I’ve rsvped to an IMAX Playa Vista screening of La La Land tomorrow evening at 6 pm. Apparently Damien Chazelle‘s award-winning musical has been up-rezzed with a propriety IMAX technology called DMR, and not solely for this event but a forthcoming domestic release (100 IMAX bookings nationwide) plus a China release.

China Film Insider‘s Fergus Ryan reported yesterday that although a specific date has yet to be determined, the Lionsgate film “has been approved for distribution in China and will screen in the China Giant Screen format and possibly IMAX 2D.”

Tomorrow’s IMAX presentation will present the film in the same 2.55:1 aspect ratio that everyone else is seeing in regular theatres. Which means, of course, that while La La Land will look bigger it won’t really look IMAX-y in a super-tall sense, which is what the whole IMAX hoo-hah is more or less about.

The laser version is a 4K DCP and has a custom IMAX Immersive 12.0 channel mix. The theatre with our laser projector in Playa Vista (Theatre 4, David Keighley Theatre) is equipped dual 4K laser projectors, with a 60-foot screen capable of traditional IMAX 1.43:1 content and with an IMAX Immersive 12.0 speaker system.

In what way will La La Land look different besides the big screen? A post-production guy says that “the most basic difference is that the IMAX version will deliver a brighter image…a higher foot lambert count…the same files that made the standard DCP are used and made brighter, and then they make adjustments to match the image to the original intent…they obviously would want it to look consistent with the theatrical, and the filmmakers almost always approve this.”