The 65mm Bottleneck

As large-format film moves further into the mainstream, does the industry have enough equipment to meet the demand?

There was a time when shooting a feature on 65mm film was something of an eccentric choice.

It was technically demanding, expensive and logistically complicated. The number of productions shooting on the format was small, and the equipment ecosystem reflected that.

That may be changing.

The success of recent large-format productions, and particularly the extraordinary reception to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, has demonstrated that there is still a significant appetite for large-format film. Meanwhile, the announcement that Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther 3 will be shot on 65mm suggests that the format is moving further into the mainstream of major studio filmmaking.

Which raises an interesting question:

Do we actually have enough 65mm equipment to satisfy the demand?

65mm isn’t 35mm

One of the advantages of VistaVision is that, despite being a specialist format, it sits within a much larger 35mm ecosystem.

There are a lot of 35mm cameras in the world.

There are a lot of 35mm lenses.

There are a lot of 35mm magazines, accessories and support equipment.

And there are a lot of people who know how to work with them.

65mm is different.

The number of serious 65mm camera systems available for feature production is relatively small. There are established systems such as ARRI 765, Panavision System 65 and IMAX, alongside newer approaches to the format.

That sounds like a reasonable amount of equipment until you start thinking about what happens when several large productions want to shoot 65mm at the same time.

Suddenly, the problem isn’t necessarily whether a production wants to shoot 65mm.

It is whether it can actually get the equipment.

Paul Thomas Anderson and crew on set with a 65mm camera.

It’s not just cameras

And the bottleneck doesn’t necessarily stop with the camera body.

A 65mm production needs appropriate magazines.

It needs lenses.

It needs camera technicians and assistants who are comfortable working with the equipment.

It may need high-speed options.

It needs appropriate heads, cranes, dollies and other support equipment capable of handling the cameras.

And, perhaps most importantly, it needs somewhere to process and scan all that film.

The larger the format, the more film you consume per frame.

That means that a significant increase in 65mm production doesn’t just create demand for cameras. It creates demand throughout the entire supply chain.

This is one of the interesting consequences of film’s resurgence.

For years, the conversation was largely about whether film would survive.

Now we may be reaching the point where a different question needs to be asked:

Can the film industry scale quickly enough to support its renewed popularity?

The success of The Odyssey changes the conversation

The Odyssey is particularly significant because it isn’t a small film made by an enthusiast trying to keep a format alive.

It is a major studio production made by one of the industry’s most successful directors, using IMAX film cameras on an enormous scale.

And audiences have responded.

Whatever one’s personal opinion of large-format film, it is difficult to argue that there isn’t an audience for it.

The format has become part of the marketing proposition.

Large-format presentation gives cinemas something tangible to offer audiences that they can’t replicate simply by watching another film at home.

That creates an interesting feedback loop.

Audiences want large-format experiences.

Cinemas want films that can provide those experiences.

Studios have an incentive to make films that can take advantage of those screens.

And filmmakers increasingly have a reason to consider large-format capture.

But if that demand continues to grow, the physical infrastructure has to grow with it.

The interesting problem with 65mm

This is where I think the next few years could become particularly interesting.

The industry has spent a long time rebuilding the infrastructure required to shoot film at all.

Laboratories have survived or expanded.

Camera companies have continued developing equipment.

Specialist technicians have maintained expertise that could easily have disappeared.

And manufacturers have demonstrated that there is still a market for new film cameras and accessories.

But 65mm is a much smaller ecosystem.

You can’t simply take a large increase in demand and assume that the existing equipment will somehow stretch to accommodate it.

If several major productions require 65mm cameras simultaneously, production managers may eventually find themselves competing for the same limited pool of equipment.

And that could create an entirely new kind of problem.

Not a lack of interest.

Not a lack of money.

Not even a lack of film.

A lack of cameras.

A good problem to have?

In some ways, this is a very good problem to have.

Twenty years ago, the concern would have been whether anyone would still want to shoot film.

Now we’re discussing whether there might be enough equipment to accommodate everyone who does.

That is quite a turnaround.

It could also encourage further investment.

If productions begin encountering genuine shortages of 65mm equipment, there is suddenly a commercial argument for developing more cameras, rebuilding older ones, producing additional magazines and expanding the technical infrastructure around them.

And that could make the format more accessible to productions that currently regard 65mm as impractical.

There is a certain irony here.

The success of large-format film could ultimately create the conditions necessary to make large-format film easier to shoot.

The next bottleneck

The film industry has already demonstrated that it can adapt to a resurgence in demand.

The question now is whether the specialist end of that resurgence can keep up.

If large-format celluloid continues its current trajectory, we may eventually stop asking:

“Why would you shoot 65mm?”

And start asking:

“Where are you going to get the camera?”

That might sound like a strange problem to have.

But after years of worrying about whether film cameras would survive at all, it is one I would be very happy to see the industry facing.