The Big Picture - The Making of ‘Oppenheimer’ with Hoyte Van Hoytema, Jennifer Lame, and Ludwig Göransson

Episode Date: January 14, 2024

In this special episode audio from our live screening of ‘Oppenheimer’ at IMAX in Los Angeles, Sean is joined by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, editor Jennifer Lame, and composer Ludwig Göransson to discuss the making of one of the biggest and best movies of the year: Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer.’ Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Hoyte Van Hoytema, Jennifer Lame, and Ludwig Göransson Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Oppenheimer. We are very blessed to be joined by three of the people responsible for the incredible work in the movie Oppenheimer. Hoitavan Hoitaman, the cinematographer, Jennifer Lame, the editor, and Ludwig Göransson, the composer. I'm going to start with a question for all three of you. Christopher Nolan famously tight-lipped about his projects. His weight, I understand, at a long time before sharing with his collaborators what it is he's going to do.

I'll start with you, Hoitema. When you get the script and he tells you, I'm making a film about Oppenheimer, what is that conversation like, and what is your first thought? Your first thought is when he tells you, I'm going to make a film about Oppenheimer,

you kind of know that you are going to make a film about Oppenheimer, you kind of know that you are going to make a film about Oppenheimer in the months ahead. He's very meticulous with his scripts. The moment that he sort of sends his scripts out into the world, he's very finished. He has thought about it for a long time. So his scripts feel watertight. And from the four films I've done with him so far,

when I go back and read his scripts again, the same scripts that I get when I start a project, they very much represent almost in a perfect way the film that comes out of it later. So you learn to pay a lot of attention to the first time you read the script, because it's a very good insight of the film that's going to live in the world later.

Jennifer, what about for you? You worked on Tenet. This is a very different movie from Tenet in some ways. What was your thought? Is he sending you the screenplay and saying, I want you to edit this film for me? No. No, what happened was we went out to lunch

and just to catch up. And he kind of said he had something brewing and he just said, it's very different from what I did just before. It's a bunch of people in room talking. And I was like, I'm in. Because that's kind of what I prefer. And that's like, that was the Chris Nolan movie.

Like I wanted to work on that kind of Chris Nolan movie after having done like kind of the action version of it. And then I don't know when he told me it was about oppenheimer if it was just when i went to his house and i read the script but he definitely didn't tell me at that lunch it wasn't till like i had already said yes to the project and then i read the script at his house so he's definitely not sending me anything through the internet or anything like that in retrospect do you think he put you through tenant to see if you could do this? Wow, I don't know. I've never thought about that. That would be crazy. No, probably not. How he did Shakey is it.

Ludwig, what about you? When do you become aware of a new Nolan project? It's when I sit down and read the script. I don't think I knew anything about it before I went to the office and I sat down and I started reading the script and I was I was I was it's it was a very exciting moment because I didn't know what it was going to be about or and I was just I just remember being completely just captivized by this incredible script you're like you you just it's it's it's an absolute page turner and just immediately you get sucked into this character. I started thinking about the music too and realized pretty quickly that the music needs to heighten his emotion. It needs to put the audience in his shoes, in his eyes, in his mind.

And that was something very exciting. I'd never read something like that before. Is it common for you to be hearing the music the first time you're reading a script? No. I don't hear music, but Chris is really... What he did with the sound design for this film and how also he writes that on in the script like the footsteps the 10 15 seconds of i don't you know exactly how long it is but the seconds

of silence after the twin test it's all written out in the script so it's a very visceral cathartic experience reading this because you kind of you kind of hear that in the background as well can you talk about why it is important for you and nolan to shoot on film and then also just the incredible act of shooting this in imax and also making kodak make you black and white film for the 65 millimeter format which had never been done before this is a pretty unusual kind of execution even for you guys. Yeah, I mean, it is an ongoing conversation, of course, but the short version of that answer is that we both believe that it's the best format out there.

We try to be as visceral as we can in our language, we really like to give the audience some sort of a sense of being present in the reality that the film presents to us. And we cannot think about a better format to do that than IMAX. And that's for a variety of reasons. And not the least resolution, but the depth and color depth and all that kind of things that I think we as human beings in a very intuitive way connect to. I mean, you could almost argue we always try to commit the scenes we do on the best and or the best possible way that we know and that that that that we feel and it's it's it's it's only logic

that we then end up in IMAX and and when it's not possible to shoot on IMAX, we resort back to System 65 and also the way we then post-produce it, the way we carry that on in post-production, the fact that we always make analog copies and are so fanatic about people go and see it in an analog movie theater because if you shoot on a digital, on an analog format like this, every time you would make a digital, on an analog format like this, every time you would, you know, make a digital copy out of it,

you would lose a huge amount of your original resolution. So we became fanatics about making analog prints, you know, because if you make an analog print of an IMAX frame, you know, you effectively maintain like 18K resolution, you know, which is impossible to do in digital technology. So we think it's the best. Simple as that, I think. Jen, I feel like this makes your job a lot harder, though.

Not really. It really doesn't. Digital is a pain in the ass. Can you describe that, then? What is the difference, then, between working in digital and film? Well, it's funny. When I interviewed for Tenet, all I talked to Chris about was the DI

because I was in a DI on a movie and I was just going out of my mind because you spend a whole day, you're windowing stuff, you're changing a car, blah, blah, blah. You come in the next day and it's like you watch it back and they're like, let's start all over. It's just like endless. You know what I mean? And I'm just like, where is the center core

of what we're doing? And you can spend so many weeks in there. So I spent my entire interview essentially asking Chris about what his film coloring process was because it just sounded so interesting and nice to me and creative and artistic and committed. Yeah, please, you can speak to that. No, I just wanted to to a short thing about the color

timing process the difference of di and the analog process is if you go to a di you effectively you don't work real time so you work shot by shot by shot by shot the way you work uh in the analog coloring process every time you do you color the film. You're forced to watch it real time. So you get to color a film real time the way that an audience watches it, which I think is a very crucial, essential difference. And if I can jump in, I thought it was very

interesting that the few times I went to visit set after your call time was over, I met you guys in the screening room and you were watching dailies on film, right? Yeah. Which is, that was the first time I experienced that. I was like, oh, this is, I'm watching film right now. And what's so cool about watching dailies on film is we're all in this little trailer together

and I hear Hoyta and Chris talking about stuff and I'm clocking that or I hear the production designer mention something. It's just like you're all listening and watching it, whereas on a digital movie, you're on pics and everyone's watching on their laptop while they're on their phones or on a call. It's just not as engaged.

So the digital world opens up this kind of whole world for issues. Please. I was just thinking, like, how great is it that we're watching dailies on film with the composer, the editor, you know, the production designer, the focus pooler, every night after shooting. The makeup artist, oh my God. The makeup artist, you know, and they're all sitting there,

oh, shit, you know. You get really, really, you know and they're all sitting there oh shit you know like you get really really you know your nose rubbed into you know the the difficulties and the problems but it's it's super cool actually and it makes you also just feel like a team right there's not that disconnect but and then there's a whole other creative side that i love about it too which is um you know we have so much freedom but there's a schedule and i have a whole there is there is a group of people that are cutting while i'm cutting because the director's cut is shown on film so they have to cut as I cut and so there is just a nice kind of rhythm to the whole thing and I always say that

working with him is kind of the slowest fat like I've never worked with someone where time kind of moves fast and slowly at the same time like I feel like we have all the time in the world but we actually have this insane schedule that he never deviates from. But it kind of weirdly feels relaxed. And I don't know how to explain that, but yeah, at movies I've been on that are digital, which is most movies, you know,

it can go on forever and it's just the tweaking and it's this endless process. And eventually that it's like you reach a peak of creativity and then it starts to become not creative anymore. And I think in the digital world, it's kind of hard to define that because you can go on forever you know interesting it seems like being on the same page is a big part of the success of this i'm glad all three of you are here to talk about this i feel like the movie is a is really immersive but it's also a movie of big moments i feel like the first big moment of the movie is the can you hear the music sequence

which is uh this is the fifth time I've seen this movie in a movie theater. It is still like breathtaking. It is an amazing, in part because of what you did, like a little bit, I'm curious, like for all three of you, that sequence, you know, and working with your wife as well, Serena, who's a violinist and just hearing that music. I'm curious if you could just talk through conceptualizing that and even where that piece of music started. Was that one of the first things you composed? Was it one of the last? And how does that work? Well, when I read the script and I came to that moment and reading that Oppenheimer is putting on a record of

writer, he's listening to the Rite of Spring and I was like thinking like I was kind of bummed out with Chris. I was like, you're really going to put one of the best pieces of music ever written as a reference point in the movie? He's like, that. And I thought, I was like, are you going to use that piece of music? But he was kind of just laughing at me.

He was like, yeah, I put the bar pretty high. But that whole sequence how that came about was just also me being involved in watching the dailies. I was also watching the dailies of the visual effects. So when we had those screen tests at IMAX and I was looking at the visual effects that Andrew Jackson and and and Hoyt and Chris were it felt like you guys were just playing around like you

know it felt like you're doing experimentations with different lenses and fish tanks and like seeing the fires and seeing the swirling molecules around and seeing that on IMAX was extremely inspiring. And when I saw that, I felt it and I knew that's how I wanted the music to sound like as well, kind of pushing the boundary of energy. And then what was also very interesting about this movie and about the music for me was obviously the most important part of the music was to capture the emotional core of Oppenheimer and his emotional journey. But also I found it very inspiring to think about how we can mix that up with math and science. And so that whole piece of music

kind of came from a math and music scale called a hexatonic scale, which is a six-tone, it's a six-note scale. And it kind of started out as an exercise and I started experimenting with tempo and rhythms and it started taking on this life and energy that I hadn't worked with before.

And it was also, I had to use computers to write that type of music, but the tempo was changing all the time. But then how it really started coming alive was when we started recording it with a live orchestra and with the help from my wife Serena who is a violinist we figured out a way to be able to record that music in one flawless performance. I was always set that we were gonna have to record it

in sections like four bars at a time and then we cut it together with a computer. But we found out, we figured out a way how to give the musicians a click in their ears while they were playing. They were playing at one tempo with their left hand, and then before the tempo happened on the page, they were fed a click in their ears in a different tempo. So they adjusted on the live in their heads. You make it seem like we can understand what that's like. I can assure you we can't. It's quantum physics in a musical way.

Hoyt, I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit too. All of those effects that Ludwig was looking at are in camera and practically done with your with andrew and i think that's a little that's uncommon and hard for us to maybe understand so how are you creating and filming those moments where we see electrons colliding and atoms swirling like that yeah i mean i i i i really owe a lot of credits here to, you know, or a lot of credits for achieving that are assigned to me, which is kind of wrong.

I think, you know, Andrew Jackson and Scott Fisher, they have constantly, simultaneously, when we were shooting, they have been working on these science projects as we as we call them so so they were very often just on a set next to our set working with tanks and with with fire and ping-pong balls and stuff it was it was it was literally sort of an arts and crafts project constantly you know with glue and tape and and electro motors and everything so initially you know we started all together before we shot we we did like two days of heavy experimentation you know we asked Panavision to build us

some specific lenses for the IMAX camera that didn't exist that we really felt we needed to achieve very specific things. So it was an ongoing process where we all the time sort of discovering from our dailies that we've been watching together, we've seen the results and we think, oh, this is really working out and this is great, so let's explore that a little further. So it was sort of a unit that had a lot of freedom to to play around when we were really trying to make our normal days with the actors you know um i think i think the base of it was that you know this is a film about quantum physics and and quantum physics is such an abstract science and especially for a normal you know semi-intelligent person as

myself you know it's just it's just these are very abstract concepts but it was also very important that you know we at least attempted or tried to you know connect to the audience in an intuitive way. So that on an intuitive level you kind of get an understanding of these very new concepts of quantum mechanics. And I think, coming back a little bit to music, I think that was also something in music, you know, you're kind of making, you know, you're kind of making the score to quantum mechanics, which is a very complex concept. But in the end, you know, you do your own version of it and you kind of reach also within your own field, the complexity that is interesting and that gives you a feeling that you at least have some sort of understanding of that concept. Even more so than a typical narrative film, this movie has a lot of this montage and this

kind of conceptualization of what's happening maybe in Oppenheimer's mind or the science that you're talking about, Hoyte, Jen. So when you have a sequence like this, is it in the script that it needs to be organized, that the moments are almost flashing in this way? Is that something that in talking with Christopher that you are landing on? Help us understand how a sequence like that comes together. Yeah, I do remember after I read the script, because a lot of it is in the script, just that he's having these images and stuff.

I asked Chris, how are you going to achieve that? What are you doing with Andrew and Scott and all that stuff? And he said, yeah, you know, we have all these ideas and we've been testing, we're going to shoot it, but I think a big way we're going to do it is editing. And I was like, oh, fuck. Because like, I literally read, because Tenet with the backwards stuff,

I was like, oh, this is going to be so hard for me. But with this script, I was like, oh, there's the black and white and IMAX, and like, that's all Hoyta. And like, I really was like, I'm just going to cut the people in rooms talking. And then so when he said this script i was like oh there's the black and white and imax and like that's all hoita and like i really was like i'm just gonna cut the people in rooms talking and then so when he said that i was like damn it um so yeah i think a lot of it you know we had all these amazing images but it was kind of like how do you cut them together that they don't feel like what they are or that people feel like they feel like what oppenheimer's thinking about you know

which they can quickly become a bit silly if you hold on one for too long or you don't want to give you don't want people to know what it is or be thinking about what is that um so yeah we spent a lot of time watching you know we would spend half days just watching hours of this stuff and chopping it together and experimenting it was just a lot of experimenting of what and it was just kind of whatever gave us that feeling because we had no idea. Did you have the music when you were doing that? No, not that early.

No, that was probably the first week or two because I wasn't on during the shoot. And it was kind of nice actually because I didn't have any baggage with the stuff they shot because you guys had watched it a lot. And I know Chris had opinions about certain stuff maybe he didn't think worked but I didn't know anything so I would watch and make selects

and then we'd go through and there was a lot of it like hours and hours right when you say I don't remember exactly kind of for each section there was just all these different all this different cool experimental stuff but no the music the music comes actually pretty quickly considering but this was like the

first week or two we really just like started going through all that stuff i have a related question for you about that jen this feel i think this is the longest movie that you've ever edited and it feels like the movie with maybe the most tonnage like the most footage the most imagery the most editing is that fair to say i guess i really don't know i mean i guess it's the longest movie i've edited is it is it i don't know if it's the most editing a longer period of time that it takes to finish an edit like this is it harder no this was quite quick i have to say i mean i came on in i think i came on in may i don't remember and we were kind of picture luck but we picture like by the holidays and like when were you mixing when we were on the stage um we started mixing in I think November

yeah I mean we were picture like kind of by the end of the year and we were doing tweaks a little bit on the stage and stuff like that but that's not long so um no it it felt like it went quite quickly Nolan has said that um you know the film is broken into three acts and that each act has a kind of genre attached to it. That the first act is sort of a coming of age movie. The second act is this heist western. And the third act is a courtroom thriller.

Is that something that he was sharing with you guys? Hoyta, did that influence the way that you were working on scenes or moments of the film? I mean, he would talk about it, but I don't think the way that we felt this film should feel or should look, we were not on purpose trying to make this feel like different genres you know I think the genres that Chris mentions is very much reflected in you know the structure of the story where

else you know the visual language just wanted to feel pure and feel real you know it I always had to feeling you know or we always had to feeling that you don't want to sort of watch this with some sort of another, you know, sort of intellectual burden apart from, you know, you as an audience just engaging with what you see on the screen. And so, no, we didn't try to make it feel or look like a genre piece in any way. Is that something you thought about a little bit? Did he say, this is the heist part of the film? Because in fact, it does have that energy, even in the music when you're watching

the movie, that you've shifted tones to a new kind of movie. Yeah, we do a lot of the music gets written, and a lot of the big themes and ideas in the sound world and the music world gets executed and written before Chris starts shooting the film.

So, and that's it film. I love that process because I'm in with him in pre-production and we meet up once a week and I write music constantly and then we listen to it together and we talk about the details of melody or sounds or production and we kind of that's how we create this the this this DNA the sound world of Oppenheimer so and he and he listens to that when he shoots the film and then when when Jen and and Chris does the first cut the you have like two, maybe two or three hours. Yeah, he keeps, just when I was saying with the experimentation, the music exists, he just doesn't let me hear it

until a strategic time, because I don't think he wants, because it's way easier to cut to music. Like if I had Ludwig, music to push play and look at, it's way easier, but I think he doesn't, so he tells, so it's like two weeks in when we have to screen it, then he's like, here's all this music and it's amazing. But I, yeah, I just don't have access to it. Interesting.

So it's easy to read the movie as a metaphor for filmmaking and they've got all of these brilliant people who all come together for a short period of time to make this thing. But it also makes it seem like the way that you're talking about it, like this is a perfectly executed machine and i feel like filmmaking there's experimentation things don't work on set or

even in the aftermath of what you're working on like when you were shooting the movie was there anything that you would imagine you'd be able to achieve that you had to improvise or change or reimagine it's very funny that we are, the film, sort of the invention of like one of the most deciding piece of machinery in the history of mankind that that would be a

metaphor for filmmaking. That's kind of funny. I didn't mean it that way. Sorry, I lost... It's a what perfect machine it's not right filmmaking isn't a perfect machine and and and and yeah this was definitely a film about uh you know a man trying to wrangle a lot of you know geniuses in the same in the same space trying to work on one common product. And in that way, of course, filmmaking is very similar because you have a lot of people and then you have to kind of all think along the same line

and you all have to be in support of each other and you're all working on one sort of final goal. And I feel that very much. I feel very much with you guys as well that, you know, when we meet afterwards and we stand in the lobby of a screening and we all have this big movie out in the theater and we're kind of, yeah,

without words sort of feeling that we've done something nice. It's very special. That's very humble about the biggest movie of the year. Oh, yeah, but when I was working on it, I never imagined, I never foresaw this coming at all, like not in a million years. Did you? I mean, yeah, it doesn't feel like we were working on a perfect machine that was going to put out a movie that made 900 and whatever million dollars

by any means. What I do like with Chris's films actually is that you know um because people always ask you know how similar is the script to the final film and so on but he always manages to pleasantly surprise somehow you know you you you you always make some sort of an you have your own imagination and you read a script and I have my own visual imagination, but always when I see the stuff coming off the press finished, I'm always pleasantly surprised with his vision and the stuff that he actually has been seeing all along

that we hadn't necessarily seen earlier in the process. He's very open in the process and we're all part of it and we're all giving our bests but there's also always a little bit left inside of him that does surprise and that you know, yeah, does always give you a feeling that he has a little extra stretch of genius and vision that I for sure not possess. Yeah, true. I agree. I'm hoping you can talk about

the Trinity test sequence a bit, which feels kind of instantly legendary, I think, if you were a fan of this film and the way that it was conceived and shot and also maybe help people understand what it's like to shoot with an IMAX camera, which is different from a regular camera. Well, that comes a little bit back to the other question

because people, they ask a lot about the Trinity test and about the size and the scale and how did you sort of envision it and when you read it on paper, how did you know how to do it? And in a way, I think that's one of these sequences that has become extremely, the scope of that image is so much dependent on editing

and it's very much Jen and Chris's work. And the music, which is insane. And the absence of music. Oh, but leading up to that journey, that music. And then also Ruth, the production designer, she and Scott, I think, and Chris has talked about this, they ended up making a lot of extra stuff that you guys ended up shooting that wasn't in the script,

which allowed for the sequence, I think, to kind of have. But yeah, that sequence was all hands on deck. All hands on deck, but also that scene is a typical example of exactly of the sum of a lot of very small elements, you know. Nobody can sort of, you know, even understand or envision, you know, something that has such a magnitude and such a scale. So at some point you're sort of, you know, something that has such a magnitude and such a scale. So at some point you're sort of, you know, you're standing at the foot of a mountain

and you have to reach the top somehow, but the only thing you can really do is sort of take the first step. And it's for all of us like that. We kind of just start to labor through it with, you know, trusting that sooner or later we kind of can grapple onto something and can hold onto something that will take us further. And then it's just months and months of laboring into the small details of it.

And in the end, that then amounts into something, yeah, that has kind of the right feel, I think, maybe. But it's never, it's sort of not from my side. It never comes from, you know, I read it on a page and there's this vision of how this should be done and the size it should be. It's more like, how the fuck are we going to do this? Well, let's just start with something small, you know? And so we start testing. We start doing small tests.

We start committing things on film. And already we know half of it is not going to work. But then there's three things that really are interesting. And then we start exploring that a little further. And so step by step, you know, we craft ourselves sort of through this. And, you know, Chris is always somebody that, you know, is very firm in sort of his trust

that things will end up and will be, you know, mostly by him guided into the right direction. It's remarkable how much suspense that sequence has given that it's a historical event that everyone knows the result of. I've seen it so many times and I just watched it again at the live concert that Ludwig and Serena and all the musicians that

did the score put on it. It was fantastic. I was on the edge of my seat but I was mostly on the edge of my seat because the violinist played that for 10 minutes long and I was like how are they going to fit? Like, I couldn't believe it. That was amazing. Yeah, and that, yeah,

the fact that it does that is crazy. I don't even understand it. But we had that music quite early. Like when we went to cut that scene, that is a scene that he was like, I know the music, this is the music, let's lay it in. And we had that very early on,

and that was just huge, that piece of music. I mean, it's fucking incredible. Yeah, no, I think, you know, the way that Chris uses music in his storytelling is, I think, pretty unique. And how he, you know, when we make these, when we make a lot of the music based on the script and he has these ideas like let's make a piece that's

ten minutes long that's just building and building and building and has this extreme tension to it and so me and my team and the orchestrator, we made this I don't know, it was like a ten minute piece of music with just a constant build of violence and I had and at that time I didn't really know if it was gonna be usable and I didn't think it was gonna be playable either because it's literally ten minutes of just 16th notes on a very, very fast tempo. But then when I saw how he used that piece of music in that scene and how you guys, I

think you cut that piece of music into that scene and it's almost, I mean it's magic. I think it's just, how you can have a constant build for that and really be on the edge of your seat for that whole scene and then the culmination of it going into the biggest part and just going into silence. Yeah, and the other thing actually, because I wasn't on the set with these guys and I've actually never gotten to say the hoita,

but like some of the shots in that sequence, for me as an editor were just like a gift like the all the stuff that you did inside the bunker you know when the thing hits and it's shaking and you know when when um i just feel like everyone every time they see it is like i feel like i was there with them and there's something whatever hoita does and how he gets in there with them but it's like a perfect distance of in there, but not too in the face, you know what I mean? And you just feel like you're another person in the room

watching it all and being a part of it. And, you know, just when Groves, there's so many great shots of Oppenheimer looking so nervous and the camera just moves and slightly goes out of focus. It just like, it just feels so visceral and it's beautiful, and it was so fun to edit. I was going to say, make it sound like you didn't work on it.

You were just like, seeing rocks. Well, I've never got to say that to White. I mean, even just when Oppie's like, when they come back at the end and Groves goes to make the call, that shot gives me goosebumps. And it just quickly catches him, and he's like, and then it pans away. It's just so catches him and he's like, call Potsdam. And then it pans away. It's just so beautiful.

And it's like you're a person just looking over at him. I don't know how you did that so perfectly. It's just, as an editor, you don't normally get footage that's just, you don't have to worry about it being fucked up. It's just perfect. And you can just make something cool. Do you all have a favorite sequence that you did work on?

Is there a moment maybe in production where you felt like, we are getting this. This is exactly how I want this to be. No, I don't. I don't have a favorite. No, I don't have a favorite sequence, but I do see a lot of, like in the materials, I see a lot of moments that were definitely magic in perspective. Like, for instance, the first black and white close-up of Robert Downey.

You know, it has taken us months to develop that black and white film, to manufacture the black and white film and to re-engineer the cameras. We had to build different gates for the cameras. Panavision had re-engineered lenses. The lab had to totally change their whole workflow. The only and the biggest analogue lab in the world, I think. And we shoot a very simple close-up of Robert Downey Jr., a hugely interesting face and an incredible actor,

but getting those rushes back and seeing that then, black and white projected on the screen, that's an incredible experience. What about for you, Ludwig? Was there one sequence that you liked the best? that then black and white projected on the screen is is that's an incredible experience you know what about for you ludwig was there one sequence that you liked the best to me it's been interesting kind of the aftermath of of because when i'm while i'm working and when i'm in the movie and i'm and you know time just flies and and i don't really sit and analyze what i'm doing um i'm just in the moment. But things come to me afterwards

when I'm seeing the movies and screenings and I'm thinking about why we made certain choices and especially something that I've been thinking about lately that I thought was interesting was in the very last scene of the movie when he goes back to Einstein again, and they have that conversation, and it goes to Castle Black eventually, but how that music is also kind of, it's a culmination of the montage in the beginning, right, and the can

you hear the music moment, it's, we're using the same music elements from that in the same theme from that scene from that montage but we do we but now isn't it isn't a very very more obvious and darker feeling and I'm also put it took in some elements from the culmination and the end of the Trinity test in that scene too in the end scene and And also what I'm thinking about and what I'm watching it now and also can see that it's also cut the same way as the montage, right?

You're using, like he's at, and it's just so sad and dark now. Like it's not having his inspiring visions. Now his visions is of bombs and rocket ships and just I'm kind of like when i was realizing that i was like oh damn like that was i don't know i was i i wasn't thinking about that when i was making the moment but how it all turned out afterwards it's um it was a pretty cool um vision you loved feeling that impending doom of our culture yeah yeah we all thought we

were working on a romantic comedy before that moment what about for you jen is there a favorite segment that you liked working on or anything i mean when i but were you thinking that when you cut that last scene to kind of channel the montage too in that from i don't know if it's anything we ever anything we explicitly talked about but i think it was kind of baked in there a little bit essentially like in the script kind of yeah totally um but hearing you talk about it it's even more dark and disturbing but yeah um i think when i was just putting the assembly together i could say um because yeah like what it just says i can't really i mean the move i love every scene

and have different relationships to each scene but when i was just putting my assembly together my favorite section was kind of the um and i had no idea it was going to be my favorite section but the casey um when casey shows up just i think i love that part in the script because the script kind of takes a left turn and i think it's so cool that chris did that and um you know because everyone's waiting for the bomb you know he's like no we're gonna go over here for a second and do this whole thing and um and that scene i found when i was cutting is so funny because you're watching oppenheimer kind of be an idiot you know and um it's so satisfying and killian's performance is incredible and casey's so good and i don't know who the other actor is but he's pretty he's incredible too and um so yeah i just had a lot

of fun cutting that scene i was laughing out loud it's funny that you say that though because it reminds me a little bit of maybe something you did in hereditary because that it's for like 30 seconds. It's a horror movie. I mean, you're, you're not showing this man's face and it feels so ominous and like something terrible is going to happen.

And then I, there in the first screening I went to, people actually laughed at me. It's also really funny when Matt Damon's like, I mean, I think that seems so funny every time you got to gross and he's like, you did what? This is a man who's killed communists and then casey's just sitting there like you know he's no idea um so i just had a lot of fun maybe too much fun when i because i think that sequence was very long chris was like what are you doing um and uh and i also loved the

all the stuff around the table with the flowers in the black and white. When I was cutting my assembly, I had so much fun with that stuff. It's so beautifully shot. And again, it's one of those scenes where those scenes are really hard to shoot around a round table. I mean, I don't know, I'm not a DP,

but I just assume they're not easy. And table scenes are just... So when someone shoots them really, really well, it makes my job just so fun because I don't have to worry like, oh, why didn't they shoot that shot? Why don't I have that guy's reaction? Like, I have everything. So my job just so fun. Because I don't have to worry like, oh, why didn't they shoot that shot? Why don't I have that guy's reaction? Like, I have everything.

So it was just so fun to cut. So I spent a lot of time, probably too much time on those scenes too, just because I enjoyed cutting them. And I think the Truman scene, I loved cutting. This is all just when I was at my assembly. I actually didn't spend too much time on the Trinity sequence.

I breezed right by it because I was like, we're going to do this and it's going to be great. And I'm sure Ludwig did some crazy music for it, but I had to get to the end of the movie, before Chris came back, I only had three or four weeks, and I knew I had to watch all the footage, but he was like,

that actually makes sense that you did that, because this will be great, and you don't have to worry about it. As we wrap up, I'm curious, now it's been six months since the movie came out and become such a big success and it's being celebrated so much now.

Just each one of you, why do you think it has resonated so much? What do you think it is that people are connecting to? Well, I think it's you know, the when the movie came out, I was in a small town in Sweden.

I was on summer break, and I was with my family, my kids in Sweden, and I booked a ticket at the local theater's tiny, tiny little village, and it was packed. And the guy that presents the movie, when he presents his movie at this local theater he always tells the audience about the premise and if he liked it or not and before the movie starts yeah yeah and also in like a very heavy like south and swedish accent

um and then he and then he's he knew i was there so he was also like telling me the composer was there but I was just so surprised that it was in that city in the village like people were just so excited to see this movie and I think this is the right time the right moment and people who are hungry to see something like this. And, you know, the format speaks for itself. You know, all the IMX screenings were just sold out and people couldn't even get a seat. And I think the talk of the town,

like people saying that, like I couldn't even get seated for the next month. Just the word of mouth and the spectacle of seeing this on the screen and and how it sounds like the the the detail that chris spent spends all not just in the visuals but also the details he spends in the mixing and you know it's it's really like an event it's really it's it is like a concert. And I think people are just, maybe after the pandemic,

people are just hungry for that again. Jen, what about you? What do you think it is that's resonating? I don't know. I mean, I just know for myself, when I read the script, like these guys said, I just ripped through it

and I was so into it. And I remember for me, it was like, you know, getting to Trinity, but then also all this stuff after I found thrilling and I love the everything between the Strauss Oppenheimer thing for me I just I found so fascinating and you know that he was mad because he sends me to Einstein and then he does this thing and then he does it but maybe he double-crossed him and like I just just remember um at the end just being like oh my god no he wanted him to do it and like just being so with it and i think i also loved all the history stuff and so i think this movie works

on so many levels you know it's like so fascinating historically so fascinating the science of it um visually stunning and then on top of it it has just like a grud like a grudge match which is like who doesn't like that you know and and um and has yeah it's just the characters are so fascinating to me and i think people love that and i um i think audiences around the world are smart and this is a fun movie it just it made me so excited that people liked it as much as i liked it but i i didn't have any i was shocked and really pleasantly surprised. Were you shocked? Huyto, what do you think it is that's making it so big?

Well, you know, the ground material is huge. You know, the story is big and is very important and meaningful, which automatically puts you in a position in which you know you're constantly very afraid that you will not do justice to the story with your own work now and I can only speak for myself I have given this film my everything you know I I don't think I have better in me than this. So the fact that it resonated was, you know, I was very happy about it because if it wouldn't have resonated, I would have, you know, I would have gone back home and cried up in a bowl, I think, you know.

So, but, and I speak now for for myself but if you allow me to speak for everybody i i think that you know when i talked to the people in the crew they all had very much this similar sort of vibe or emotion around it you know and you could also see it during the day everybody was really giving their everything and and you know I'm talking about makeup costume you know when I looked at Jen you know at Luda's work you know at some point you know karma should pay you there somewhere somewhere some somewhat you know so in that way, I'm surprised because it's a room about faces, or it's a film about faces, but I'm not surprised because there's just so much humanity and energy that went into it.

So at some point, that stuff has to start resonating. What else will? We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing they have seen. You guys weren't seated for this so you can't say Oppenheimer. Ludwig, have you seen anything you like recently? You mean films?

I saw this movie All of Us Strangers that I thought was amazing. It made me feel a lot of feelings, and it was very impactful. It's a wonderful movie. Jen, what about you? The last movie I watched recently that really resonated with me was Anatomy of a Fall.

Loved that. But I love movies like that about what's true, what is even true. So I thought that was stunning. People talking in rooms as well what about you my god i was really hoping you guys would take a little longer on those answers great great films this this this this this year around I think you know I really enjoyed Linus's work on Saltburn very nice been binge watching Fargo I hadn't seen it before really enjoy it

what season are you up to for right now okay okay still got one one more to go okay let's give it up for Hoytoman Hoytama, Jennifer Lame, Ludwig Thorensen.