IN his latest film, Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan reconstructed the Trinity Test without the use of visual effects.

“Obviously, we couldn’t make an explosion the size of the actual explosion, so we used trickery,” reveals cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, and no, they didn’t launch a real atomic bomb.

Much experimentation went into creating the ten-minute sequence depicting the first successful atomic bomb blast.

“We’re suckers for this absolute depth of resolution that IMAX gives us,” Hoytema says.

“We created science experiments,” he explains further. “We created power-packed aquariums. We sprayed it with silver particles. We had metallic balloons that were lit from the inside. We had ping-pong balls crashing and smashing into each other, as well as objects whirling.”

The sequence took many weeks to film in total. “The buildup was fragmented,“ Hoytema exclaimed.

“There’s a lot of cross-cutting and different people doing different things before it all comes together.”

“It’s this enormous group of people from all over the country who put their heads together and, under Oppenheimer’s guidance, lead this project into that final bang,“ he continues.

Hoytema is widely known for his vast vista shots, and he proudly says that his objective this time was to capture intimacy because the story was delivered from Oppenheimer’s point of view.

“It was very much about what was going on inside his head, what he’s thinking, and what we can read in his eyes,” he continues, “so we really needed to be there with him and progress that throughout the story.”