Van Hoytema and FotoKem talk 65mm and Oppenheimer

 
 by Photo of author

Director Christopher Nolan‘s film Oppenheimer tells the epic story of the Robert Oppenheimer, the behind the Manhattan Project—the secret government project that brought together scores of scientists and engineers to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. And similar to the Manhattan Project itself (though with far lower stakes), the team at FotoKem brought together its own scientists and artists and engineers and helped bring Nolan’s vision to life in 70mm.

From The Prestige to The Dark Knight, Tenet, and Dunkirk, it’s no secret that Christopher Nolan prefers to tell his great stories using the medium of analog film. “Every part of the process always seems to be so epic,” says Oppenheimer’s Color Timer Kristen Zimmerman. “He’s always wanting to try new things and push. Push the lab into trying things when we say we can’t do them. He says, ‘Sure you can.’ And he’s always right.”

But Hoyte Van Hoytema, the cinematographer of Oppenheimer who’s lensed four of Nolan’s films, knew right away that Nolan wanted to push the envelope even further with Oppenheimer. “Chris had written into the script the cues for black and white and color. He thought it was a good idea to use it sort of to distinguish two different storylines.” In other words, this time, Nolan wanted to tell a story in both color and black and white, a thing which hadn’t really been before except in a very limited way.

“The major new challenge was handling black and white in 65mm format,” says FotoKem’s Senior VP Feature Sales & Marketing Andrew Oran, who shepherded Oppenheimer‘s overall workflow from day one, and lamented the fact that the film stock hadn’t been manufactured in decades. “Kodak had to figure out how to make it and it involved working with our lab engineers on processing that product.”

And so Nolan’s team and the FotoKem sat down and got to work on the Oppenheimer 65mm workflow, knowing full well the monumental challenges that lie ahead, not the least of which involved balancing a budget-sensible shooting schedule with a FotoKem lab schedule that would need to switch continually between processing 65mm black and white and 65mm color film.

“We’d never processed 65 millimeter black and white before,” says Oran. “And we had to figure out not only how to process it, but how to switch between black and white and color processing, which involved installing huge tanks in our lab where we could temporarily place all of the color chemistry while we were loading up our processing tanks with black and white chemistry and vice versa. We had to learn during production—we had to figure out how not to break the film while they were shooting this stuff.”

What’s more, FotoKem and Nolan’s objective was to give audiences a chance to see the film without any sort of digital “filter” in place.

FotoKem VP and Principal Color Scientist Joseph Slomka spent around six months ahead of production on that very subject, locking down details on both the photochemical side and the digital side. “So if anything was different,” says Slomka, “we knew ahead of time and we were able to simply have them sit down and agree… that what was on the digital side was matching the film side.”

And once production began, FotoKem printed literally everything Nolan shot. Then after the edit was complete, FotoKem brought in Negative Cutter Simone Appleby from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’image Animée in France to cut each section and glue it together, which starts with a list that comes out of the Avid that provides every single one of the over 3,000 shots. That list, coupled with a work print (a film version of the list of shots), was then rolled against the negative, using also a QuickTime reference with key numbers—all of which allowed Appleby to cut the physical negative together into the final assembly, from which final prints were made. And from there, Van Hoytema and Color Timer Kristen Zimmerman painstakingly perfected the color of each and every shot by hand.

So was the result worth so much planning and effort? For fans of analog film and the beauty of the photochemical image, the answer is a firm yes. Says Kostas Theodosiou, FotoKem Senior Colorist who handled the final digital color for the picture, “Something about film is different. It has a texture. From the lens to the falling off around the edges of the film to the vignette. How it captures the light. Yes, you can get into the tools that we have to create that from digital capture but it’s not the same as capturing in 65mm because the grain structure is different, the images look different. You know, something very unique.”

Theodosiou’s focus was matching the color of the digital master to that of the analog film master because Nolan and FotoKem knew that not everybody in the world would be able to view Oppenheimer on analog film. “We were able to manipulate the images and make them look exactly how Christopher intended for them to look on film,” says Theodosiou. “For the final tweaks, we had to split screen the image between a digital and a film on the screen and match the film identically throughout, from reel one all the way to the end.”

“If you see Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm film,” says Andrew Oran, “you’re replicating the experience that Chris and Hoyte had when they first viewed and fell in love with the film. The dedication to film capture allows us to continue to provide these services on a scale that makes it possible for them to use it on feature films and television shows.

And for the entire team at FotoKem, the huge effort was highly rewarding not only visually but because we were able to see it all come together the way Nolan initially imagined.

And as for the film’s cinematographer Van Hoytema, he encourages filmmakers to give analog film a try. “We believe that in the analog way and staying in the analog way, we maintained the highest resolution possible. And it’s fairly easy to shoot on film. I’d love for people just to try it out. Film is extremely tolerant and a very rewarding process. It is not at all as intimidating as a lot of people think… It’s very, very special, and very magical but also a very concrete process that is very easy to grasp. I would say do it, you know, don’t hesitate. Just just, just go for it. It’s a beautiful thing.”