Yahoo News Creative Fusion on an Extra-Large Scale: Jennifer Lame on Editing ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Postcard From Earth’
Editor Jennifer Lame’s work has appeared on many of the world’s largest screens this year. Over the summer, her second movie with director Christopher Nolan, his historical epic Oppenheimer, for Universal, had moviegoers scrambling for tickets to Imax’s large-format theaters. And in October, the Lame-edited Postcard From Earth, from director Darren Aronofsky, became the first movie to debut at the newly opened Sphere in Las Vegas.
Speaking to the success of Nolan’s drama about the father of the atomic bomb, Lame says, “I really enjoy cutting people in rooms talking. When I first read the script, I was ripping through the pages. For me as an editor, I want to replicate that experience when I get the footage.” On the alternating use of color and black-and-white, she says that Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema created a palette where, generally, color images represent the perspective of Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) while black-and-white was a look through the eyes of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s Lewis Strauss (portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.).
More from The Hollywood Reporter
From Lillian St. Cyr to Lily Gladstone: A Brief History of Hollywood Honoring Native Talent
Netflix Short 'The After' Depicts a Shocking Tragedy and a Father's Grief
A highlight of the film is the Trinity Test, during which the first nuclear weapon was detonated in the New Mexico desert in 1945. “Up until that point, you had been sitting in these rooms and listening to these scientists talk about these theories, but I think what’s interesting about the Trinity Test is you see all these scientists come together,” she says.
“I think for Chris, a lot of the Trinity scene is seeing their reactions — how those guys experienced it — rather than just showing a big, wide shot of what we all think of as the Trinity explosion,” Lame continues, noting that she built a sense of anxiety through the faces of the characters, including Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves (director of the Manhattan Project, played by Matt Damon) and with the shaking hand over the button that would start the test. She also showed the initial exhilaration that the scientists experience in seeing the result of their work but quickly changed the tone — “making that cut right after, when the Army comes and they take the bombs away, and Matt Damon abruptly leaves, and Oppenheimer’s just standing there.” She adds, “It’s one of the best breakup scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie, especially when he’s waiting for the phone call. Oppenheimer’s like, ‘Do you want me to come to Washington?’ and Groves is like, ‘For what?’ To me, it’s so devastating.”
Now playing at Sphere — which boasts a record 160,000-square-foot curved LED display that extends beyond audience members’ peripheral vision and high above and behind their heads — Postcard From Earth is a one-hour movie that is an enveloping tour around the world, bookended with a space-set story in a movie’s familiar aspect ratio. It begins as two humans arrive on Saturn, and, as they are reminded of life on Earth, the images open up to use the full display.
The movie was cut at Burbank’s Sphere Studios, which houses a quarter-size version of Sphere and editing facilities with the ability to view cuts with virtual reality goggles for a sense of how it would look in the Las Vegas venue.
For Lame, working with Nolan on Imax films helped to prepare her for this project, as she learned not to be intimidated by new tech and processes. “Working on Sphere, a lot of people were focused on the technical issues, and it was up to me and Darren to just make the best movie we could make.”
This story first appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
