BLOGS

Written by Robin Bell

I'm one of those people who don't react well to change; I still bought cassettes well into the late 90's, then begrudgingly accepted CD's and now even an iPod. It took me ages to convert from VHS to DVD, so when I first heard of the IMAX I thought'oh here’s another cinema gimmick' and hoped it would wither and die so change didn't occur and I could still watch films as they are shown now.
Then I saw The Dark Knight on an IMAX screen. Although I've seen it since on an average cinema screen and it is still mindblowing in its scale, intensity and depth, this is heightened on an IMAX. Especially memorable is the scene with Batman flying through Hong Kong.
So what's so good about IMAX? (Because I don't have to explain now what's so good about The Dark Knight because everyone will have seen it - and if you haven’t you should have). It's a screen that fills a whole wall at the front of the cinema, from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, making it able to display larger images with a greater resolution, indeed some shots for The Dark Knight were filmed with a special IMAX camera taking full advantage of the resolution capabilities.
A standard IMAX screen is 72 ft wide and 53 ft high, it might just seem like numbers, so I urge you to go along and see The Dark Knight in IMAX to experience it for yourselves. 
With piracy currently the main threat to cinema box office IMAX could be the format to get the numbers back to the cinema because it certainly fulfills its remit of increasing the visual impact of motion pictures.