Film and Digital Media @ Messiah

With The Dark Knight, all the action sequences were shot in IMAX, and later intercut with 35mm film. This film also marks cinematographer Wally Pfister’s sixth collaboration with director Chris Nolan, which began with the indie hit Memento and was seen most recently in The Prestige.

As a team, Nolan and Pfister are notable for their efforts to adhere to an “in-camera” ethos. Pfister famously avoids the digital intermediate process that has become commonplace among Hollywood filmmakers for the ability to tweak nearly everything about the image. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Pfister comments. Though “The Dark Knight” does include digital visual effects, many of the effects are captured in-camera.

In one notable sequence an exploding four-storey building was destroyed for the filmmakers, who shot it in Chicago. In other words: What you see in this film may actually have been there on the set.

From IMAX senior VP David Keighley’s point of view, The Dark Knight is a long-time dream come true. “We’ve tried to get a filmmaker to shoot a film in IMAX for 40 years,” says Keighley, who ticks off Coppola’s Apocalypse Now as one project he pushed for. “But everyone said, the cameras are too big, too heavy and too noisy.”

That makes it all the more impressive that the very intense action sequences, which include the six-minute opening shot of a bank heist, were shot in IMAX. Pfister revealed that he and Nolan have long been fans of the IMAX format. “There’s no better image quality,” says Pfister. “And Chris wanted to enhance the film-going experience.”