Why Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland filmed The Odyssey without ever looking at each other

The cast of The Odyssey had their work cut out for them while shooting scenes for Christopher Nolan's new film.

Stars such as Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson and Jon Bernthal didn't get the opportunity to actually share a glance while filming with each other.

This isn't because of the extremely tight ship that legendary director Nolan runs, though - as it's actually down to the 'ingenious' technology that he used to shoot his adaptation of the ancient Greek literature.

Nolan fulfilled a dream he has had since he was just 16 while working on The Odyssey, as he finally managed to shoot a feature-length film on IMAX.

Fans of his work will be filling up cinemas across the world on Friday (17 July), as the almost three-hour film hit cinemas yesterday (16 July).

Take a look at the trailer for The Odyssey here:

IMAX is widely regarded as the most immersive cinematic format that the world has to offer, and Nolan once compared it to providing the 'sensation of virtual reality without the goggles'.

The filmmaker has incorporated this method into 'more and more' of his projects over the years, including some of his most celebrated titles such as Dunkirk, Interstellar and Oppenheimer.

"But what we’ve never been able to do before was to shoot the entire film that way, because the cameras themselves are very loud," Nolan told Letterboxd.

That's not the only problem with them either - as to put it bluntly, IMAX cameras are something of a logistical nightmare to operate. However, the payoff from using them is phenomenal, hence why Nolan went to all of this trouble.

Explaining how they work, he went on: "It’s a very large amount of film - 65mm film running at fifteen perforations per frame. So, this film has to be transported through the camera very, very fast, which creates an enormous amount of noise. So we would always use it for action scenes because noise wasn’t a factor, since we’re building the soundtrack afterwards."

Nolan's crew had to get creative in order to shoot The Odyssey using IMAX (Universal Studios)

But it's a completely different kettle of fish if you want to include dialogue in the scene - as any discussion is 'obliterated' by the deafening sound of the film stock running through the shutter, according to Anne Hathaway.

So, Nolan had to get creative to bring his vision for The Odyssey to life on IMAX. For starters, the film stock had to be changed every three minutes during the shoot.

Then, the director worked alongside IMAX to develop a specialised sound-proofing blimp system to ensure we could hear what his cast were saying.

Nolan said: "We challenged IMAX to build new cameras and a blimping system that we could place an IMAX camera in and mute the sound of the camera sufficiently so that we could shoot an intimate dialogue scene, have the camera very close to the actors, and have them not only be able to record dialogue, but also perform in the way they need without the distraction of a very loud camera.

"IMAX was able to step up and develop that [for us], and we were able to shoot the film that way."

The blimp solved the sound issue, but blocked the actors from being able to see each other (Universal Studios)

The Odyssey's director of photography, Hoyte van Hoytema, also got a shoutout from Nolan for finding a way to recreate the effortless flow of 'modern filmmaking' with equipment that weighed an absolute ton.

Although they solved the sound problem, their solution led to another snag in Nolan's masterplan - as the cast were unable to get the shots they needed due to the sheer size of the blimp.

Oscar-winning actress Hathaway, who stars as Penelope, the queen of Ithaca, in The Odyssey, explained how she and her co-stars managed to circumvent this issue with the help of some strategically placed mirrors.

Speaking to Collider alongside her on-screen son Tom Holland, who plays Odysseus' child Telemachus, she explained what panacea the 'geniuses' on the film crew came up with to fix the problem.

"They created a blimp to go around an IMAX camera that was really huge," Hathaway said. "The thing about it is, when you're making movies, you have to be able to get close to the camera for eye lines.

"And an IMAX blimp surrounds the camera by several feet in all directions, so that makes it very difficult."

Stars such as Tom Holland and Jon Bernthal relied on a 'mirror system' to shoot scenes together (Universal Studios)

The Brooklyn-born star then shared some details of the 'mirror system' that Nolan and van Hoytema thought up, while putting it into the context of her filming a scene with Holland.

"If Tom needed to see me, he was standing on one side of the lens," Hathaway explained. "And I was behind it looking into a mirror that reflected into a mirror that Tom could then see, that he would act with.

"The thing that's amazing about it is, it was so beautifully designed that none of us actors felt like we were compromising ourselves to engage with a system that made us feel like our performances were outside of ourselves.

"All of our memories are, 'I was just acting with you'. And it was truly ingenious."

Both her and Holland said they were in awe of the IMAX equipment, as Hathaway added: "All the form followed the function, it was genuinely a thrill. And if you're film nerds like us, we couldn't believe we were there."

The Spider-Man actor described the mirror system as 'crazy' - and shared a comical anecdote about a scene he filmed with Bernthal using this technique.

The star-studded cast seen at the London premiere of Nolan's latest masterpiece (Ian West/PA Wire)

"I did a scene with Jon Bernthal, the whole thing on the mirror," Holland said. "And it made me forget that the camera was there, because his face was floating in front of the camera.

"Whereas usually, you're trying to forget that there's a camera, an operator, a focus puller, and then the actor. It was like I could have kissed him, he was that close."

Now that truly would have been a piece of cinema.

Nolan believes the blimp seriously excelled when shooting the 'quiet moments' of The Odyssey, as he further explained: "We had to rig a system of mirrors where they could see each other and act to each other, rather than acting to a piece of tape on the side of the camera, which is often what happens - even with a regular camera system."

Robert Pattinson, who plays Antinous, joked that between the blimp and the mirror system, it felt as though he was 'shooting a scene with an SUV'.

"But even with the size of the camera, you just feel like the machine should move slower, and it moves faster than if you were shooting it on an iPhone," he added.