Production designer Ruth De Jong transported New Mexico back to the 1940s in 'Oppenheimer'

Jul. 20—Editor's note: The interview with Ruth De Jong took place before the SAG-AFTRA strike. Ruth De Jong spent months envisioning what the 1940s world looks like. Sure, she had references to the previous era via history. Yet the vision had to be different because Christopher Nolan was bringing the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer to the silver screen. "It was lots of hard work," says De Jong. "With every film, you have to start somewhere. You can't overanalyze too much. Chris likes to work closely with his designer in prep. We had some wonderful time to talk together to talk concepts and have the script to use as our guide, and we dove in." As the production designer, De Jong's vision was vast and difficult. While filming in New Mexico, De Jong and her team didn't have a studio or home base to work out of. Everything was shot on location and tons of work had to be done in advance to be ready to film. "Oppenheimer" opens nationwide on Friday, July 21. De Jong got started in New Mexico, seeing the scouting locations and getting ideas. "We started scouting early on and visiting places like Berkeley, California, Princeton University, Washington, D.C. and New Mexico," she says. "New Mexico was really going to be the source of where we filmed everything. We ended up filming a lot of D.C. interiors in New Mexico, and Pasadena doubled for the Berkeley shots." De Jong says Nolan prefers a timeless look for his films, even one such as "Oppenheimer," which is set in a distinct historical period. He encouraged De Jong to not be fussy or precious about period details. He liked the idea of pushing modernism — — allowing the cars, phones or other pieces of technology to be of-the-moment. "Chris would always say, 'Ruth, I'm not making a documentary snooze fest,' " De Jong remembers vividly. "That was always helpful to hear because I would get very ingrained in the research. Instead, our process was to see the real thing, understand its essence, and then divorce ourselves from its form and go make our picture." Creating Los Alamos The first assignment was to develop Oppenheimer's version of Los Alamos, homebase for the Manhattan Project. Nolan did consider shooting the film at the real Los Alamos, where some of the structures built for the Manhattan Project are preserved. But the current location no longer matches the Los Alamos of the Manhattan Project, with modern buildings — including a Starbucks — that would have been too difficult or costly to frame out or eliminate with digital technology. De Jong drew up an elaborate recreation of Los Alamos, which was then rendered physically as a 3D white model at the preproduction facility. The model grew so large that it had to be stored in the production office backyard. It began to shrink as the producers began to realize that building a full-scale replica of Los Alamos with exteriors and interiors would become cost prohibitive. As the filmmakers modified their plans, a novel strategy emerged: They would build exteriors for their Los Alamos at Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre retreat in northern New Mexico, and shoot most of the interiors at the real Los Alamos. This approach proved energizing for the cast, as it allowed Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt to shoot scenes in the very home where the Oppenheimers had lived. Building the Trinity Test Site Nolan's team received permission to shoot at White Sands Proving Ground, at the very place where the Trinity Test was conducted. But the location remains an active military base, and the production couldn't afford to go dark for six-to-eight hours each day while the military practiced bombing runs and tested radar. Instead, Nolan built his version of the Trinity Test Site — whose signature feature was a 100-foot steel tower — and the far-away bunker where Oppenheimer watched the detonation, in Belen. De Jong says everything was built from the ground up, and New Mexico had plenty of places to accommodate. "We used Amy Biehl High School in Albuquerque to double for a New York hotel," she says. "The interiors of the White House were shot in various state buildings in Santa Fe. We used a lot of locations in New Mexico. I personally traveled a lot of the state. One of the favorites was being able to shoot the Trinity Site in Belen because we had the same mountain range in the background." De Jong says there were plenty of days she spent on the road. "I was based in Santa Fe, and I'd start my day at Ghost Ranch and end the days in Belen," she says. "We really utilized every opportunity we had, and it worked very well for us. We were able to get locations that we needed. We did have snow as we started to film in December and went through February."