Production designer Ruth De Jong and costume designer Ellen Mirojnick have worked on projects directed by incredible filmmakers. De Jong earned an Emmy nomination for David Lynch’s film. Twin peaks: the return and worked as a production designer on Jordan Peele Us and No. Mirojnick, for his part, won an Emmy for Behind the candlestick – one of his six collaborations with Steven Soderbergh – and designed costumes for Steven Spielberg (Always), Richard Attenborough (chaplin), Kathryn Bigelow (Strange Days), Oliver Stone (financial world) and Paul Verhoeven (Basic instinct, chorus girls and Starship Troopers).
So the pair know a thing or two about what makes a great director. But it is oppenheimer Writer-director Christopher Nolan, whom De Jong and Mirojnick call the definitive filmmaker.
“There is no other director like him and I have worked with some of the best,” says Mirojnick. “His method of collaboration is very generous and he shares a lot compared to anyone else.”
De Jong and Mirojnick remember first receiving Nolan’s 180-page script, based on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s biography. American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. It came with a trove of images the director had gathered of Oppenheimer, his associates, and Los Alamos, the New Mexico city where much of the film would take place. For De Jong, the work began when he broke down the script scene by scene, location by location with a researcher, covering his department building with historical images.
“You should have seen this house, wallpapered from floor to ceiling,” says Mirojnick, who adds that it was the first step to enter oppenheimer. But according to both designers, a historical recreation was absolutely what Nolan wanted to avoid in the film’s visual vocabulary. Capturing the essence of Oppenheimer’s real world was the goal of the film, which would be told largely through the scientist’s own subjective perspective.
From left to right: production designer Ruth De Jong, director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema and Christopher Nolan.
Courtesy of Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
oppenheimerThe centerpiece is Los Alamos, the isolated site of the Manhattan Project. The production did not have the same resources (or time) that the United States government had to build the site, which housed the project’s scientists and their families. But filming exteriors in the real Los Alamos was impossible: De Jong points out the presence of a Starbucks and stucco shopping centers. The production designer ended up constructing dozens of buildings in a smaller-scale version of the city, which also housed the various departmental offices as if it were a studio in the middle of the desert.
Isolation played in favor of production. “Chris and I wanted the ranch to be 100 percent,” De Jong says. “There were no crew vehicles. The vans dropped people off in the morning and picked them up in the afternoon. No tents, no video-village, nothing. The actors would leave their hotel and lose cell phone service immediately. Every day, you were just there. There were no distractions.”
Design by Ellen Mirojnick for one of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s costumes in the film
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
However, authenticity from that era was not a requirement throughout the film. “We use the word ‘regeneration,’” De Jong says of the way the film transports the viewer into Oppenheimer’s life. “The investigation was essentially a launching pad to get us to that place.”
For Mirojnick, that meant optimizing Oppenheimer’s wardrobe throughout the decade-spanning film. “I thought he was making a period film. That was not the case,” he states. “Chris had a vision and wanted to make a movie that wasn’t stylized and precious.”
Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick on set with actor Matthew Modine.
Courtesy of Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
In particular, two directives from Nolan surprised Mirojnick from the beginning. “He said two things: ‘I don’t want anyone to wear hats except Oppenheimer, and I think he only needs four suits,’” he recalls, noting that the latter seemed “crazy for five decades.” But as the project progressed, it all made sense. “Because of the way Chris tells stories, it was necessary to analyze each and every decade and extract the essence of each decade. The overall effect would be to move between periods with no dates in front of you, but you would always have the feeling of moving in time,” he says. “Frankly, it was liberating to design characters in a way that felt authentic to who they were and real to the story we were telling.”
For the main character’s look, Mirojnick recalls the first fitting with star Cillian Murphy in which he built a suit without warning while the actor was briefly in Los Angeles. “Cillian was my sketch[pad]. It was three-dimensional,” he says, adding that Nolan was present at every test, unusual for a director. “Chris is a collaborator who really engages with you on all levels. you see the movie [being made] right in front of your eyes.”
This story first appeared in the January standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here for subscribe.