Director Christopher Nolan Completes First Feature Film Shot Entirely on IMAX Film

Director Christopher Nolan has completed principal photography on "The Odyssey," the first feature film shot entirely on IMAX film. CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley and Nolan visited FotoKem in Burbank, California, the last laboratory still producing 70-millimeter prints, to watch technicians complete the final release prints.

Actor Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus, said the decision to shoot 100 percent on IMAX had not been announced in advance because the team did not know whether it would be possible. He noted that each camera magazine holds only two-and-a-half to three minutes of film and that the cameras are loud enough to interfere with dialogue recording.

Nolan's crew and IMAX developed a sound-dampening housing roughly the size of a coffin and weighing more than 300 pounds. They also installed a mirror system that allowed actors to maintain natural eyelines while the large camera remained close to the performers.

Negative assembly technician Ron Juarez demonstrated how edited scenes are spliced by hand. Nolan watched as Juarez applied adhesive to connect two pieces of negative and said every one of the thousands of cuts in the film is performed manually. Color timer Lance Spindler explained the process of assigning numerical values to each shot and running the negative through a contact printer that exposes the positive stock with filtered light.

Nolan said the resulting image quality remains unmatched by any digital format.

Pelley screened sequences at the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, one of the few remaining venues equipped to project 70-millimeter film. The film is scheduled for release in theaters this July.