J.J. Abrams shot Star Wars: The Force Awakens on 35mm film and yesterday news broke that Rian Johnson will do the same for Star Wars: Episode VIII, but apparently Gareth Edwards is going in a different direction with his anthology film, Star Wars: Rogue One.
According to THR, parts of Rogue One will be shot with a large-format, 6K resolution model of Arri's Alexa 65. As described on the Arri website, it’s “a complete large-format solution for high-end theatrical motion pictures.” It’s “a scaled-up version of an ALEXA XT, able to capture an uncompressed ARRIRAW 65 mm image of stunning intensity and definition.”
The moment the camera debuted back in December, cinematographers were clamoring to get their hands on it. Robert Elswit used it for an underwater sequence in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Stuart Dryburgh might shoot all of Yimou Zhang’s The Great Wall with it and Arri is also working on an Imax-friendly version of the camera, which is expected to be used on Captain America: Civil War and for all of Avengers: Infinity War.
It’s unclear how much of Rogue One will be shot using the Alexa 65, but if the large majority of the footage is captured using the hot, new tech, this anthology film is bound to have a different feel than Episode VII and VIII.
Star Wars: Rogue One stars Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed, Sam Claflin and Ben Mendelsohn, and is due in theaters on December 16, 2016.
