Universal Pictures has released two new BTS pictures of the anticipated Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan and shot by Hoyte Van Hoytema. One of the pictures shows the IMAX camera shooting B&W. That confirms what Nolan said before: “For the first time ever, we were able to shoot IMAX film in black-and-white”.

Oppenheimer is almost ready

According to resources, Nolan’s Oppenheimer is almost ready. Post-production editing on was wrapped last week, ready to get refined in the VFX pipeline, which, in the case of Nolan, is a portion of the movie (we’ll talk about that later on). Furthermore, there’s a chance that the trailer will be released before the screening of Avatar 2. Personally, I doubt that, since the Mission Impossible new trailer is supposed to be released in that time frame. However, there’s a possibility that Oppenheimer’s trailer will be released only on IMAX (before Avatar 2). 

Creating a real atomic explosion

That sounds unrealistic. Although Nolan is familiar with realism and green screen minimization (take for example the 747 scene in Tenet), the next fact is going to ‘blow’ your mind. Nolan told Total Film, that they have recreated the Trinity test (the first nuclear weapon detonation, in New Mexico) without the use of computer graphics. “I think recreating the Trinity test without the use of computer graphics, was a huge challenge to take on” explains Nolan in Total Film’s upcoming 2023 Preview issue. “Andrew Jackson – my visual effects supervisor, I got him on board early on – was looking at how we could do a lot of the visual elements of the lm practically, from representing quantum dynamics and quantum physics to the Trinity test itself to recreating, with my team, Los Alamos up on a mesa in New Mexico in extraordinary weather, a lot of which was needed for the lm, in terms of the very harsh conditions out there – there were huge practical challenges”. Yeah – that sounds crazy. Even Michael Bay scratches his head right now.

B&W IMAX

For Oppenheimer, Nolan and his cinematic partner, Hoyte Van Hoytema, used a new specialized IMAX film stock. “We challenged the people at Kodak Photochem to make this work for us,” Nolan said. “And they stepped up. For the first time ever, we were able to shoot an IMAX film in black and white. And the results were thrilling and extraordinary. As soon as Hoyte and I saw the first tests come in, we just knew that this was a format that we were immediately in love with” Moreover, Nolan said that it was pretty much groundbreaking to shoot in large-format black-and-white film stock. In a new BTS picture released by Universal Pictures, we can clearly see Hoyte is shooting on a regular IMAX film camera, with black and white imagery screened on the monitor. Explore it in the images below: 

That can confirm that this specific scene was shot on black and white IMAX film stock. Oppenheimer opens in cinemas on July 21, 2023. We can’t wait! BTW, do you think the Trinity test will be in the trailer? 🙂

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