Stones at the Max

Rolling Stones: Live at the Max
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Julien Temple David Douglas Roman Kroitor Noel Archambault Christine Strande: ("2,000 Light Years from Home")
Produced by	Michael Cohl Nicholas J. Gray Toni Myers André Picard Martin Walters Robbie Williams
Starring	The Rolling Stones
Cinematography	David Douglas Andrew Kitzanuk
Edited by	Daniel Blevins Jim Gable Lisa Grootenboer Toni Myers
Distributed by	IMAX
Release date	June, 1992 re-released 1996
Running time	89 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Rolling Stones: Live at the Max (also known as Stones at the Max) is a concert film by The Rolling Stones released in 1991. It was specially filmed in IMAX during the Urban Jungle Tour in Europe in 1990. It was one of the first attempts at presenting entertainment in the IMAX format.

Rolling Stones: Live at the Max premiered 25 October 1991 in Los Angeles at the California Museum of Science and Industry. In the UK it was shown at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1992. The tagline was "Larger than life".

Rolling Stones: Live at the Max was the first feature-length film ever to be filmed in IMAX format.

Imaging fed to the jumbotrons at concerts came from "bread trucks" switching live feeds from an army of video cameras. Midway through post, the request came to use some of this video that had been recorded on 3/4" tape in the final IMAX film. This began a crazy series of tests to improve and up-res this video to be shot on IMAX neg at the lens facility in Mississauga. Test neg was processed in New York, prints made, returned to Toronto for screening at the IMAX theater at Ontario Place. After many tries, a process was created to improve imaging enough to be used. Final release included approximately 6 minutes of this footage.

Originally shot with 8 IMAX cameras outfitted with the first long load film magazines, for 5 concerts in 3 cities. The magazines were so huge and the ballistics of the loading so unpredictable, there was no guarantee of complete coverage of any song in any single concert. Eventually trying to cut this on a flatbed proved impossible. Recently re-released EditDroids were in Toronto on various projects and one was custom configured with the help of the folks at Lucas in Los Angeles. All 35mm "twist reduction" work print was reassembled in original rolls, transferred to video and recorded on one-off laser videodiscs. The 8-headed Droid could load all data bases and imaging for a single song in all concert locations. The editors could jump to any point in a song, see what was available (or not) then jump to the same spot in all subsequent concerts. The trick was tracing back from the Droid data through LaserDisc data through video data back to 35mm stepdown print edge code and ultimately to the original IMAX neg - frame accurately to produce the neg cut list that needed to sync with the original 64 track digital recordings.

VHS, DVD and Blu-ray versions were released under the title Rolling Stones: Live at the Max.