By Iain Blair
Nope director Jordan Peele has been churning out critically acclaimed films since his 2017 feature debut, Get Out, which earned four Oscar nominations — including a Best Original Screenplay win for Peele. He followed that up with another Oscar nom for co-producing Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, and then he directed the horror hit Us.
Peele’s newest film, Nope, combines horror and science fiction, and to realize his ambitious vision for the project, Peele collaborated with IMAX and a team that included its head of post production, Bruce Markoe. Peele had worked with Markoe on an IMAX version of Us.
I recently spoke with Peele and Markoe, who ran post at Marvel Studios for four years, about making the film and their collaboration.
How many IMAX sequences did you shoot, and what did they bring to the film?
Jordan Peele: We shot the entire film on 65mm celluloid, and 60% was 5-perf and 40% was 15-perf for IMAX, so a considerable amount. The sheer immersion that you get with IMAX was invaluable in terms of heightening audience experience.
Bruce Markoe
Because of where we were shooting, near Santa Clarita and the San Gabriel Mountains north of LA, the landscape and the sky are so vast that only IMAX could do it justice. The sky, in particular, plays such a big role in the film, so we really wanted the audience to feel like they were there and could look around.
Using IMAX’s 15/65mm film cameras isn’t that common, is it?
Bruce Markoe: Correct. We have our certified digital IMAX cameras, which a lot of filmmakers use, but the film cameras aren’t widely used… except by Christopher Nolan. The last James Bond movie, No Time to Die, also used them, but they’re typically only used for select sequences, not a whole film.
It helped that Nope DP Hoyte Van Hoytema (ASC) was so experienced with the cameras because he’d shot a lot with them on the Chris Nolan films before this.
Nope is the first horror film ever to be shot with IMAX cameras. What were the big technical challenges?
Markoe: They used five of our film cameras, and we only have eight (we’re currently building more). The scenes that Jordan didn’t shoot with our IMAX cameras — in our 65mm horizontal 15-perforation film format — were also shot with large-format 65mm film. Our IMAX cameras capture the 1:43 aspect ratio, which is what you see on selected IMAX screens, so the image is incredibly lifelike.
The IMAX cameras are larger and heavier and have shorter running times — the mags only run about three minutes, whereas other film formats can give you a 10-minute load on a mag. So that can limit the way a director shoots. You can’t do super-long takes, and you have to reload more often.
The cameras are also a little noisier than a typical sync-sound film camera, which means that if you want to shoot a dialogue scene up-close, you’re going to have to loop them in post. That’s why our film cameras are often used to shoot big action sequences where camera noise isn’t an issue, or for scenes where they’re fine doing ADR.
Once the crew gets used to working with the cameras, it all goes very smoothly; it’s not a steep learning curve. We typically have one or more IMAX camera operators working on any given project because they’re so experienced. If you look at how Nolan has used it [on Tenet] and what they did in No Time to Die, it’s just amazing where they’re able to place the camera and what they can do with it using various rigs and cranes. Remember, this camera’s been to the top of Mount Everest, it’s been to outer space three times and down to the bottom of the ocean, so it’s really durable and reliable and there’s really no limitations when it comes to shooting.
We also have our IMAX camera department based in Toronto, and they’re actively involved in prepping and supplying all the cameras, doing tests and troubleshooting during production if there are any problems or technical issues, and we’re very involved in all that.
As VP of post production at IMAX, how does your role carry through to the entire film?
Markoe: Absolutely. We do reviews of all the film footage and dailies to make sure it’s all going right, and we do that in coordination with FotoKem in Burbank. That is really the only lab here in LA that can develop the large-format film. We work very closely with them on all IMAX projects such as this.
There were a lot of conversations about how to deal with the VFX in terms of the 1:43 aspect ratio and how to finish the movie in the resolution needed. The VFX were all done in 4K, and the movie was finished in 4K. Here at IMAX, we scanned all the shot IMAX negative in 8K, and then it went down to 4K. All those details were worked out in preproduction together with the VFX team, so it was all designed into exactly how the film was going to be made.
Where did you post, and what were the main editing and post challenges?
Peele: We did our editing at a Universal facility that’s situated between the backlot and my Monkeypaw offices. I did some remote edits from a setup they built in my office, but I was also on-site often with my editor, Nicholas Monsour.
The biggest challenge was probably the volume of VFX shots [done by MPC and SSVFX] that were incorporated, including many cloudscapes throughout. Often, we would have to make editing decisions without the final VFX work, so inevitably when we saw the final product, we would have to make adjustments to the edit if the pace and timing didn’t feel right. So there was a lot of back and forth that stemmed from marrying those two efforts.
How closely did you collaborate with Jordan and his post team during post?
Markoe: Very closely. We did at least half a dozen reviews of all the IMAX footage and sequences with him and his team here at our headquarters and at our IMAX theater at CityWalk in Universal City. Almost all the VFX in the IMAX sequences — and even some that weren’t in those sequences — were reviewed in IMAX as part of their post process.
That’s a very important part of what we do, and we always advise filmmakers to make that process part of post because IMAX screens are so much bigger than non-IMAX cinemas on average, so it’s really helpful to see the movie that way — even in an unedited or rough-cut version. You can check on the VFX and see how it all plays because it’s easy to miss stuff on a far smaller screen. Doing this in post means you have time to adjust and fine-tune it all.
What was the most difficult VFX sequence and why?
Peele: There’s a big scene where Jean Jacket is aggressively stalking the ranch at night during a rainstorm, and it was by far the most difficult based on the number of elements we were juggling in that scene. Beyond the pure VFX work, it was a combination of day-for-night and night-for-night, and we had some real rain mixed with CG rain.
A particularly tricky part of the scene was capturing the messiness of real rainwater falling at night. It was a challenge to make what OJ sees through the wet windshield honest and grounded in terms of what is visible and what is murky. And, again, we are working with this vast landscape and quite of a bit of distance between our characters, so we had to make sure the blocking of everything going on made sense.
I assume you were also closely involved with the DI?
Markoe: Yes, very. It was done at Company 3 with colorist Greg Fisher. In fact, Jordan, his team and Greg came back here to IMAX at the end of post to review everything and make final adjustments to the IMAX version.
We have FilmLight Baselight color correction systems here, and because all our theaters use exactly the same projection systems — the same screen type, the same geometry and the same sound system — you can get a very uniform, consistent playback of your movie. That’s what filmmakers like about IMAX. There’s no consistency in regular theaters. We also create both a laser master version for release with our laser projection systems and a Xenon master.
Jordan’s such a fan of the format and technology that he’s now working with IMAX to help develop the next generation of IMAX film cameras. We also consulted with him and various DPs, such as Hoytema and Nolan, to get feedback that will help us improve the technology. So it’s very exciting.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
