The Look of Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is the story of the man behind the atomic bomb. Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s newest film examines the gifted theoretical physicist, played by Cillian Murphy, as he wrestles with the consequences and moral implications of bestowing a world-ending power unto humanity.  

(SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Nolan tells the tale in the way he does best — presenting non-linear timelines to thematically converge on the political destruction of the scientist after his public opposition to creating more weapons of mass destruction following the war. Oppenheimer is professionally ruined, labeled a Communist sympathizer, and his government clearance is revoked. Once he gave the United States the A-bomb, he was no longer useful to the emerging world power. 

At one point in the film, Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt) says, “You think because you let them tar and feather you that the world will forgive you? They won’t.” 

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OPPENHEIMER ‘PUSHING THE BUTTON FEATURETTE’:

The filmmakers had the unique challenge of conveying the interrelationship between the brightest minds in academia and the war effort that was increasingly suspicious of communism. The rising USSR, though among the Allied forces, rivaled American hegemony. Even as Lieutenant General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) interviewed Oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project, it was clear the scientist’s sympathies for the Soviets played to his detriment. This was later emphasized when Oppenheimer struggled to achieve Q-level clearance — and it would ultimately be revoked for that very reason. 

However, what motivated Oppenheimer wasn’t the bomb itself. The idea that a weapon so great would not only end the Second World War but end all wars was enticing for a man whose sights were set on bettering humankind. Needless to say, their work only ended up perpetuating the demand for more weapons of mass destruction. 

THE TECHNICAL MARVEL OF THE AMERICAN PROMETHEUS

Even though the stakes are so astronomically high that there’s even a chance the detonation could destroy the Earth, the film retains a sobering, noirish quality through the perspective of Oppenheimer. 

Christopher Nolan confirms this very idea with the LA Times, “All the films I’ve made, one way or another, are film noirs. They’re all stories about consequences. And with Oppenheimer, the consequences are the fastest to arrive and the most extreme.” 

Over 100 theaters obtained specialized equipment to properly screen the 70mm prints, and the technical innovations and modifications are in and of themselves a marvel, necessitating a theatrical viewing to properly watch the film as it was intended. With a weight of over 600 pounds, the final prints for Oppenheimer unravel to over 11 miles. About less than a mile longer than the ground flattened by the bomb at the test site. 

Christopher Nolan made the film on the largest scale possible because the idea was for audiences to experience the film in a theater. That way they could adequately exhibit the phenomenon of the nuclear trial, codenamed: TRINITY. 

It is said when Oppenheimer witnessed the raw power unleashed in the Jornada Del Muerto desert, he was struck by a verse from the Bhagavad Gita… 

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”  

Keep reading to unravel the filmmaking behind the tale of an enigmatic scientist whose paradoxical plight was to risk the destruction of the world in order to save it. 

This is The Look of Oppenheimer.

 

CONTENTS:

• Tech Specs
• The World 
• Production Design
• Cinematography
• Costume Design
• Practical FX

 

☢ OPPENHEIMER TECH SPECS ☢

• Runtime: 3 hours (180 minutes)
• Color: 
  • Color 
  • Black and White 

• Aspect Ratio: 
  • 1.43: 1 (IMAX 70mm: some scenes)
  • 1.90: 1 (Digital IMAX: some scenes)
  • 2.20 : 1 (70mm and Digital)
  • 2.39 : 1 (35mm)

• Camera: 
  • IMAX MKIII, Panavision Sphero 65 and Hasselblad Lenses
  • IMAX MKIV, Panavision Sphero 65 and Hasselblad Lenses
  • IMAX MSM 9802, Panavision Sphero 65 and Hasselblad Lenses
  • Panavision Panaflex System 65 Studio, Panavision Panspeed & System 65 Lenses
• Negative Format: 65 mm (also horizontal, Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219, Eastman Double-X 5222)
• Cinematographic Process: 
  • IMAX 
  • Panavision Super 70

• Printed Film Format: 
  • 35 mm(anamorphic, Kodak Vision 2383)
  • 70 mm(also horizontal, also IMAX DMR blow-up, Kodak Vision 2383)
  • D-Cinema 

 

⚛ THE WORLD OF OPPENHEIMER ⚛

The story of Prometheus is one that is in the bones of our origins. Eons ago when humanity was first conceived, we had to decide how to best sacrifice to the gods. With the help of the titan Prometheus, we tricked Zeus into accepting the bones and fat of animals as their tribute while keeping the meat for ourselves. 

Outraged once he discovered he was deceived, Zeus took back fire from humanity as punishment. Pitying the cold and hungry humans, Prometheus ventured up to Mount Olympus and brought fire back down so humanity could prosper. For his treachery, Zeus chained Prometheus to a stone on a far-off island where his regenerative liver would be eaten by an eagle every day for eternity. 

The “fire” that the American Prometheus provided to humankind is more than a weapon of mass destruction. As a theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer was motivated by innovating the field and the possibilities of quantum field theory, spectroscopy, and theoretical astronomy. But just as fire could be used for creation or destruction, Oppenheimer’s work could either power the world or obliterate it. 

OPPENHEIMER FEATURETTE ‘TRINITY TEST’:

The film does not put its sights on showing the nuclear devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rather, it focuses on the moral implications that overcome the scientist who contends with the guilt of constructing such a weapon. What the audience is eventually treated to is the grand spectacle of the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945. It’s like waiting for some titanic Lovecraftian monster to reveal itself. 

Fast forward to 1947, just a few years after the war and Oppenheimer is now the director of Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. Still very much plagued by the shockwaves of his efforts. While chairing the General Advisory Committee of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, he lobbied for international control of nuclear power to prevent an arms race with the Soviet Union. When he opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb in 1949, this was a bridge too far for the national security state. Oppenheimer became a target for the Second Red Scare, sabotaging his reputation and security clearance. 

Any other instance, outside the Trinity Test, where the atomic bomb is felt throughout the film is consequentially in the mind of Oppenheimer. Such as when he stands before a cheering audience at Los Alamos after Japan surrenders and while facing a particularly heated interrogation years later in a private tribunal that functions as a kangaroo court. In no way could he take the fire back from humanity. It was too late. 

☢ PRODUCTION DESIGN ☢

The filmmakers launched into pre-production in January 2022 and wrapped principal photography in May of that same year. With such a quick turn time, production designer Ruth De Jong had her work cut out for her. Her collaboration with Nolan, producer Emma Thomas, and executive producer Thomas Hayslip began even a year earlier in 2021. 

There were plenty of locations to consider from Princeton, New Jersey to Cambridge and Zurich — not to mention, New York and Los Angeles. De Jong largely worked within the theoretical physicist’s beloved desert, replicating the 1940s top secret laboratory town of Los Alamos. 

Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

Designing Non-Linear Timelines

Comprised of a non-linear timeline, Oppenheimer alternates between when the theoretical physicist is developing the science and theory for the atomic bomb and his later public destruction due to his opposition to furthering nuclear development. Nolan finds a clear way to define the contrast between Oppenheimer’s “Fission” timeline in color and Strauss’ “Fusion” timeline in black and white.  

We open with Oppenheimer at Cambridge before turning his studies to the University of Göttingen, the world’s leading center of theoretical physics, then becoming a professor at Berkley and his eventual recruitment as the director of the Manhattan Project. 

This is woven along with the 1954 timeline with an aged, pensive Oppenheimer who faces a private security hearing that questions his allegiance to the U.S. and its national security. Then, it is fused with yet another storyline in black and white, following the 1959 confirmation hearing of Admiral Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.). 

“It was lots of hard work,” says De Jong. “With every film, you have to start somewhere. You can’t overanalyze too much. Chris [Nolan] likes to work closely with his designer in prep. We had some wonderful time to talk together to talk concepts and have the script to use as our guide, and we dove in.” 

 

PRE-PRODUCTION

When it came to research and development, the production designer found herself obsessed with each and every little detail. To this, Nolan told her, “Ruth, I’m not making a documentary snooze fest.” This clarified to De Jong that she didn’t have to be so married to the reality of the time period and instead bottle its essence. This was a story about the forward-thinking Oppenheimer, after all. 

Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

Location scouting for the epic vistas took them through Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. Ultimately, they found that New Mexico would supply more than enough scenery to match the historic desert detonation. So, they set up shop in Santa Fe to plot the production. 

Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

They worked off of a detailed recreation of Los Alamos that De Jong illustrated, and ultimately physically rendered it as a 3D white model. It became so extensive that they moved it into the backyard of the production office. Vision, however, sometimes outweighs the cost. So, they had to downscale it as they realized the heavy price of recreating the entire town. 

“Chris liked to call it ‘our little Western town,’ which is a few small buildings and two gunslingers, and that’s about all you see,” says Thomas Hayslip. “But there’s nothing little about Los Alamos, and much of our work was as much about creating the illusion of the place as it was recreating it.” 

 

OPPENHEIMER PRODUCTION

The production of Oppenheimer predominantly took place in New Mexico and California. They focused their world-building efforts on a select number of locations that fit Nolan’s story like a puzzle. There weren’t any additional pieces left over. This allowed the filmmakers to work efficiently within their allotted five months. 

“New Mexico was really going to be the source of where we filmed everything,” says De Jong. “We ended up filming a lot of D.C. interiors in New Mexico, and Pasadena doubled for the Berkeley shots.” 

While there, they were immersed in the region far from a soundstage and without a centralized home base. Starting her mornings in Santa Fe, De Jong would typically end up wrapping each day in Belen where they constructed their Trinity Test site. 

While Nolan initially considered filming all the Los Alamos scenes on location, he eventually changed his mind once he saw it. The director resolved to only film the interior scenes there due to how much the outside had changed. Exteriors would have been too difficult with its modern buildings on location, replete with its own Starbucks. So, instead, they constructed the town at the 21,000-acre retreat known as Ghost Ranch in Northern New Mexico. 

Authentic Interiors and Exteriors

Shooting the interiors at the actual locations of Los Alamos imbued a sense of authenticity and timelessness to the film, from the laboratory where the bomb was assembled to the office space where the scientists feverishly collaborated.  

Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

For the exteriors, they constructed all 360 degrees of the structures, not just the camera-facing sides. “We want it to feel like you are right there, you are in this,” De Jong says. “This is happening, this is real. This isn’t a backlot.” 

As far as Oppenheimer’s house, it’s still standing. This permitted Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt the latitude to authentically channel their performances. 

This also extended to Oppenheimer’s home at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where they shot both interiors and exteriors, including its surrounding grounds. 

Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

The Oppenheimer production also received permission to use Einstein’s old office at the Institute for Advanced Study and to redress it as Oppenheimer’s. This is because Oppenheimer’s office was remodeled over the years whereas Einstein’s office was preserved for the period. 

When shooting on location wasn’t viable, De Jong constructed sets where possible. For instance, they shot the New York hotel scenes at Amy Biehl High School in Albuquerque. When Oppenheimer was received by President Truman (Gary Oldman) in the White House, the interiors were actually shot in various Santa Fe state buildings. 

Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

TRINITY TEST SITE

The centerpiece of the film is the infamous Trinity Test site where the first atomic bomb was detonated. The scale of the site and the blast were important because it was intended to send shockwaves throughout the entire film. Everything depended on the viability of this set piece. Its two main features include the 100-foot steel tower and the bunker where Oppenheimer and the scientists watched the test. 

The U.S. military gave Nolan and his production permission to shoot at White Sands Proving Ground, but since it’s an active military base, there were too many hoops to jump through. For one, they would have to go dark for military training drills and lose 6-8 hours each day. 

Ultimately, it made more sense for the Oppenheimer production to pick another space in open New Mexico to replicate the place of the Trinity Test site. They chose Belen to do so because it shared the same mountain range, and was the place where Oppenheimer watched the original detonation. 

De Jong and her team built the set piece as large as possible while still staying within budget. They of course don’t share the benefit of an endless military budget. From the circular windows to the detonation button, the bunker had all the trappings of a top-secret military bunker of the 1940s. This was crucial for the sequence of shots leading up to the pushing of the button. 

Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

⚛ OPPENHEIMER CINEMATOGRAPHY ⚛

Christopher Nolan teamed up yet again with the one and only Hoyte van Hoytema, ASC, NSC, FSF to lens the Oppenheimer biographical drama. The two titans of the film industry previously collaborated on Interstellar (2014), and continued with Dunkirk (2017), and Tenet (2020). 

Typically, when Nolan initiates a project with van Hoytema, they go out to lunch and the director shares his new idea. Since Nolan only makes a few copies of the script, he invites the seasoned DP to his house to read it. For Oppenheimer, Nolan wanted van Hoytema to read the script before he did any other research. 

In an interview with Kodak, the Oppenheimer DP says, “I discovered that he had boiled down the story into a dramaturgical structure that was very personal, intimate, and thrilling. In our previous films the emphasis was on the action, but for this film, he wanted a very simple, unadorned style to the photography, especially on faces to support the unfolding psychological drama.”

However, one of the biggest technical challenges was shooting lots of close-ups on large format and keeping the audience engaged on faces for an intimate outcome.

“To a certain extent,” van Hoytema tells British Cinematographer, “we felt like we somehow had to grasp the grand principles of quantum physics, as well as finding a way for us to make the audience understand it. And, of course, quantum physics is a very abstract form of physics. And there are very few people in this world who really understand it on the level of J. Robert Oppenheimer… he’s a genius. And my mind, for sure, doesn’t even tip to the places that he could go. Yet, we felt as filmmakers we could understand things on an intuitive level.” 

Read more about the cinematography of Oppenheimer at British Cinematographer!

“The style of photography that Hoyte and I adopted for this movie was to be very simple yet very powerful,” Nolan says. “No barrier between the world of the film and the audience, no obvious stylization other than the black-and-white sequences. But particularly with the color sequences, we wanted very unadorned, simple photography, as natural as possible, revealing lots of textures in the world. Whether it’s the costumes or the sets or locations, you’re looking for real world complexity and detail.”

What fascinated Hoytema was the descriptions of the bomb from firsthand accounts. There were those who said it appeared like a mushroom cloud while others spoke of the morning sky “suddenly lit by searing bright white before turning golden yellow, then red to beautiful purple and violet.”

They were subjective responses, says the DP, “I found it really compelling as I sought to get to the essence of what those people experienced during that period and on that particular day.” 

IMAX FILMMAKING

What better way to capture the immense power of an atomic bomb than on IMAX (15-perf) format using KODAK 65mm large format film? 

According to van Hoytema, IMAX preserves the full 18K resolution of the image because if you get it in camera, you can make a contact print. Otherwise, the process involves scanning, digitizing, and taking it back to film. “There’s not a more refined, not a more depth-giving medium in the world than doing it exactly in that way,” says the cinematographer.

Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

They shot on the IMAX MSM 802 MKIII and MKIV cameras along with the Panavision Panaflex System 65 Studio Cameras. The 5-perf 65mm “work horse” cameras permitted them to record dialogue. 

“Large format photography gives clarity and places the audience in the reality you are creating for them,” van Hoytema tells Kodak. “Of course, as the film has grand vistas and deals with the explosion of the world’s first atomic bomb, it had to be a blast, and there is nothing better than IMAX for creating that spectacular cinematic experience.”

What Nolan relishes about large-format photography is its clarity before anything else.

“It’s a format that allows the audience to become fully immersed in the story and in the reality that you’re taking them to, says Nolan. In the case of Oppenheimer, it’s a story of great scope and great scale and great span. But I also wanted the audience to be in the rooms where everything happened, as if you are there, having conversations with these scientists in these important moments.”

IMAX CAMERAS AND FILM STOCK

They filmed on KODAK VISION3 250D Color Negative Film 5207 for bright day interiors and exteriors. For low-light and night scenes, they switched to KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219. 

“The 250D and 500T are workhorse speeds that I knew would cover pretty much all of the lighting situations I would encounter, explains van Hoytema. “And even though the larger surface area of the emulsion means the grain is finer – especially in IMAX – they still had enough texture for me. There’s still nothing that beats the resolution, depth, color and roundness of the analog image, nor in the feeling overall that film conveys. When you watch an analog print, especially in an IMAX theatre, the level of impact is freaking inspiring.” 

BLACK & WHITE FILM

Just as the film portrays the first test of detonating an atomic bomb, Oppenheimer also has its own first in the form of celluloid. Oppenheimer was shot on IMAX black-and-white film photography for the first time ever, combined with IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-format film. Nolan and Hoytema had wanted to shoot black-and-white on large format for some time and felt that it would benefit the confirmation hearing of Strauss, set in 1959. 

“The reason for the black-and-white was very much a way of separating those two narratives, so that on an intuitive level you could easily jump from one to the other,” explains van Hoytema. In a way, we had already done that with the blue and the red color coding in ‘Tenet.’ Black-and-white seemed a very obvious way to do it in this film.”

Since black and white 65mm celluloid didn’t exist, they made a request to Kodak to manufacture it for them. 

“It was a gutsy choice,” van Hoytema says. “One of my very first phone calls was to Kodak, enquiring if they had any 65mm large-format B&W filmstock,” the DP recalls. “But they had never made that before, and early on it was uncertain as to whether they would or could achieve it in time for this production. But they stepped up to the plate and supplied a freshly manufactured prototype DOUBLE-X 5222 65mm filmstock, delivered in cans with handwritten labels on the outside.”

However, you cannot simply load the black and white film into a camera made for color due to its emulsion’s thickness and breakability. Just like the scientists in the film devising the bomb, a team of camera engineers and lab technicians from IMAX, Kodak, Panavision, and Fotokem experimented with the prototype 65mm black and white Kodak film stock. 

They modified the IMAX cameras to accommodate the film stock, adjusted the pressure plates, and made new gates. Hoytema also had to overcome the static in the film, scratching of the negative, and fogging issues. Sometimes they needed to agitate the bath differently and other times it wasn’t so obvious. “We had to keep a very keen eye on the whole process,” Hoytema tells BC. 

LENSES

Optical innovations and special equipment were essential to the look of Oppenheimer. Dan Sasaki of Panavision re-engineers lenses and optics as well as builds them from the ground up for a specific purpose. 

Sasaki constructed the equivalent of a snorkel lens for the IMAX camera to shoot underwater cinematography and capture extreme macro shots. The lens is a large waterproof long tube that allowed them to convey the atomic world of physics. 

Hoytema was fascinated by Peter Kuran’s book ‘How to Photograph an Atomic Bomb’ and referenced it while replicating the Trinity explosion. He investigated the side development of extremely high-speed, ultra-light sensitive, and split-field cameras and long lenses to record the nuclear explosions. 

The director of photography selected the 50mm and 80mm as his preferred lenses that he believes “touch the sweet spot of immersiveness in IMAX.” 

“Anything beyond those focal lengths and you start to diminish the immersive quality of the image,” says the Oppenheimer DP. “If you go too long the image appears compressed and more graphic, as if you’re looking at a sort of flat screen. Anything too wide becomes more like a fishbowl, where the edges start to fall off too fast. So, the 50mm has become our wide lens, the 80mm our tighter lens. On close-ups they give you the right proximity and wideness, and everything around starts to function like the peripheral vision of your eyes.” 

Sasaki helped deliver close focal optics like the Hasselblad Panavision Sphero 65 and Panavision System 65 lenses. This would allow the filmmakers to get closer to the actors in low-light situations shooting at T1.4 instead of T4. 

CAMERA MOVEMENT & LIGHTING

They used cranes and dollies to move the camera and van Hoytema even lugged the heavy 50-pound IMAX camera on his shoulder for handheld shots. 

Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

“Yes, it’s heavy, but it’s perfectly manageable,” he insists to the folks at Kodak. “We were not doing long takes, and I only had the IMAX camera on my shoulder in short bursts. Plus, I had a rock-solid crew with whom I have worked on many films before. My key grip Kyle Carden and dolly grip Ryan Monro were very sensitive and sensible towards my needs in wrangling the camera and making sure that I got it on and off my shoulder in good time. I must also mention Keith Davis, my genius focus puller, in getting the cameras ready in the first place to do some run-and-gun work.”

Authentic and natural sources informed the film’s lighting. Even when it came to inside the mind of the theoretical physicist, the “interpretive work” was motivated by reality with a helping hand of added creativity from veteran gaffer R. Adam Chambers ICLS.  

They used a mix of old-fashioned Tungstens and the extra punch of 18K ARRIMAX HMIs with newer fixtures like the ARRI Skypanels. 

“I have to say that LED lighting has come on dramatically in the last few years,” remarks van Hoytema. “The lighting is rich, the color rendering indexes are way up there, and the controllability is great. Adam, together with his brothers Noah and Shane, have developed an extremely solid, no-latency, 100% wireless DMX control system. This meant our lights were instantly controllable from the board as soon as we put them up.”

Van Hoytema didn’t use any lights inside the room for the Oppenheimer hearing sequence in Room 2021. Instead, all their lights came from outside the windows as they followed the color of real daylight from the board, matching it perfectly with ambient light. The DP notes, “It’s such a fast and versatile way to work.” 

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⚛ COSTUME DESIGN ⚛

From Oppenheimer’s wide-brimmed hat to Strauss’ handmade suits, the cast was dressed by the one and only Ellen Mirojnick, who conveyed the pomp and dignity of the 1930s and 1940s period with her masterful costume design. 

“What I found really interesting about Oppenheimer’s story was learning how in-sync both their geniuses were in exploring an unknown landscape through the experimentation of fission and fusion, literally and figuratively,” says Mirojnick. 

The costume designer carefully selected clothing for each character, accentuating their unique personas, quirks, and position in society — be it in the scientific, political, or military communities. 

The biggest challenge for the costume designer above all else was handling the extras. The scale of the movie is large full of European academics, American students, scientists and their families at Los Alamos, soldiers, military personnel, and politicians, and that’s only about half of what Mirojnick and the costume department contended with. 

“There were scientists, soldiers, mothers, workers, and children, of all shapes and sizes, over a period of a number of years,” Mirojnick says. “Additionally, the team were tasked with making sure each season was represented correctly whilst being mindful of the actors who were shooting outside in the cold of a New Mexico winter.”

J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER

Beginning with Robert Oppenheimer, he was an academic who was well-traveled and of means. Mirojnick focused on his silhouette, which of course was capped by his wide-brimmed hat that took extensive research and persistence to get just right. She describes it as a “porkpie crown with a somewhat Western brim.” 

Its origin unknown, Mirojnick sought out hatmakers in New York and Italy for help, but they came up empty-handed. Eventually, it was the Hollywood hatmaker Baron Hats that came through and recreated its infamous shape. 

“Only Chris had the ability to shape it just so,” recalls Mirojnick. “When Chris touched it, magic would happen. He’d flip it or turn it a bit or squeeze the brim slightly to get it how he saw it in his mind’s eye.”

Oppenheimer | Universal Pictures

The costumer accented the silhouette with blue shirts that the theoretical physicist preferred and also highlighted Murphy’s blue eyes. With his wide-brimmed hat and his K-6 badge, Oppenheimer appears as the sheriff of his own town. 

When Oppenheimer moves to the desert, Mirojnick keeps the same kind of suit but alters it to a sandy color. They used a tan whipcord fabric from hard-twisted yarns that played beautifully against the blue. 

KITTY OPPENHEIMER 

Beginning as a Bay Area socialite, Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt) brought a distinct intellectual flavor of smart yet fashionable dress that soured with children in a domestic setting. 

As her role as a wife and mother carried her off into the desert by the winds of destiny, her choice of clothing turned more practical and casual while still clinging to the stylish vestiges of her previous life.  

JEAN TATLOCK 

Mirojnick didn’t have many references for Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) outside of some headshots. 

This meant she had to get creative with Tatlock and invited Pugh to dream up what her character would eventually wear. Together they let the character’s personality inform the style of dress and the character’s movements. 

ADMIRAL LEWIS STRAUSS

Meanwhile, Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) adorned handmade suits, and custom shirts, and was perfectly manicured in every scene. Mirojnick and her team even recreated his ties from old photographs. Every part of Strauss’ outfit exuded affluence, wealth, and success. 

What informed Mirojnick’s design for Strauss and his Senate confirmation hearing was an old photograph from the event. In the photograph, Strauss wore a narrow dark pin-striped suit, white shirt, and yellow tie with a dark blue stripe. 

Even though the sequence is in black and white, Mirojnick and her team carefully crafted each article of clothing to perfectly match the photo. 

☢ PRACTICAL FX ☢

The idea for Oppenheimer was to do as much as possible in camera with practical effects and miniatures over CGI and VFX. Nolan proudly insists that the film has absolutely zero CGI shots. 

“Chris wants everything to feel authentic, whether shooting in the actual places where the people in the Manhattan Project lived or building things from scratch,” producer Charles Roven says. “He also likes films to feel hand-made, not made in a studio or generated with computer-generated imagery. You feel that throughout the movie, particularly in the area of practical effects, whether it’s putting snow on the ground, or creating ripples in a pond, which is a recurring motif in the movie, or how he approached the first atomic bomb explosion.”

Van Hoytema also prefers the physical world to the world of VFX. He tells British Cinematographer, “I always get a big kick out of enabling shots or enabling ways of storytelling that you haven’t seen before, and especially in these times where people think they can do whatever they can come up with in CGI… I always like to challenge myself and find the equivalent of a good CGI [shot] in the physical world, because I just think that the physical world brings us a certain level of tangibility that is unobtainable in CGI.”

Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

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REPLICATING THE ATOM BOMB

Visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson was given the ultimate challenge of making a mushroom cloud explosion without CGI. Using solely practical effects, Jackson had to recreate the spectacular Trinity Test of July 16, 1945. 

 

“I knew from the beginning that the Trinity test was going to be one of the most important things for us to figure out,” says Nolan. “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.”

Nolan continues, “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 analog methods to produce effects to evoke the requisite threat, awe, and horrible beauty of the Trinity test.”

This weighed so heavily on the director that he invited Jackson to be the first person to read his script when it was finished — after his wife and producer Emma Thomas, of course. That way he could begin dreaming up how to make it practical without launching a nuke for the sake of cinema. 

Assisting Jackson with the atomic endeavor was special effects supervisor Scott Fisher. They conducted experiments that ranged from smashing together ping pong balls to developing luminous magnesium solutions. Using small digital cameras, they filmed closeups of the experiments at varying frame rates. 

“Their whole unit was one, big science project,” says van Hoytema. “I was very jealous that they got to play around so much with all that kind of stuff.”

 

ATOM BOMB WITH PRACTICAL EFFECTS

The explosion was a delectable recipe of gasoline over propane and other fuels because Fisher notes that it gives “so much bang for your buck.” In addition, they used magnesium and aluminum powder to enrich the brightness and provide its raw atomic appearance. 

“We did a bit of that on this because we really wanted everyone to talk about that flash, that brightness. So we tried to replicate that as much as we could,” he explained.

When Jackson and Fisher showed their work to Nolan, he affirmed that they were on the right track and tasked them with figuring it out on IMAX cameras. This is where Sasaki’s long, fish-eyed probe lens came in handy. 

So, combining magnesium flares with gasoline and black powder explosions, among other things, they experimented with combinations of imagery that both the main unit and Jackson had shot. 

Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette | Universal Pictures

“You just start visualizing combinations,” says Nolan, “and experimenting with combinations of imagery to give the feeling of what this must have felt like to watch this. And what that gave me in the edit suite was this thread, this connecting set of analog techniques that confuse scale, from the particle world of quantum mechanics to the vast universe, astrophysics, et cetera, and all the points in between.”

The finished product was one of immense power and distinction — the world would never be the same. 

“There was a definite feeling of what we are seeing is both beautiful and dangerous, in equal measure”, says Nolan. “And that’s what we had asked for. So we always knew that the sequence would be a collage rather than one iconic shot. If there is an iconic shot, I think it’s the profile of Oppenheimer seeing it.”

According to Universal Pictures, “how the actual atomic explosion images were created for the film remains top-secret.”

CONVEYING ATOMIC PHYSICS

The filmmakers cut the film with extraordinary images of atoms and subatomic particles without the use of CGI. This meant that the filmmakers had to imagine other ways to represent the microscopic world that Oppenheimer dreamt of. 

“We’ve gotta see the world the way he [Oppenheimer] sees it,” Jackson remembers Nolan saying. “We’ve gotta see the atoms moving, we’ve gotta see the way he’s imagining waves of energy, the quantum world. And then we have to see how that translates into the Trinity test. And we have to feel the danger, feel the threat of all this somehow. Let’s do all these things, but without any computer graphics.” 

Nuclear Cinematography | Oppenheimer | Universal Pictures

The techniques that Jackson, Fisher, and the FX team used to recreate the nuclear explosion were also used to convey Oppenheimer’s internal world. 

“There’s one sense in which computer graphics is the obvious way to do it, but I didn’t feel we were going to get anything that would feel personal and unique to Oppenheimer’s character,” says Nolan. “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, 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.”

Abstract Cinematography | Oppenheimer | Universal Pictures

“We try and grow that thread to its ultimate release, this kind of vibrating energy that follows through the whole film, to its ultimate release in this incredibly destructive event”, Nolan tells IGN. “And so some of what they did was absolutely tiny and magnified, sort of miniature, as it were, or even beyond that really, microscopic. And some of it was absolutely vast and required intense concentration on set.” 

The film showcases some of the fallout in the gymnasium at Los Alamos as Oppenheimer addresses a crowd following the Japanese surrender. As he speaks, he imagines the nuclear fallout from the impact of the bombs, the filmmakers utilize a combination of VFX and LED technology to tremble as the scene unraveled. 

The final results are MIND-BLOWING. But you will have to get tickets and head to the theater to see for yourself!

⚛ WATCH OPPENHEIMER ⚛

As Robert Downey, Jr. says, “Do yourself a favor and go see this on as big a screen as you can.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPbbksJxIg 

Oppenheimer is currently playing in theaters. After that, it will be available on your friendly neighborhood streaming service. 

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WORK CITED: 

• British Cinematographer
  • BC Archive 
• NBC
  • Oppenheimer Featurette Highlights Realism of Nolan’s “Monumental” WWII Bomb Thriller 
• Universal Pictures
  • Oppenheimer | Pushing The Button Featurette 
• Kodak
  • Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC gets up-close  personal using Kodak 65mm large-format film on Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ 
• Albuquerque Journal
  • Production designer Ruth De Jong transported New Mexico back to the 1940s in ‘Oppenheimer’
• Universal Pictures
  • “Oppenheimer” Production Notes
• YMCinema
  • Christopher Nolan “Oppenheimer has Zero CGI Shots”
• IGN
  • Oppenheimer: How Christopher Nolan Built an Atomic Bomb
• IndieWire

• • Kodak Had to Engineer Brand-New 65mm Film Stock for the Black-and-White ‘Oppenheimer’ Sequences 
  • Striving for Authenticity, Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt Filmed in the Oppenheimers’ Actual Los Alamos House
• Bounding Into Comics
  • ‘Oppenheimer’ Special Effects Supervisor Reveals How The Film Recreates The Trinity Nuclear Explosion