Guerilla Filmmaking with IMAX Cameras: A Conversation with Inhumans Director Roel Reiné ahead of its September Debut
Inhumans debuts in IMAX cinema on the 1st of September and explores the never-before-told epic adventure of the Royal Family of Inhumans, as they readjust to life in Hawaii following a military coup. Their surprising interactions with the lush world and humanity around them may prove to not only save them, but Earth itself.
Marvel’s Inhumans stars Anson Mount as Black Bolt, Iwan Rheon (Game of Thrones) as Maximus, Serinda Swan as Medusa, Eme Ikwuakor as Gorgon, Isabelle Cornish as Crystal and Ken Leung (Star Wars) as Karnak.
The legendary comic book series will be brought to life in a way that has never been done before - the first two episode which have been shot on IMAX® cameras will get an exclusive run in IMAX cinema’s before airing on TV in its entirety soon after. It is the first time a television show will be shot using IMAX cameras. To take advantage of the scale and scope of the IMAX canvas, the set for the first two episodes reflect the bigger scale offered by IMAX.
“Marvel’s Inhumans” explores the never-before-told epic adventure of the royal family including Black Bolt, the enigmatic, commanding King of the Inhumans, with a voice so powerful that the slightest whisper can destroy a city. After the Royal Family of Inhumans is splintered by a military coup, they barely escape to Hawaii where they are greeted with surprising interactions with the lush world and humanity around them. Now they must find a way to reunite with each other and return to their home before their way of life is destroyed forever.
The first two episodes of Marvel's Inhumans will premiere exclusively in IMAX cinemas around the world for two weeks starting Sept 1st. The IMAX episodes were shot entirely with the new ALEXA IMAX 65mm cameras. The full 8-episode series will then debut on The ABC Television Network in the US, and television networks and platforms globally later in the autumn.
Roel Reiné was born in the Netherlands, and with his first theatrical feature “The Delivery” he won the Golden Calf (the Dutch equivalent to an Academy Award) for Best Director. His 2015 movie “Admiral,” an epic historical Dutch language movie, had a very successful theatrical release worldwide. In 2015 it was the only Dutch movie in the Netherlands’ top ten box office, right in between “Jurassic World” and “Furious 7.” The movie tells the story of a 17th Century Admiral, Michiel de Ruyter, who protects the Dutch population from a civil war between two political factions while defeating English armadas in massive sea-battles. In 2016 Roel directed his first American television series “Black Sails” for Michael Bay and STARZ.
This is genuinely a kind of world first event where you’ve got the big screen and the small screen meeting in a way that really hasn’t happened before. How exciting was that for you?
Was that sort of the first conversation that you had? That this was going to be something that was going to appear in IMAX, people are going to be out of their homes to watch this and then back into their homes to continue the arc of the show.
Yeah that was from day one, that was kind of the assignment. We’re going to shoot this with IMAX cameras for an IMAX audience on IMAX screens and I was very excited about it because I’m really a movie maker, I make movies.
I’ve also done television, but I think especially living in Los Angeles now for over 12 years is that the movie industry is really defaulting and TV is kind of glorifying, there are much more creative stories being told in television and very much more exciting, but then the opposite of that, they look more cinematic and bigger but people start watching them on iPhones and iPads, it’s like you’ll get stories by looking at it or listening to it but you will never get an emotional involvement because it’s such a small screen.
I’m lucky I have a little movie theatre in my house so when I watch TV in my own little theatre it’s good, but nothing compares to this….
Not the size of your screen at home?
No, I wish (laughs). But what is cool is that I think as TV becomes such a cinematic thing is that, for me if I would see ten episodes of The Crown for example I would prefer to see it here on an IMAX screen and sit ten hours in seeing these characters develop, so I hope that this is kind of the start; bringing really good stories back to the cinema where they belong and it’s very exciting to be part of that and be the first.
Another aspect the IMAX screen really highlighted the locations in Hawaii. Tough gig to spend three months in Hawaii filming...
Boring (laughs)
You where out in the jungle of Hawaii, any advice for a filmmaker who was going to go out and shoot in those conditions?
No, because I changed the conditions a little bit, put big rain towers above it and put all this rain down. Shooting in Hawaii was really a blast, but for me shooting with the IMAX cameras in the format is much higher so normally when I do my movies it’s 235 framing, whereas this one is 1.50 and shoot all this headroom so I remember when I was scouting the locations and I wanted to scout a location that had a lot of head room that I could give the scope of IMAX and even when we were building the sets I spoke with the production designer to build ceilings in everything, a really complicated process because normally you light from the ceiling and we could not do that because of all the low angles, the crews call me “Mr Low Angles” because I like to have the camera really low, and so doing the camera really low in these IMAX lenses made an even bigger scope and I remember when I was doing this IMAX camera test and they gave me all the lenses that where, after the test I told them “guys the lenses are not wide enough” and they where like “what? IMAX not wide enough” so they build a special lens here in London, they rehouse a Canon lens to an IMAX lens for me to be even wider, and those are the shots when you see Maximus walking out of the throne room and the camera is really low and also in the trailer we’re going to show you are some of these shots.
Do you still have the cameras?
No they went back to the Avengers set. I heard that Chris Nolan got a camera as a present from IMAX...
Is that right? (laughs)
MARVEL'S INHUMANS DEBUTS EXCLUSIVELY IN IMAX ON SEPTEMBER 1
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