IMAX has confirmed that its cameras will be used in the filming of the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII film, set for release in December 2015. The news was confirmed on Twitter by director JJ Abrams’s Bad Robot production company.
The cameras have been used previously to film parts of Hollywood productions including The Dark Knight, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and The Dark Knight Rises.
Disney, which bought all rights to Star Wars in October 2012, entered a five picture deal with IMAX starting with the 2009 release of Disney’s The Jonas Brothers: An IMAX 3D Concert Experience.
The IMAX camera uses 70mm film, twice as wide as that used in ordinary cameras, and custom lenses to capture a unique IMAX image. Seventy-millimeter film yields a sharp negative, with a wider, more subtle colour gamut. The resolution and aspect ratio of sequences filmed with the cameras are optimised for the IMAX screen, allowing the picture to expand to fill the entire screen.
It has yet to be confirmed how much of the latest Star Wars production will be filmed using the cameras, but their deployment is sure to set the film apart from its predecessors, the first of which was released in cinemas in 1977.
