{"id":525510,"date":"2026-03-07T22:26:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T22:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/525510\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T22:26:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T22:26:18","slug":"how-the-bride-uses-imax-like-no-other-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/525510\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘The Bride!’ Uses IMAX Like No Other Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Maggie Gyllenhaal<\/a> started prep on \u201cThe Lost Daughter,\u201d one of the first things she and cinematographer H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Louvart talked about in their early Zoom conversation was light. What the light looks like in the first scene of the movie \u2014\u00a0the color of light, its clarity or gauziness or texture, how it plays with lens choice and framing \u2014 is as much a storytelling tool to guide viewers toward the film<\/a>\u2018s emotional reality as the dialogue.<\/p>\n

For her second film, \u201cThe Bride!\u201d<\/a>, Gyllenhaal employed many different kinds of light, real and fantastical, to play with. But she needed to find a cinematographer who understood the relationship between Christian Bale\u2019s still-kicking, still-lonely Frank(enstein\u2019s Monster) and Jessie Buckley\u2019s The Bride, in her first life, a \u201830s mob mole named Ida, but now reinvigorated into something else entirely and haunted by Mary Shelley (also Jessie Buckley<\/a>) herself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"WE<\/a> \"Buddy<\/a> <\/p>\n

\u201cI was speed-dating DPs. I met so many DPs who were so incredible, and so interesting, and so talented, and fancy,\u201d Gyllenhaal told IndieWire on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast<\/a>. She wanted a partner in crime who would understand how to use cinematic tools to weave the audience through the tiny shifts in the tapestry of the characters\u2019 emotional language. And she found her answer in cinematographer Lawrence Sher<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe and I were totally on the same page,\u201d Gyllenhaal said. \u201cHe understood, in the most complicated way, the emotional trip through the movie.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The emotional trip through the movie, at least in terms of its visual language, is one that treats the world of \u201cThe Bride!<\/a>\u201d as both iconic, heightened, and expressive, like the panels of graphic novels, and also grounded in something very real. That sometimes meant a back-and-forth between DP and director about how to visually capture the spaces in the film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Bride!\u2019\u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201c[Sher] became a major teacher and one of the most exciting things about working with him was disagreeing with him and knowing that I had a point of view,\u201d Gyllenhaal said. \u201cI really love the magic and the value of very long lenses. They\u2019re not for always, but in this move that\u2019s full of magic and full of a kind of mind connection between people, I often found I was pushing him towards longer lenses.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another way Sher and Gyllenhaal worked to imbue a bit of magic into \u201cThe Bride!\u201d was through their use of IMAX. The most fantastical parts of the movie retain some of their power because Sher and Gyllenhaal subtly manipulate aspect ratio changes and a vertical growth across the film.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Bride!\u2019\u00a9Warner Bros\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201cI had barely consumed anything in IMAX. I know I was in \u2018The Dark Knight,\u2019 one of the first of its kind to dramatically use IMAX. And I think I\u2019d seen something at the Museum of Natural History about rock climbing in IMAX. But I think that\u2019s it,\u201d Gyllenhaal said. \u201cLearning these tools, not only on the job, but learning and digesting them in my own way \u2014 what I\u2019ve been told by the people who I got to know really well at IMAX is that the way that we use it is different than it\u2019s ever been used before.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

How \u201cThe Bride!\u201d uses IMAX is sometimes a slow change \u2014 it has a native 2:39:1 aspect ratio for a kind of epic, sweeping feeling. But if you see it in one of the 40 1:43:1 IMAX theaters around the world, \u201cThe Bride!\u201d find ways to grow into itself. It changes to a 1:90:1 aspect ratio and to a 1:43:1 aspect ratio. It shifts between 2:39:1, 1:90:1, and 1:43:1, and sometimes the aspect ratio changes across three cuts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s new,\u201d Gyllenhaal said. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing what it does because the movie\u2019s about bringing people back from the dead. There\u2019s magic in it. And actually, in an IMAX theater with those vertical grows, it creates a feeling of magic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bride!\u201d is now in theaters. The full Filmmaker Toolkit interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal<\/a> launches on podcast platforms Wednesday, March 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Maggie Gyllenhaal started prep on \u201cThe Lost Daughter,\u201d one of the first things she and cinematographer H\u00e9l\u00e8ne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,1689,37998,214659,344,108043,31405],"class_list":["post-525510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","tag-maggie-gyllenhaal","tag-movies","tag-the-bride","tag-top-of-the-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}