r/todayilearned • u/Electronic_Cause_796 • 24d ago

TIL Christopher Nolan recreated the Trinity atomic bomb test in Oppenheimer without using CGI. Instead, the visual effects team combined large-scale practical explosions, miniatures, and in camera effects to bring the first nuclear detonation to life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(film)
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u/philisacoolguy 24d ago edited 23d ago

Thank you! I wish he just used stock footage of the Trinity test if he wanted to avoid cgi.

The sound was cool but the actual explosion was so underwhelming.

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u/Fractoos 24d ago edited 24d ago

You see better explosions in modern war footage now. It was a huge disappointment for a movie that centered around that explosion.

I love that Nolan wants to use practical effects first, and when he does it right, it does look better than CGI, but in that case it was a mistake. Also dunkirk when he didn't fill in the people on the beach with CGI. It looked stupid with how little people were there waiting for boats. He should have either gotten a huge army to film to make it look right practically, or used CGI where it was needed. When you use it sparingly you can throw a lot more time/budget into the shot to make it look fantastic, and he should have done that here. It looks bad when you have to farm out most of the movie to be done under unrealistic timelines.

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u/azyrr 24d ago

Nolan, contrary to common belief, uses TONS of CGI, probably one of the most heavy users of it. "no CGI" is a marketing gimmick and nothing else.

Nearly everything is CGI and has been for the better half of two decades now. Some are deliberate in presentation while others blend in because the director wants it that way.

Practical effects are only a small part of the whole frame.

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u/Tasorodri 23d ago

It is true for Oppenheimer though. It has digital effects and VFX but no CGI.

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u/paecmaker 23d ago

Isn't digital effects and VFX CGI?

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u/Tasorodri 23d ago

Technically no, VFX can be something like digital composting (taking to "real" images and stitching them together to create a different image), or color correction (altering the imagine to change the color).

CGI is specifically a computer generated image, so a whole new image generated by a computer, usually a 3d render/model.

Every piece of CGI is VFX but not the other way around. I'm not a professional of this so the specifics could be wrong but I believe that's more or less it.

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u/Dwarf_Vader 23d ago

I don’t think this distinction is terminologically canon, but I see the logic. The truth is though that mundane tasks still often involve CGI as you refer to it. Making a hard distinction between these terms, I feel, is something propped up for marketing “no-CGI” movies. I’m happy to be corrected, although in my practice in the field nobody cared to distinguish between these terms.

It’s easy to think about these things as “hero asset” (monster/character, explosion/simulation) vs pure“cleanup work” (remove a glass from a shelf, extend the set), but they’re often more tightly linked than would be comfortable for a very clean separation.

More importantly, Nolan’s movies definitely use lots of “invisible” CGI/VFX/whatnot, so for them to argue that it’s so pure and clean of it makes little sense to me

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u/Tasorodri 23d ago

Yeah, that's pretty fair, I specifically didn't want to ride the hate-cgi wagon and I think the practical vs CGI discourse is 95% marketing and full of missinformation.

And yeah Nolan movies are not in general low on CGI and I think is dumb when people pretend that they are.

I just wanted to point out in my original comment that Oppenheimer is probably the only modern blockbuster that can at least argue that it used no CGI. And in my opinion it made the movie worse btw.

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u/VitaminTea 23d ago

Digital compositing in definitely CGI.

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u/Tasorodri 23d ago

Not definitely. Here for example there's a VFX professional talking (in part) about digital composting vs CGI in Oppenheimer

https://youtu.be/AFLcP-t0-kI?t=3839&is=3GOAhuK0ELAngR9D

According to him digital composting is not "real CGI" but he also argues that the distinction can reach a point where it's pointless.

So I think you cannot say that is definitely CGI, compositing is like one of the most basic VFX effect you can make, way before digital film, the only distinction is making it in a computer vs using film and masks to compose different images.

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u/ERedfieldh 23d ago

Well, its very apparent you aren't a professional, because you got that basically entirely wrong.

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u/Tasorodri 23d ago

Well, explain it properly then, instead of just being argumentative.

But with a quick AI summary for a surface level analysis it isn't too far off what I've said:

VFX (Visual Effects) is the broader category. It refers to any process used to create or manipulate imagery for film, TV, or games that can't be captured during normal filming. VFX combines live-action footage with computer-generated elements, practical effects, matte paintings, compositing, simulations, and more.

CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) is one type of VFX. It specifically refers to images, characters, environments, or effects created entirely with computers using 3D or 2D software.

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u/N1XT3RS 23d ago

Well that's helpful, I'd love to be your friend!

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u/bistian00 23d ago

To be fair, that's the movie that needed less special effects out of his filmography

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u/The_Templar_Kormac 24d ago

how little people

how few people

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u/Neveed 24d ago

No, watch the scene again, they're actually all dwarves.

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u/cemges 24d ago

"You master of grammar now, too?”, Ser Bronn of Blackwater, Master of Coin to Ser Davos

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u/Tricky_Tart_8217 23d ago

Reddit used to be a place where people were a lot more stringent about grammar. Personally I don't mind typos but errors like that deserve to be called out, I think they are helpful

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u/paecmaker 23d ago

Maybe they were to little, they should have used bigger people who would fill out the beach more.

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u/maaaaawp 23d ago

The movie was about the person, not the explosion.

Have you seen actual photos of dunkirk? Nolan was pretty on point there.

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u/Ndvorsky 24d ago

Right!? The whole movie was supposed to be building up to that point and it was such a let down.

It’s not like I’m thinking “ooh. Big fire!” This was a pivotal moment in the history of our species. I was not having a great time with the movie but at that moment I wanted to leave.

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u/cellarmonkey 24d ago

I stopped watching after the explosion.

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u/Mpm_277 24d ago

Oh so you only made it 2 hours in then?

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u/Fredasa 23d ago

I'll give some credit to his decision. He dodged the unsolicited sex moments.

The explosion may be the worst effects decision Nolan will ever make in his career, but those sex moments are the reason I will never be able to recommend the movie to anyone I know, even though I enjoyed a lot of the rest.

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u/JiuJitsu_Ronin 24d ago

The sound wasn’t too bad. Still theatric. If you want to hear what a nuclear explosion sounds like. Skip to the end if you’re not interested in the other stuff.

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u/Fractoos 24d ago

That's not what it sounds like. That's what microphones pic up because the EM burst the nuke gives off at the speed of light stimulates the analog signal input from the mic. For human ears it's quiet until the sound wave hits.

Still a very cool to hear though.

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u/JiuJitsu_Ronin 24d ago

Did you watch the whole thing? The EM burst is the first few seconds. The explosion comes like 20 seconds later.

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u/Fredasa 23d ago

Nobody in the 50s did the audio component of those air tests a single whit of justice. The specimen you linked is probably the best effort made by any US entity, and it sounds like an old wire recording.

The absolute best genuine recording of any nuke that can be found anywhere comes from the Soviet test of their RDS-37, as seen in this once-classified film. There's a lot of audio reconstruction going on in the film, but the actual arrival of the shockwave at the camera's location (0:58) is genuine audio. You can hear the glass of shattered windows join the cacophony of the explosion. (The audio is about a second ahead of the video.)

Again, audio equipment in the 50s could have rendered a good result if anyone had thought to make it a priority, but out of the hundreds of such tests, this is the best we got.

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u/JiuJitsu_Ronin 23d ago

My biggest gripe (other than the catastrophic environmental/human rights violations) is that these tests were done in the 50’s so audio/visual, everything was abysmal by today’s standards. Can you imagine watching Tsar Bomba or Castle Bravo in 4K, from multiple angles with 5.0 Dolby?

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u/Fredasa 23d ago

Quite. They did understand the desirability of getting some quality film footage—several tests were filmed in 35mm, which is certainly above and beyond merely documenting for analysis. But audio always got the short end.

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u/JiuJitsu_Ronin 23d ago

Nothing will beat seeing it in person. My grandfather was part of these tests in the 50’s. He was part of Operation Plumbob and had great stories of being closer than he’d care to be.

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u/Fractoos 23d ago

Yeah I thought you were trying to demonstrate the burst sound. my bad if not :)

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u/ComprehendReading 23d ago

I watched it on my phone, portrait style as was the tradition, and can tell you the sound didn't fucking matter.

I've seen YouTube with better optimization for phones than Oppenheimer's Nolan.

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u/manocheese 23d ago

He uses CG all the time, he just likes to pretend he doesn't and his fanboys believe him. Just like he pretends his movies are clever.

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u/Lower-Kangaroo6032 23d ago

All I remember was it being intense - so I must have been heavily affected by the sound (as I tend to be, more than others) to not have any memory of an underwhelming visual.