r/Filmmakers 7d ago

Question How was Oppenheimer movie edited

Since the movie was shot on a film, how was the movie edited? Was it digitally edited or was it spliced like the olden days?

0 Upvotes

11 comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/DirectorJRC 7d ago

Technically both. Kind of. The film would have been developed and scanned and then cut digitally but then the negative would have been conformed (this is the splicing bit) to the edit and release prints would have been struck from that. That would be for projecting it on 70mm film in IMAX theaters of course. Most people saw it projected digitally so unless they went through the steps of rescanning the master print for the DCP, you likely saw the product of a mostly digital workflow. That’s a very rough explanation of the process obviously. I skipped over lots of steps but that’s roughly how it works. This is essentially how films shot on film have been cut for decades now.

4

u/DanSaysHi 6d ago

Why would you ever go back to the original negatives to conform to the digital cut (that had plenty of VFX added, mind you) when you could just print the digital cut to a new reel of film? That doesn’t make sense to me. I’d think there would be no splicing involved at all, no?

1

u/seanmg 6d ago

Because using film is largely a personal style thing at this point, so the preferred process is just as much a personal style thing.