The rapper Drake has announced on his Instagram page that the upcoming video for his current chart hit, Nokia, has been shot with IMAX film cameras. The post even features a customised version of the IMAX logo integrating the logo for Drake’s OVO brand.
The IMAX film format is considered the highest quality image format available, due to its large 65mm frame (70mm including the 15 perforations at the top) running horizontally through the camera. However, due to its expense and the limited number of available cameras worldwide, it is still a rarity for it to be used on a feature film, let alone a music video.
However, it turns out that Drake’s Nokia is not the first music video filmed using the format, with that honor going to Adele for her song Hello back in 2015.
The inspiration to use IMAX is likely to have come from its director Theo Skudra, and while I’m not familiar with his work, he website bio states that for him, “the tactile richness of 16 mm film and the nostalgic quality of large format Polaroid photos, reflects his continuous search for new ways to convey stories through visual imagery.”
How this will translate to an effective use of the format remains to be seen and, as one comment on the IMAX Reddit group but it, there an irony of “a music video for a song called “Nokia” being shot on a format such as IMAX that’ll be almost exclusively be consumed on mobile phones.”
However, if one is feeling generous, one could say that at least the full frame 1.43:1 aspect ratio of the native IMAX film will be a good fit for cropping to smartphone portrait screens.
One suspects, though, the primary reason is great marketing, enabling Drake to “flex” that his status as a major rapper warrants his music video being captured in the highest format. The song’s producer noted on Instagram that, “Shooting this in IMAX is insane. It’s $2K per minute just to develop the film.”
This reminds me of how Michael Jackson broke new ground in the 80s by having his “short films” shot on celluloid rather than the low-quality videos that most other artists used and how much was made that his 1995 video short-film for Scream was the most expensive ever made, which cost $7 million to make.
However, while the IMAX 70mm has cache, it doesn’t seem to have been enough on its own to drive pre-release sales for Sinners, the year’s only feature film shot on the format. While his previous films, such as Creed III and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (both featuring Sinner’s star Michael B. Jordan), were successful, as of writing, many tickets are still available at the BFI IMAX in London for Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Here’s hoping that good reviews and word of mouth will see those seats filled come the 18 April release date.