10 More Epic Movie Moments You Won't Believe Didn't Use CGI

If there's a way to achieve an effect almost completely through practical means, Christopher Nolan will do everything in his power to make it happen.

And while the average filmmaker may have found it tough to resist the urge to unleash the most staggering digitally created explosion imaginable when it came time to bring the Trinity Test to screen in this year's Oppenheimer, Nolan had other ideas.

While visual effects were actually used to layer the various shots of smoke and explosions to create the final mind-blowing visual of the detonation of the first atomic bomb, the actual shots themselves were all created without CGI (via THR).

For one of the largest explosions the team captured on camera to use in that incredible big-screen moment, the film's VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson would note how "they used four 44 gallon drums of fuel and then some high explosives under that, which sets the fuel alight and launches it into the air."

The team also used other forms of "trickery" to create a practical version of this epic blast, with the movie's cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema explaining to Variety that experiments involving aquariums "with power in it" having silver particles dropped in them, smashing ping pong balls together, and more were all used to figure out how to make this massive bomb drop a big-screen reality.

He'd also note how, in this experimental phase, "we had long shutter speeds, short shutter speeds, wide negative color, negative overexposure, underexposure. It was like a giant playground for all of us."