The scene in Christopher Nolan’s ‘Dunkirk’ that destroyed an IMAX camera
For such a staunch proponent of IMAX and a filmmaker who opts to use the format to the greatest possible extent on his features, Christopher Nolan is in danger of gaining a reputation for being a little too reckless with the rigs.
When the director opted to use the cameras for what ended up being almost 30 minutes of footage in The Dark Knight, there were only four in the world suitable for motion picture use. By the time he was finished, there were only three, after the unforgettable truck flip led to one of them being crushed under the weight of the Joker’s preferred mode of transport.
Under normal circumstances, that would encourage anyone to be more careful, but when Nolan decided to incorporate even more IMAX into sequel The Dark Knight Rises, he only went and did the exact same thing again when Anne Hathaway’s stunt double ended up crashing into the camera after making her escape on Batman’s bespoke motorcycle.
In a roundabout way, it was a case of third time marking the charm, though, with Nolan’s subsequent misadventures in IMAX making it into the final cut of Dunkirk. Anyone watching the World War II epic would have thought it was seamless cinema, but as it turned out, Jack Lowden’s Collins escaping from a downed Spitfire in such immersive fashion was almost lost forever.
Always on the hunt for as much authenticity as possible, Nolan mounted an IMAX camera into the cockpit of a replica Spitfire plane, which proceeded to perform a water landing. The water gradually filling the cockpit made for an intense sequence, but the plane ended up sinking to the bottom of the sea with the camera still inside. The director thought it was game over, but that wasn’t quite the case.
As the Academy Award winner explained to Business Insider, despite the modernity of shooting in IMAX, it was a classic trick of the trade that saved the day. “In the hours it took to retrieve the IMAX camera, its housing – which was a big plastic barrel – actually had a hole in it and the entire thing filled with water,” he admitted. “But we called the lab and they clued us into an old-fashioned technique that used to be used on film shoots.”
The camera wasn’t quite as fortunate, but the footage made it out unscathed. “You keep the film wet, you unload the camera, and you keep it damp the whole time,” Nolan continued. “We shipped it back to Los Angeles from the set in France, and they processed it before drying it out, and the shot came out absolutely perfect and it’s in the film.”
Claiming a win for the traditionalists, Nolan dropped a sly “try doing that with a digital camera” into the mix, and it can’t be argued that it’s impossible to tell the camera in question needed to be rescued from the briny deep.
