Melbourne<\/a>, Australia, which removed its film projector in 2015 but bought it back two years later when Nolan appealed to Imax cinemas around the world to show his 2017 film Dunkirk on 1570.<\/p>\nNow, ahead of The Odyssey\u2019s release this week, Nolan fans are heading down under from places as far flung as Turkey, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany and Los Angeles to watch the film at Imax Melbourne, which is the only cinema in the southern hemisphere with a 1570 reel of The Odyssey. The enormous reel runs more than 17km, weighs 240kg, and is, as Imax Melbourne\u2019s technical manager Dan Drobik says, \u201ca precious commodity\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are only one of 41 cinemas across the globe [where] you can see it in the way that Nolan created the film,\u201d says Imax Melbourne general manager Jeremy Fee. \u201cThere\u2019s only seven outside of North America in the entire world, so people do seek out that really special experience. They can\u2019t really see this anywhere else.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing more people travel than ever. We have people who built their holidays around their Odyssey screening, which is pretty incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Melbourne\u2019s Imax is also the largest 1.43:1 cinema screen in the world, measuring 32m wide by 23m high (roughly as tall as a seven storey building). When tickets for The Odyssey first went on sale \u2013 a year ago \u2013 it sold more than 17,000 tickets in under 24 hours. They have since sold more than 30,000 tickets; The Odyssey is already their eighth biggest film of all time, before it has even opened.<\/p>\n
As a 1570 projectionist, Dan Drobik compares 1570 film to digital in the same way audiophiles prize vinyl over CDs. Photograph: Eugene HylandThe number of cinemas able to project 1570 film has risen from 30 to 41 globally since the release of Oppenheimer three years ago. Photograph: Eugene Hyland<\/p>\n
Christian W\u00e4chter, 45, and his wife, Romy Demeter, 42, have travelled from Germany to Indonesia for a work trip, but are heading to Melbourne especially to see The Odyssey on 1570 at the Imax \u2013 twice.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have asked, why would you take that plane to Melbourne and see a movie? Because it\u2019s the biggest 1570 screen in the world,\u201d W\u00e4chter says. \u201cThere is a bigger Imax screen in Germany but it\u2019s digital, so you don\u2019t have the full peripheral vision. That\u2019s why we prefer to go to Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many sports fans wouldn\u2019t think twice about spending huge sums to attend the World Cup, Wimbledon or the Formula One \u2013 so doing so for a film isn\u2019t so strange, he argues: \u201cThey spend thousands and we\u2019re just paying a small amount, but for a cultural experience. I think it makes sense. It\u2019s not like we are totally crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone understands the fervour Nolan inspires. \u201cI told my grandma about it. She is 87 now. And she was just laughing. She didn\u2019t say anything. She was just laughing and said, \u2018oh, my God, you both,\u2019\u201d says Demeter.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy 70-year-old father is like, \u2018What?\u2019 He cannot really grasp it, because he didn\u2019t grow up with that kind of cinema. But my sister and our friends, of course they understand it,\u201d W\u00e4chter adds.<\/p>\n
As a 1570 projectionist, Drobik compares 1570 film to digital in the same way audiophiles prize vinyl over CDs. \u201cThey are both playing you the same song, but one is a much earthier, richer, sort of natural feeling,\u201d he says, adding: \u201c[1570] is the highest resolution you can project in, but it still has that sense of warmth and feeling to it that, I think, is lost to a degree with some of the digital content that is played everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Projecting on 1570 is far more fiddly and expensive \u2013 Drobik has to stay close to the projector for the entirety of every Odyssey screening, \u201clistening away, hearing out for anything that might sound out of the ordinary\u201d \u2013 but its scarcity means that \u201cpeople are willing to pay to come experience something like that and put their phones away\u201d. Increasingly, audience members ask to visit him in the projection booth: \u201cIt can feel very isolating up in the projection booth. So it\u2019s very humbling to know people have travelled so far just to come and see the film in this format. It\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Film formats are almost leading the discussion in terms of where to seek out a film\u2019: Imax Melbourne general manager Jeremy Fee with the reels of 1570 film from Christopher Nolan\u2019s previous films. Photograph: Eugene Hyland<\/p>\n
The rise of Nolan\u2019s career correlates with 1570\u2019s mini comeback: the number of cinemas able to project 1570 film has risen from 30 to 41 globally since the release of Oppenheimer three years ago, while at the same time several auteur film-makers are returning to shooting on film.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of other film-makers are now shooting in 35mm, in 70mm, VistaVision \u2013 we projected One Battle After Another here, which was filmed on VistaVision and still looked incredible,\u201d says Fee. \u201cIt is something people can\u2019t experience on their TV or on smaller screens. And it\u2019s the quality and the real sort of authorship, I think, that certain film-makers want to project and they want to show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fee says Nolan\u2019s passion has also driven audiences, particularly younger viewers, to become more aware of film formats: \u201cWhat I\u2019ve seen, for this film in particular, even more so than Oppenheimer, is a huge groundswell of people understanding the difference between film formats and filming methodologies. I\u2019ve never seen anything like it. The Odyssey has been above and beyond in terms of hype and knowledge. Film formats are almost leading the discussion in terms of where to seek out a film \u2013 that is really new.\u201d<\/p>\n
1570 screenings for older films, like Nolan\u2019s 2014 Interstellar, are also more popular now than when they were released. \u201cInterstellar sells out 1783999029 more than it did then because people know how precious it is and how important these singular experiences are,\u201d says Drobik.<\/p>\n
Like many Nolan fans, W\u00e4chter respects his talents enough to seek out his films in the format he wants: \u201cHe shoots and finishes his film with this format in mind. This is the way you should watch that movie \u2013 nothing else makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Homer\u2019s Odyssey, the hero Odysseus embarks on an epic journey spanning oceans, monsters and gods to return…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-800472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}