Who of “Oppenheimer“ was excited, you should have a lot of fun with the Blu-ray, which is available today. The long making-of “The History of Our Time: The Making of Oppenheimer” provides insight behind the scenes in an entertaining and informative way. Naturally, the effects for the film are also being worked on – culminating in the explosion of an atomic bomb during the Trinity test.
It’s impressive how Christopher Nolan, his visual effects supervisor Andrew Jackson, special effects supervisor Scott Fisher and their teams created not only this explosion, but many other visual gimmicks with very practical effects. In the documentary, you can even watch Christopher Nolan personally create a radiant connection between lead actor Cillian Murphy and the camera to illustrate Oppenheimer’s visions in the final image.
Of course it will pass that “Oppenheimer” did without CGI effects. This created the misunderstanding in advance that no computers were used at all, there is no VFX at all. But that’s wrong. We’d like to use this article to explain a little about how it really happened and what the differences are between CGI and VFX.
No CGI in “Oppenheimer”: that’s what it means!
One fact is: Everything you saw in ‘Oppenheimer’ on the screen in the cinema or now on the screen at home was also filmed in front of a camera. That’s the CGI exemption.
Because CGI means ‘computer-generated images’. These are images that are first (usually afterwards) created on the computer. Green screen is then filled with a background or mythical creatures emerge that do not exist in reality. CGI is also often used to create or enlarge buildings. For example, you only build the floor or area of the building that you need for filming on set. Additional floors or the rest of the street are then created on the computer.
Building just a small portion of the set and generating the rest from computer is now a major use case for CGI. Here’s an example from Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf Of Wall Street”:
All that is missing in ‘Oppenheimer’. All the buildings you see in the film were actually built. When characters appeared on camera, they were there. And when things blew up, there really was an explosion. And even during the excursion to the subatomic world, these images were not created on the computer. They simply tried to create fast-moving spheres and then film them.
These are VFX: there are several in “Oppenheimer”
However, computers were of course also used in the work on “Oppenheimer”. There are numerous visual effects, so-called VFX, in “Oppenheimer”. For example, with the help of the computer, things have been removed from the image. ‘Oppenheimer’ is a historical film that was largely not shot in a closed studio. An airplane or modern buildings in the background can quickly come into view, which then have to be removed on the computer.
In addition Computers were also used to combine and overlay images. An example: during Oppenheimer’s speech, the walls in front of him begin to shake, visualizing his mood and feelings at that moment. To do this, those responsible took photos of the walls, then projected these photos onto the wall, used the computer to “shuffle the photos”, filmed this and finally projected the photos back onto the wall as the scene with Cillian Murphy was shot. filmed. . During filming, the shaking walls were already in the background of the photo (without the set actually shaking).
Especially when the atomic bomb exploded, a lot of work was done on combining images. Many images of smaller explosions were put together to create the illusion of a much larger one.
Finally, one thing to remember for the entire discussion: everything you see in “Oppenheimer” was also seen through the lens of a movie camera. Nothing was later created on the computer (CGI). Still, computers were used – for example to remove things (VFX).
Christopher Nolan’s CGI Disclaimer: No Dogma!
The fact that Christopher Nolan so consistently avoids CGI in ‘Oppenheimer’ has nothing to do with the fact that he dogmatically rejects computer images. He sees these as tools that can and should be used for certain purposes.
When the Hulk rages across the screen at Marvel or the dragon Smaug roams through Middle-earth at Peter Jackson, this is of course computer generated these days. After all, it looks better than a green-painted Lou Ferrigno or a stop-motion monster. Christopher Nolan has also used CGI for many films – and not just because it had no other option, but because he wanted to achieve a certain effect with it.
If you want to learn more about this topic and the filmmaker’s perspective, we recommend our detailed interview with Christopher Nolan. In it he explained to us why, for example, Two-Face in ‘The Dark Knight’ or the atomic bomb explosion at the end of ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ were CGI, while he now refrains from doing so in ‘Oppenheimer’. And he also makes it clear that the now widespread use of green screens and subsequent computer images is an abomination to him.
By the way, our interview with the visual effects supervisor will follow during the weekend Andrew Jackson and special effects supervisor Scott Visser. There you will gain even more insight into the origins of “Oppenheimer“.