Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer Under Fire: Overlooked VFX Crew Sparks Outrage
Christopher Nolan has long been a proponent of practical effects. This is the filmmaker, after all, who actually flipped a truck over in downtown Chicago for "The Dark Knight," and created a real-life rotating hallway for the dizzying fight scene in "Inception." The director continued to proudly eschew computer-generated imagery for "Oppenheimer," even when it came time to recreate the atomic bomb explosion.
Even though "Oppenheimer" doesn't contain any CGI, it still relies on visual effects to achieve its final look. Now, Nolan is under fire for apparently failing to credit over 80% of the VFX artists who worked on "Oppenheimer."
"Oppenheimer" marks Nolan's eighth film made in collaboration with the London-based VFX studio DNEG, beginning with "Batman Begins" in 2005. The end credits of the film list 27 VFX artists, including VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson. The DNEG website, meanwhile, credits 164 VFX artists.
This has naturally stirred up some controversy and resentment among the VFX community, members of whom have taken to Twitter to voice their disappointment. "Everyone knows credit lists are limited, but with a short credit list in general, and as the ONLY VFX vendor, this is highly disappointing," tweeted VFX artist Pia Josephson.
VFX artists are speaking out against the production
DNEG reached out to Cartoon Brew to confirm just how much VFX work went into creating "Oppenheimer." "The process involved shooting an extensive library of elements. They shot these explosions at high speed, slowed them down then brought layers of footage together in post-production," the statement reads. "Almost all the VFX shots in the movie were recreated using only real elements combined together. Chris Nolan was determined to keep the VFX grounded in reality and maintain the raw feeling of the actual footage."
Given how labor-intensive the VFX process is, failing to credit the artists is all the more egregious. "Hundreds of people, mostly from India, whose efforts have not been recognised," tweeted VFX artist David Rouxel, whose credits include "Avatar" and "Guardians of the Galaxy." "Shame on the production team. I hope this will be fixed for the physical and online release."
It's notable that VFX departments aren't unionized, resulting in an industry in which many artists work paycheck-to-paycheck or experience other forms of workplace precarity. "Most union workers, whenever I tell them I'm not union, they are shocked because everyone assumes that we're in a union," VFX artist Maggie Kraisamutr told Vulture. The "Oppenheimer" controversy, then, is even more salient on the heels of the historic coinciding WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. With those strikes in full swing, efforts to unionize among VFX workers are stronger than ever, and they could provide the sort of workplace protection that guarantees proper accreditation.