When I finished working with Imax on Dunkirk, I was pretty sure that that would be my last time in the booth.
Fortunately, I've been proven wrong. That said, I had good reason back then. The projector with which I was working hadn't been used since Interstellar. Mechanical devices don't generally respond well to not being used.
I was going to get to come back for Tenet; but, the unspecified virus of unknown origins hit.
Having some reliable information going into Oppenheimer, there are some reasons for every movie buff to do whatever he or she can to see the movie presented in 15/70.
Dunkirk was only shown in 15/70 at thirty-three locations world-wide. We're down to twenty-five for Oppenheimer.
The booth to which I'm returning was gutted since Dunkirk. They even took out our desk. The projector has been sitting on the side of the room for years.
Oppenheimer has the distinction of, so far as I can tell, very likely being the first and last of its kind in regard to film capture and presentation. Black and white film stock on 70mm was already a bit of a rarity -- it's unheard of on 15/70. To my pleasant surprise, the runtime limitations to which I had become accustom in the 15/70 format have been dealt with, and we're being equipped with specialized, extended platters.
Of course, I have a personal stake in getting your butts into the seats of those twenty-five auditoriums. The better the movie does, in regard to those screens, the more likely they'll extend the show by a week -- yes, it'll help my bank account. We also need to keep voting with our dollars if we're going to keep providing artists with the means to show their movies as they're meant to be seen. As Ansel Adams said, "The negative is the ocherstration, the print is the symphony." Nolan has been the only person shooting and showing movies in 15/70 for some time now. Coming to one of these theaters is to truly support the person who gives a shit about his art over the traffic cops working for Disney who wanna grift you with digital images and DCPs that cost $110 and minimum wage projection employees instead of showing you a $70,000 film print that's shown by a projectionist who gives a shit about his or her job, and your experience.
Movies only exist, and maintain some semblance of quality, if we maintain a reverence for them.
You might think that you don't care whether you see Oppenheimer on 15/70 or you just catch it streaming on your laptop in a few months. You might think that you won't see the difference. You might figure that you're seeing the same story, and the same performances, and hearing the same dialog, regardless. To be fair, a lot of you probably couldn't tell me what was 15/70 and what was a laser projector if we were to run a side-by-side experiment.
Still, there's a difference between noticing a difference and consciously understanding a difference. The reason why I've dismissed any argument for shooting digital, or presenting on digital, on the basis that most people won't be able to tell you the difference has always been the same -- it's not the audience's job to see the minor details; that's my job. The audience gets to enjoy a good movie because the people who got it in front of their eyes worked their asses off, and paid attention to the details, and made deliberate decisions about what's on screen so the audience can just enjoy what's in front of them.
Still, that said, I don't think that seeing the movie the way that it was always meant to be seen is much deeper.
We needn't look much past the box-office numbers to know that Christopher Nolan is a popular filmmaker, and somebody that a great number of people get excited about whenever a new project comes out. We keep going to the theater to see his movies because he's always pushing the medium to its limits. We trust him to make good decisions.
It's about supporting artists in general.
Yeah, you can look up a Clyde Butcher photo on Google; but, anybody who has seen a contact print in person knows that there's no comparison. We can all look up paintings online; but, there's a reason why we still go to art museums and galleries to see the real things. I can tell you that I've had hissy-fits over projection problems on movies that I shot.
Artists care about everything that they present to the world. Projection of a movie is what people ultimately see. It's no small factor.