The Real Star Of Oppenheimer Is How Christopher Nolan Shoots The A-Bomb And Quantum Physics
Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" features a stellar central performance from Cillian Murphy, who delivers career-best work as the haunted, brilliant scientist who became known as the father of the atomic bomb. But while a number of directors may have been able to collaborate with this spectacular, star-studded cast to achieve memorable and complex performances, something Nolan brought to "Oppenheimer" that exceedingly few other filmmakers could is his obsession with filming as many things as possible in a practical way instead of relying on CGI.
That tactile approach extends to the movie's explosive Trinity test of the atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert (which is perhaps the film's most show-stopping scene), as well as some visually dazzling moments of Oppenheimer imagining atoms, particles, and nuclei flying around in space.
"In this film, we're going to try and portray the inner state of the character, we're going to try and show atomic activity, we're trying to show the quantum world to a degree, which is something that's unshowable and might obviously lend itself to fancy computer graphics. I don't want to use any computer graphics for that," Nolan told his visual effects supervisor (via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). "We've got to show the Trinity test, we've got to show the destruction of that; I don't want to use any computer graphics for that."
So how exactly did the director and his collaborators pull off those effects? Nolan has tried to be somewhat secretive so far about the specifics of his methodology, but here's what we know.
Filmed using miniatures
"The point of the Trinity test being there for that birth of atomic weaponry, you want to be terrified. You want it to be beautiful but also frightening, and things that are photographed for real, they're going to inherently have more weight to them, they're going to have that threat," Nolan told Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. "Computer graphics tends to feel a bit safer."
Through extensive conversations and testing with both his visual effects supervisor, Andrew Jackson, and special effects supervisor, Scott Fisher, Nolan determined he could use forced perspective to shoot the Trinity explosion and make it appear much larger than their version was in real life. Jackson and Fisher realized they could use, in Nolan's words, "some small-scale things to photograph that could be proxies for bigger events and could use the scale of things but also some massive explosions on set that the actors were tied in with; they were there. By using different frame rates and forced perspectives and different combinations of chemicals — magnesium flares in combination with black powder explosions and petrol — to create a variety of explosive effects that could stand in for the Trinity test." (Nolan laughed that detonating a working atomic bomb for the film "would be a little extreme.")
Make no mistake: As Nolan mentioned, there were indeed some "massive explosions on set," so the forced perspective approach did not allow them just create some tiny explosions and call it a day. "We don't call them miniatures; we call them 'big-atures,'" Fisher told Total Film (via SYFY). "We do them as big as we possibly can, but we do reduce the scale so it's manageable. It's getting it closer to the camera, and doing it as big as you can in the environment."
Protons, neutrons, and nuclei, oh my!
As for those incredible shots of Oppenheimer's visions of atoms and otherworldly imagery swirling just out of reach, /Film spoke with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who told us about how the team pulled that off.
"We engineered a lot of lenses for [Jackson and Fisher] that enabled the actual perspective and the actual way that those physics experiments were shot," he said. "So I think the integration of these elements and the way that they were shot, I think they were very much — it was very pivotal and important that they were interwoven with very much what the main unit was doing. But on the other hand, I also remember being so super jealous because they got to sit all day [laughs] and move around with molded metal and spinning gold balls on strings, and coming up with all these amazing representations of quantum physics. But yes, we definitely were working together on that one."
"There is a confusion of scale in the imagery," Nolan said. "Are we looking at distant stars and planets or are we looking at atoms and molecules? You don't quite know; the scales are confused."
That approach reminds me of what Darren Aronofsky did in his 2006 film "The Fountain," using macro photography to create space-centric landscapes that were fluid and timeless as opposed to relying on the most state-of-the-art CG of the era, which would undoubtedly have looked dated a few years down the line. The end result in "Oppenheimer" captures a similar timeless aesthetic, while narratively underscoring the idea that J. Robert Oppenheimer could see things no one else could.
"Oppenheimer" is in theaters now.