to Chris about that.” And even last summer, AICN was reporting that rumors about “Batman 3” potentially shooting in the format. So what do we think about all this?

As potentially cool as it could be, there are some hurdles to get over. For one, IMAX cameras are reportedly quite loud which makes shooting dialogue heavy scenes a bit of a challenge. And the format itself puts limits on the overall film’s length and even how long a single take can last. Will IMAX be used more often and prominently in “Batman 3”? Our guess is yes– we doubt the film will be shot front to back in the format, but we would love to be surprised.

“Batman 3” will shoot sometime next spring and is penciled in for a July 20, 2012 release.