If you've been to the movies in the last few years, you may have heard about or even watched in an IMAX theater.
While the technology isn't really something new, having been used to shoot nature documentaries for museums in the past, its recent integration in full-length movie-making has helped renew the public's interest in watching films in theaters with its wider screen and better resolutions.
Now, IMAX is once drawing attention from moviegoers as one of the biggest superhero films of the year, Warner Bro. Pictures' Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, is going to use the format to allow the audience to experience the action-packed movie in full.
On Friday, IMAX released a clip from the movie on Twitter to let people see the difference between a scene shot using an IMAX camera system and one shot in a standard format. The video is just a 29-second scene that surveys the destruction of a city from afar.
The 2:4:1 ratio of a standard shot already provides a gripping view of the film's sequence, but as the clip begins to widen to the 1:9:1 and 1:43:1 ratios of IMAX cameras, viewers get to see Batman's scene in its fullness.
The explosions in the distance are more visible, and the city's devastation becomes even more apparent in the expanded view.
Only in IMAX do select sequences filmed on our cameras expand vertically to fill the entire screen! #BatmanvSuperman pic.twitter.com/qZi2RNZaPP
— IMAX (@IMAX) March 18, 2016
This is not the first time a DC feature film made use of IMAX to enhance its visual experience.
Director Christopher Nolan shot some of the sequences in his 2008 film The Dark Knight using IMAX cameras. These include the opening scene where the Joker pulled a bank heist as well as the final fight scene between the clown villain and Batman.
IMAX technology was also used to tweak some scenes in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, which helped present the vastness of space as the film's primary setting.
With Dawn of Justice director Zack Snyder very much committed to using IMAX to help make the film more epic, we expect some more wide-shot scenes like the "Knightmare" sequence in the Twitter clip.
If it's any indication of what's to come when the film hits theaters on March 25, then superhero fans and casual moviegoers alike are in for a visually-stimulating experience.
