[Edaily Starin YUN GI BACK Reporter] Even Robert Pattinson—who is known for finding it hard to stop laughing once he starts—was different on the set of director Christopher Nolan’s *The Odyssey*. This was because the actors were well aware that “expensive film was being used up” the moment the camera started rolling.

“The Odyssey” is the first feature film to be shot entirely on IMAX film cameras. Director Nolan revealed that over 2 million feet of IMAX film were used during production. Actual filming took place over 91 days in 2025 across six countries, including Morocco, Greece, Italy, Iceland, and Scotland. Two million feet is equivalent to approximately 610 km. This means the film used for a single project was long enough to far exceed the straight-line distance from Seoul to Busan.
The scale becomes even more tangible when converted to monetary terms. Based on a simple calculation using the price of 65mm film at the time of filming—approximately $1.50 (about 2,070 won) per foot—the cost of raw film material alone for 2 million feet amounts to about $3 million (approximately 4.1 billion won). This is a rough estimate that does not include ancillary costs such as film processing, transportation, and storage.
Unlike digital filming, which consumes storage space, film shooting involves physical film continuously running through the camera as long as it’s rolling. This is why the sound of the film winding through the camera likely felt to the actors like the sound of “money slipping away.”
As a result, the actors’ focus on set was extraordinary. Pattinson, who usually finds it hard to stop laughing once he starts, revealed that while filming *The Odyssey*, he almost never ruined a take by laughing. He explained that knowing expensive IMAX film was rolling, he naturally couldn’t help but feel tense.

Lead actor Matt Damon felt the same way. He revealed that despite filming an enormous amount of footage, he could only recall a single instance where he messed up his lines and caused a take to be ruined. On Nolan’s set—where a single actor’s mistake required countless crew members, extras, and large-scale equipment to be set in motion again—the weight of each take was entirely different.
That’s not to say Director Nolan berated the actors to “not make mistakes.” Rather, the very nature of film shooting—unlike digital production, where multiple takes are shot first and then selected—elevated the concentration of both actors and crew. It wasn’t so much a rule that “you can’t mess up” as a natural sense of tension that emerged: “Let’s get this right the first time.”
The results are also intriguing. Despite involving large-scale location shoots across the globe and using over 2 million feet of film, *The Odyssey* wrapped production in just 91 days—a full nine days ahead of the original schedule.
Ultimately, the “pressure of film”—which even made the actors hold back their laughter—led to remarkable efficiency on Nolan’s set. With over 2 million feet of film and costs estimated at several billion won, what reached audiences as stunning IMAX imagery was, for the actors, nothing short of a “no-takes-allowed alarm” that made the sound of the camera rolling more nerve-wracking than on any other set.