10 Movie Secrets They Didn't Want You To Know
6. The Full Recipe For The Practical Trinity Test - Oppenheimer
Back when Christopher Nolan first revealed that he was going to show the Trinity nuclear weapon test in Oppenheimer without the use of CGI, many fans joked that Nolan was just straight-up going to film an atomic bomb detonation for real.
And while this obviously wasn't ever going to be the case, Nolan and his crew have nevertheless been pretty cagey about revealing the precise practical particulars of how the Trinity sequence was pulled off.
In the near-year since Oppenheimer's release, we've learned only slivers of how the end result was pieced together. For the practical fireball, a smaller explosion was detonated with forced perspective being used to make it appear appropriately scaled.
According to the film's special effects supervisor Scott Fisher, he concocted a secret recipe to create a fireball which not only generated a fittingly sized cloud but also let off a distinctive bright flash and fiery red hue.
Fisher revealed that the hallowed recipe included gasoline, propane, black powder, aluminum powder, and magnesium flares, though didn't list the whole shebang.
Then again, given the possibility that some of Nolan's more "industrious" fans could try recreating a version of the explosion themselves, a little restraint might actually have been for the best in this case.