Christopher Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema are a Hollywood filmmaking team like almost no other in their hyper-attention to realism, including on their epic version of “The Odyssey.”

“It’s definitely filmmaking in its purest form,” said van Hoytema, the Dutch cinematographer who has worked with Nolan since “Interstellar” (2014). “He loves trying out new things that he hadn’t done before, same as myself. We like to spend a lot of time in real places, on real locations, having stuff in front of the camera that is tangible and tactile.”

For “The Odyssey,” the first commercial feature made entirely with cumbersome IMAX cameras, that meant shooting across oceans and deserts, in three-minute bursts. Though Nolan often notes that three of his films have won visual effects Oscars, many of his techniques would be familiar to directors a century ago; others were cutting-edge inventions created just for him.

Nolan and I had spoken about his ethos and anxiety around the film. In separate interviews, he and van Hoytema discussed their approach and why they don’t like to plan everything. Here are edited excerpts from the conversations.

Why were you so committed to using IMAX, even through all these technical challenges?

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN I’d originally seen IMAX films in museums and theme parks as a kid and immediately thought, why aren’t they making movies like that? That was when I was 16 or 17. Now I’m about to be 56, and I’ve finally gotten to do it.

I’ve been using the format for almost 20 years. We started with just the action sequences — you’re climbing a mountain with a camera, sailing the seas and everything. Then we tried to incorporate it over the years into more intimate scenes. But the big thing holding that back was sound, because the cameras are very, very loud.

HOYTE VAN HOYTEMA It sounds like a lawn mower, diesel engine.

NOLAN After “Oppenheimer” [2023], I called up my friends at IMAX. I couldn’t tell them what the movie was yet, but I said if ever we were going to do a film all in IMAX, this is the one. So let’s finish these new cameras, find some kind of soundproofing system. And they engineered this blimp system that we could put the camera in.

VAN HOYTEMA A year before production, they presented us with three different prototypes. With the blimp, you hear nothing — a little purring, far away. But to filter out the sound, it needed to be heavy — a whole new set of problems to overcome. We ended up with a very clumsy, SUV-size box almost. We were just stubbornly determined to make it work.

We did: with dumb force, hold it onto tripods, or up and down hills. Sometimes we would long-line the camera [attach a rope] with a helicopter to get to specific places. But these are practical problems that you can solve with mechanics and machines. I enjoy these challenges.

NOLAN Every shot on those [dialogue-heavy] scenes was an engineering question, because you can’t take a 400-pound camera and stick it above an actor. You have to build chain hoists, find a way to move the camera appropriately. Everything has to be done safely.

And there were a lot of unknowns, because you can only load three minutes of film. I had to find a rhythm between my crew and my actors and myself for suspending the take, reloading the camera, keeping everybody in the zone.

The tradition with “action” and “cut” — there’s incredible focus between those two words. Once you say cut, everybody breathes a sigh of relief; tension’s gone. What we have to do is keep everybody in that spell. The first A.C. [assistant cameraman], Keith Davis, figured out how to reload the camera incredibly quietly and incredibly fast. He got it down to under two minutes. When we first worked with IMAX, in 2007, we were warned a reload took 25 minutes.

VAN HOYTEMA When we started doing it, I heard the mythology about the [IMAX] camera, the size and how difficult it is. We decided, why don’t we just try it? I like to make filmmakers understand: Try it out.

[On “The Odyssey”], I operate for 90 percent of the film. The naked IMAX camera is not 100 pounds. It’s not even half of it, you know? And somebody puts it on my shoulder. I’m not carrying it all day.

I have now worked so many times with the same people; they know the weight and how to secure it. My key grip, Kyle Carden, is like a ballerina; he’s strong and powerful but also very sensitive. The blimp, when I tilt down, it gets so top-heavy that it would flip me over the dolly. Kyle would resist it with counterweight.

Ryan Monro, my dolly grip — it’s almost like we become this two-headed monster, always entangled. On the waves, when I tip over, he will weave an arm through and counterbalance me. He described it as two men doing a game of Twister, wrestling with a sewing machine. It’s funny to see but very effective.

You use a lot of practical effects. To do so on a film of this scale is quite a feat. Why do it? It’s not cheaper, is it?

NOLAN Quite often it is. When we were doing “Tenet” [2020] and I was looking at how to stage a 747 crashing into a building, it actually made sense, economically, to buy a plane, build a building and smash it in, then sell the plane back for salvage.

Really you’re in pursuit of consistency of tone, photographically. Going on a real boat in a real ocean and filming the actors in that environment, it puts a burden on the visual effects that’s quite high. My visual effects adviser, Andrew Jackson — he’s finding real-world solutions as we go.

In “The Odyssey,” we used every technique in the book — paintings, backing paintings. They can create a much more convincing illusion — because of the way you can light them — than having a green screen or even a photographic backing.

We also use a lot of false-perspective illusions where you build things smaller in the deep background. On “Tenet,” I remember seeing this beautiful backing painting; there’s a river and highlights of the rippling water. How the hell? You realize, they’ve put fishing line threads with little bits of foil and a fan blowing. It just gives a little scintillation that the water would have. It’s those old tricks that fool the eye, fool the camera.

VAN HOYTEMA We watch dailies every day, all of us together. So if you use C.G. or not, it’s very much depending on what you have in the can.

[Filming in IMAX], our whole process is analog. The moment you go with a digital effect, you have to scan your original negative, and reduce the resolution to do it. Then you refilm it back with a reduced resolution. You have a whole step where you can lose a lot of quality. The more we maintain in-camera, the more we maintain that original quality. That has always been very important to us.

Do you storyboard?

NOLAN I don’t tend to think in pictorial terms, generally. I want to kind of discover that through the process — that’s part of the fun.

I’ve storyboarded less and less over the years. I do it for my department heads if we have a complex action effect sequence. Hoyte has been an absolute master of saying, OK, we’re going to shoot the fall of Troy, with all these thousands of extras, things we are going to set fire to — but he knows that I want to turn up on the night and try things out.

VAN HOYTEMA With Chris, you want to find yourself in a place you haven’t really been before, understand the energy and funnel that into the perfect way to communicate that energy. That is never going to be represented by drawings made months prior, in an office.

I love the fact we get out of our cars in the morning, get on the set and see what the weather is, how the actors are. Sometimes things [like set pieces] collapse overnight. Interesting stuff happens.

You never know what the sea is going to do. One day it can be extremely windy and the other, you can shoot on a mirror. We had an incredible marine department keeping a close eye on the tides. We had a special weather person.

But the truth is, you can predict only so much. And we don’t want to predict everything, you know? Otherwise you might as well shoot in a studio. You want to receive the extremities of the world with open arms.

You also invented a new lighting system.

VAN HOYTEMA Ninety-five percent of the film, the nights are solely lit by lights we built ourselves. Pyrohedrons, we called them. It’s a made-up word, because of the shape — fire pyramids.

When Chris and I talked about the film very early and watched a lot of films [as references], I started getting disturbed by big battle scenes. They were lit, traditionally, by moon boxes: gigantic frames over the top of the scene that contain lights and bleed very soft, pretend moonlight over the scene. I couldn’t help always becoming aware of the mechanical lighting.

So the initial idea is, I wanted to light everything with fire. I wanted the camera to see what the human eye would see.

Of course, you find out quickly that it’s very unpractical. Because A) Fire gives very little light, so you have to build a lot of fire to do it. And B) Every time you light a fire, instead of extras, you need special effects people and a fireman with a fire extinguisher. So I went back to the drawing board: Could I make an artificial fire that we carry into the set, switch on? We started testing and working with an LED company.

We opened a whole production facility to churn out these lights, from custom-made components, some electronics that existed, some that we made. We had 1,000 four-foot panels; we could literally hide them in every nook. They were engineered to give that very truthful flicker, based on real flames. We had different settings, for stormy weather and gentle weather. Just put them down and you would see fire a mile away, glowing into the trees.

For me, it was a revelation to work like that at night. It gave us a lot of freedom.

NOLAN That’s what I love: Putting all the elements in place so we can experience something and have the actors experience something, and let that guide the photography. Try to create a world, and then live in it.