There's an IMAX 70mm print of Sinners in theaters at the moment, and if you ever wondered about the complexities of loading that into a projector, we have the video for you.
Everything about IMAX is outsized. The screens are up to eight stories high, the area of the frame on the celluloid strip is 10x larger than that of 35mm at 52mm high by 70mm wide (2 inches by 2.75 inches), and the horizontal platters the film is spooled onto are suitably enormous. A 2.5 hour IMAX film can weigh 250 kg (551 lbs).
Unsurprisingly, loading all that into a projector is a bit of a task, as this video we stumbled across on London's BFI IMAX Facebook page at the weekend shows. It shows a projectionist lacing Ryan Coogler's latest film, Sinners, though the feed unit, through the cleaning rollers, and onto the rotor on the projector after which it returns to the platter.
All in all the process takes between 30 to 45 minutes to complete and has to be done for every single show. Like we said, everything about IMAX is outsized. And the first comment under the Facebook post? "Why do all this rather than digital?" Sheesh...