Oppenheimer - General Information

The upcoming epic thriller based on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it.
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That still is gorgeous.

I'm so glad there seems to be more new stills to come this week.

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How Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Recreated A Nuclear Explosion Without Using CGI

In the most recent issue of Total Film Magazine, the "Oppenheimer" special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher — a longtime Nolan collaborator — talked about what was required to emulate the destruction of a bomb that size. He notably talked about the Trinity nuclear test of 1945, a test that was well-filmed and documented (one can visit the Trinity site in New Mexico to this day). Luckily for Fisher, the filming of "Oppenheimer" was less elaborate than some of Nolan's other fantasy films. But that didn't make accuracy any less important.

Fisher said:

"It was my sixth film with Chris. Compared to a lot of the other ones we've done, it was definitely not as rigorous with day-to-day filming. He said, 'There's not as much stuff for you on this as the other one, but there's a couple of things we do have to cover.' And that was, of course, the Trinity explosion, and some prop builds, and elements of different things that we had throughout the film."

For "Oppenheimer," Fisher and Nolan thought of old-fashioned miniatures, but for explosions. Big enough to look real, but small enough to put a camera kind of close to. He said:

"It is like an old-school technique. We don't call them miniatures; we call them big-atures. 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 camera, and doing it as big as you can in the environment."
Total Film also spoke with Andrew Jackson, another effects technician who had a lot of experience filming bombs and explosions. He recalled presenting some of his ideas to Nolan in an exciting "explosion demo reel." This was something of a golden opportunity for Jackson, who saw recreating nuclear blasts as a fun, unique challenge. He liked giving his presentation, and it seems that Nolan selected the look of what he wanted from Jackson's visual album. Jackson said:

"I've been doing this for years. I had years of little samples and things that I filmed. So I put together a single screen with little thumbnails of all these different effects and things that I filmed that I thought were interesting. And I just played that on a big screen and said, 'Is there anything here that you find interesting?'"
https://www.slashfilm.com/1294112/chris ... on-no-cgi/

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We're so close now

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From TotalFilm.
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Screenrant is a bunch of film commentary nonsense clickbait. They post like ten articles a week either praising Nolan or bashing him because it gets views for them.

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Innovator wrote:
May 23rd, 2023, 3:21 pm
How Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Recreated A Nuclear Explosion Without Using CGI

In the most recent issue of Total Film Magazine, the "Oppenheimer" special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher — a longtime Nolan collaborator — talked about what was required to emulate the destruction of a bomb that size. He notably talked about the Trinity nuclear test of 1945, a test that was well-filmed and documented (one can visit the Trinity site in New Mexico to this day). Luckily for Fisher, the filming of "Oppenheimer" was less elaborate than some of Nolan's other fantasy films. But that didn't make accuracy any less important.

Fisher said:

"It was my sixth film with Chris. Compared to a lot of the other ones we've done, it was definitely not as rigorous with day-to-day filming. He said, 'There's not as much stuff for you on this as the other one, but there's a couple of things we do have to cover.' And that was, of course, the Trinity explosion, and some prop builds, and elements of different things that we had throughout the film."

For "Oppenheimer," Fisher and Nolan thought of old-fashioned miniatures, but for explosions. Big enough to look real, but small enough to put a camera kind of close to. He said:

"It is like an old-school technique. We don't call them miniatures; we call them big-atures. 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 camera, and doing it as big as you can in the environment."
Total Film also spoke with Andrew Jackson, another effects technician who had a lot of experience filming bombs and explosions. He recalled presenting some of his ideas to Nolan in an exciting "explosion demo reel." This was something of a golden opportunity for Jackson, who saw recreating nuclear blasts as a fun, unique challenge. He liked giving his presentation, and it seems that Nolan selected the look of what he wanted from Jackson's visual album. Jackson said:

"I've been doing this for years. I had years of little samples and things that I filmed. So I put together a single screen with little thumbnails of all these different effects and things that I filmed that I thought were interesting. And I just played that on a big screen and said, 'Is there anything here that you find interesting?'"
https://www.slashfilm.com/1294112/chris ... on-no-cgi/
I mean what else was it gonna be besides miniatures? Lmao
They did the same with Inception and the big snow fortress explosion at the end.

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They made a mini nuclear bomb. The size of an orange.

I've started my Nolan marathon recently.

Oppenheimer clearly borrows the <<colour>> is subjective and ##B&W## is objective from Memento (nothing new).
That's how they were differentiated in the script by the way.
But watching Insomnia today made me realize he also borrows the subjective microscopic visions and inserts from that film into Oppenheimer. It'll be interesting to see how that footage will be cut throughout the film. There were some incredible flashes and cuts in both Memento and Insomnia.

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