How did Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer film atomic bomb sequences?
Christopher Nolan eschewed CGI in favour of practical effects for his latest film.
Given that Christopher Nolan's new film Oppenheimer is a character study of the man credited as the 'Father of the atomic bomb' it's no spoiler to say that it includes a couple of almighty explosions.
Nolan has been clear during interviews that no CGI was used to create these scenes – which at one point in time led to some rather outlandish speculation that the director had detonated an actual atomic bomb in New Mexico during production.
Of course, those rumours don't actually have any bearing in reality, and Nolan in fact worked extensively with Oscar-winning special effects supervisors Scott Fisher and Andrew Jackson to create the nuclear fire and mushroom cloud that is seen in the film.
Read on for everything you need to know about what effects were used for these sequences.
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How did Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer film atomic bomb sequences?
If you're familiar with Nolan's work, you'll probably already be aware that he has a strong preference for practical effects – and so it's no surprise that he was determined to avoid resorting to CGI for the atomic bomb sequences.
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Speaking in the film's press notes about putting together the Trinity test sequence, the director said that he always knew it "was going to be one of the most important things for us to figure out".
He explained: “I had done a nuclear explosion via computer graphics in The Dark Knight Rises, which worked very well for that film. But it also showed me that with a real-life event like Trinity, which was well documented using new cameras and formats developed for recording that event, computer graphics would never give you the sense of threat that you see in the real-life footage.
"There’s a visceral feeling to that footage. It becomes tactile, and in becoming tactile it can be threatening as well as awesome. So that was the challenge. To find what you might call analogue methods to produce effects to evoke the requisite threat, awe, and horrible beauty of the Trinity test.”
And so a number of experiments were carried out by Jackson and Fisher, which included such relatively low-tech ideas as smashing ping pong balls together and throwing paint at a wall.
These experiments were filmed in super-close-up using small digital cameras at various frame rates before Nolan would provide feedback and ask them to work out a way to recreate these effects on a bigger scale – using massive IMAX cameras.
Alas, if you're wanting to know exactly what techniques were eventually used, you're out of luck: Nolan and co have opted to keep the process top secret, which almost serves as a nod to the Manhattan Project itself.
But whatever the techniques, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema said that Jackson and Fisher's unit was "one big science project" adding that he was "very jealous that they got to play around so much with all that kind of stuff".
Although the Trinity test is the set piece that will grab the headlines, some of the same techniques were also used at other points in the film: specifically for those scenes portraying the chaos of Oppenheimer's mind.
Nolan said that this was another area where CGI simply wasn't an option, explaining that he "didn’t feel we were going to get anything that would feel personal and unique to Oppenheimer’s character" if that approach was taken.
“We were able to generate this incredible library of idiosyncratic and personal and frightening and beautiful images to represent the thought process of somebody at the forefront of the paradigm shift from Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics," he said.
"Who is looking into dull matter and seeing the extraordinary vibration of energy that’s within all things, and how it might be unleashed, and what it might bring.”
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Oppenheimer is now showing in UK cinemas. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
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Oppenheimer is showing in UK cinemas from Friday 21st July. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
Try Radio Times magazine today and get 12 issues for only £1 with delivery to your home – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
