Darren Aronofsky’s New Movie Used Truly Never-Before-Seen Tech
Ollren
Summary
Director Darren Aronofsky's new movie, Postcard From Earth, was filmed with an 18k camera and is playing on the world's largest screen in Las Vegas.
The film is a technical marvel, with 18k resolution at 60 frames per second, pushing it into the half-petabyte range.
Postcard From Earth is described as a "part sci-fi story, part nature documentary" and takes viewers on a journey through the Antarctic, the ocean depths, and the cosmos.
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Darren Aronofksy opens up about his new movie, Postcard From Earth, which was filmed with an 18k camera and is playing on the biggest screen in the world. The Oscar-nominated director is known for his sometimes surreal, often dark, thought-provoking, and visually striking cinematic style. Aronofksy has directed acclaimed films like Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and The Wrestler. His latest film, The Whale, completed Brendan Fraser's comeback and won the actor his first Academy Award.
Now, during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, Aronofksy opened up about his new movie, Postcard From Earth, which used some truly never-before-seen technology.
Aronofksy explains how the movie was filmed with an 18k camera, which took about 12 people to turn and prevent from overheating. The film is screening exclusively at the Sphere in Las Vegas, which is the largest screen in the world, and Aronofksy recalled the moment that audiences saw the 18k image for the first time. Read his full comments below:
I knew it was a crazy idea. But I couldn't really imagine what a TV screen four football fields large would feel like. I actually didn't get to see it till August of this year. That was the first time they turned it on. And so we had been working on these crazy images, and then suddenly, to see it everywhere, was a wild journey.It was a lot of guesswork. It was kind of shooting blind. It was described like flying the airplane while building it, and it was very much that. 'Cause the technology didn't quite exist and how we were going to actually interpret all that data. So, the camera outputs 32 gigs per second. So like a movie on your hard drive is three gigs. So this is 30 gigs -- 32 gigs per second to make an 18K image. So the amount of information was just, it was kind of mind-blowing. It took about 12 people to turn this camera on because there was fans and overheating. And then, the final file of the film is what they call half a petabyte. So that's after terabyte is now a petabyte.It was great. It was what we were hoping for. So, no one had ever seen it, so we didn't really know what they would respond. And then this moment happened. I actually didn't know that jaw-dropping was a real thing. You hear that word, but it's fun to look around, and people are just like, their jaws are literally dropped and they're all pointing at different places on the screen. So it's a joy to have audiences go along for that trip.It's kind of a nature film where we shot in every continent on the planet. We went to the Antarctic, we went to Australia, we went everywhere, and just shot the coolest stuff that you could imagine but with a resolution that's hard to sort of take in. And we also shot micro images. There's one shot of a praying mantis. And most people, when you think of a praying mantis, you're like with a magnifying glass, or you're really close, staring at it. But this is a 150-foot-tall praying mantis, fully in focus. And so you could look at it, and so it's not like anything you've seen before. It's pretty cool.It was kind of a jigsaw puzzle because the camera was really unwieldy. I think you had to shoot things that were that held still, like a praying mantis, after it eats something sort of sits there for a while, digesting, so that's when we shot it. We tried to move the camera a few times. It's very tricky. And then, we did a lot of really cool stuff. We attached it to a helicopter and flew it around for a while, which was great because I got to do that with these incredible pilots. And we were up in Oregon when there was all these incredible forest fires, and we were just flying over the most incredible landscape and just knowing we were capturing it with something that looked as real as what we were seeing.
Everything We Know About Postcard From Earth
Last month, Aronofksy shared the first look at his new movie on the biggest screen in the world, the Sphere. The screen is the size of four football fields and wraps around and over the audience. The theater opened recently in April 2023 and seats up to 17,000 people. The film itself, Postcard From Earth, is also a technical marvel, screening in 18k resolution at 60 frames per second. As Aronofksy explains, the film is 32 GB per second, as opposed to a standard movie which is 3 GB total, pushing Postcard From Earth into half a petabyte range.
Postcard From Earth is described as "part sci-fi story, part nature documentary" and takes audiences on an incredible journey, starting in the Antarctic, descending into the depths of the ocean, and venturing deep into the cosmos. In addition to the cutting-edge visual technology, the project also takes advantage of the Sphere's haptic chairs and 167,000 speakers that immerse the audience in sound. Overall, Darren Aronofsky's movie is "a love letter to mother earth." Postcard From Earth premiered at the Sphere on October 6, where it will run exclusively for two years.
