LOS ANGELES — All directors promise that their sequels will be bigger and flashier than the predecessors'. But Christopher Nolan doesn't mess around.
The director's sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, will become the first feature film to be partly shot in the IMAX format, an expensive and cumbersome process that typically is the province of documentaries and short films.

Nolan will shoot four action sequences — including the introduction of the Joker, played by Heath Ledger — on IMAX.

The move is one of Hollywood's most pronounced steps yet in its embrace of IMAX theaters, which are increasingly showing commercial fare on their giant screens.

"There's simply nothing like seeing a movie that way," Nolan says. "It's more immersive for the audience. I wish I could shoot the entire thing this way."


What is IMAX you ask?

A film technology, developed in Canada, but now exploited in the United States. Huge cameras shoot huge rolls of film to be projected on to huge screens. In the IMAX theaters, the film is high enough and wide enough to include the whole visual field of the viewer, thus making the experience closer to that of the "mind movie". In the OMNIMAX theaters, this effect is further enhanced by projecting the image on a semi-circular surface.

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