Cold Crash Pictures

Swords of Mars

RIP Nigel John Dermot Neill (September 14, 1947 - July 13, 2026) 🕊

I am so tired of this discourse. People feel like they are "missing out." But they don't understand the point of immersive composition.

IMAX is a full immersion experience. The large screen is designed to fill your entire field of view. This gives you a sense that your are *in* the movie. But if you outstretch your arm and hold up your thumb, that is roughly the area you can focus on in a given moment. You are not meant to see every detail on screen. You are physically unable to. But if the director did their job correctly, they draw your focus to the subjects on screen and not the top of a building.

Directors compose for the smallest theater screen and then fill in the periphery for other aspect ratios. The idea is that whatever screen you view the movie on, it will fill your entire field of view. If they showed this movie in 4:3 on a wider screen, you would have black voids on either side of your vision. Everything would be smaller. It would be less immersive.