As the culmination of what will be (at least) 17 films, eight TV series, five shorts, a couple dozen comics, Avengers: Infinity War feels like it has the potential to be the biggest filmmaking endeavor of all time.
Fittingly then, IMAX has announced that Infinity War will be the first Hollywood film to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras. Holy crap that’s going to look cool.
Is this a big deal?
Absolutely! We’ve seen movies with select IMAX sequences before (Chris Nolan’s work and the most recent Mission: Impossible are good examples), but we have yet to see a Hollywood release done entirely in that massive format. Even movies that are played in IMAX theaters have to upscale their non-IMAX segments. With Infinity War though, everything will look as good as it possibly can on the big-big screen.
What cameras will they be using?
Directors Joe and Anthony Russo will be provided with IMAX and ARRI’s Alexa 65, the “next generation revolutionary 2D digital camera – a joint customized digital version of ARRI’s new large format camera.”
What aspect ratio will it use?
According to the announcement, the film will be shot primarily in the 1.9:1 aspect ratio typical of IMAX theaters. Since this will also be shown in non-IMAX theaters though, one has to assume that they’ll be framing it in a way that nothing important will get cut-off.
How will they prepare for this?
The Russo brothers will be shooting approximately 15 minutes of IMAX footage on their next Marvel film, Captain America: Civil War (currently underway right now), before tackling Infinity War the following year.
According to IMAX CEO Greg Foster, the Russos will also be spending the next 15-ish months “designing the making of the ‘Avengers’ films with these cameras in mind. They’re not looking at this a week before they start filming or only focusing on an important section of the film. This is something that’s never happened before.”
Either way, it sounds like the Infinity War team isn’t taking any chances with such a giant undertaking, and will be spending the time necessary to get it right before the cameras even begin rolling.
Damn I’m excited, when is Infinity War out again?
Avengers: Infinity War has been split into two parts which will be released on May 4, 2018 and May 3, 2019.
Filming for both halves will begin late next year, and will shoot for approximately nine months straight.
