Joseph Kosinskiracing drama ”F1: The movie“Has fairly celebrated for his high octane Competition sequenceswhich contains the latest film technology to convey a visceral sense of what it is like to drive a Formula One car. But these set pieces would not work if whole film was a constant blur of fast cars. The film’s quieter moments – focusing on the actors Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem – also needed to have the same level of excitement, beauty and artistry, even when a starting net was not in sight.
For this, Kosinski turned to his long -standing partner Claudio MirandaThe Kinematographer who has shot all the director’s films that go back to “Faith: Legacy” in 2010. When it came to these character types, the filmmakers were led by the same principles as the competition scenes: make them as grounded as possible. “There were not many sets on this movie,” Miranda told IndieWire. “The places were our sets.”
And so, in a big way, were the cars. Although Miranda admired John Frankenheimer’s 1966 “Grand Prix” film, he felt that many of the other racing films he watched were missing when it came to capturing the actual speed and intensity of the sport. “One of the things we really wanted to improve was the speed,” Miranda said. “Many films use process cars or biscuit rigs, and these things only go 60 miles per hour. And knowing that these cars go 200 miles per hour, it’s far too slow.”
Miranda and Kosinski opposed suggestions to shoot scenes with a car on a platform. “It’s not our movie,” Miranda said. “We watched movies that were made in that style, and they make tricks like speeding it up or put the vehicle on a gimbal or in the volume … but it seems a bit sad. I think the audience can recognize it, and they only feel when it is AI or the volume, and that is not really. The voltage level probably drops.”
With that in mind, Miranda collaborated with Sony, Formula 1, Mercedes and other companies to create a system for filming the actors when they ran their cars with 200 miles per hour – no easy task given that even the smallest extra weight braked vehicles. “The smallest cameras that existed at that time were far too big,” Miranda said, noting that this created a challenge that he did not have to face on “Top Gun: Maverick,” where the plans he stood up cameras on could handle hundreds of extra kilos – and did not require the same type of visibility for the pilot.
“This was not like” Top Gun “, where I could block the entire front view and it doesn’t matter,” Miranda said. “These drivers really needed to see where they were going; it was critical.” In the end, Sony cameras designed as Miranda described as “sensors on a stick”, which could capture high quality images and forward it over the track to the recorder via modern radio frequency technology. Miranda was able to catch up to a dozen unique angles at a time on each car, and could pan and tilt rather than being suppressed to a fixed camera mode.
All this led to the most kinetic and realistic racing film ever made, but the methodology did not end on the track. “What I love about Joe is that he will always try to shoot in a real place, a real environment,” Miranda said. This meant that not only the racing sequences avoid process images and green screen, but the more intimate moments did it too – even when they could theoretically have been shot on a stage with much less cost and effort. At one point, Pitt’s character opens up about his regrets and failures to condone to a hotel balcony in Las Vegas in what is the film’s most emotional scene; It is also the most visually beautiful thanks to Miranda and Kosinski’s approach.
“We did it with just one camera-more settings, but a camera,” Miranda said. He noted that a dialogue scene that the balcony exchange could easily have been made on a set and would have looked convincing, but again, to be in place in Vegas created an emotional effect that would otherwise have been difficult to capture. “The city lights come from underneath, and it feels like they really light that scene. Sometimes signs will be blin, K and it lifts the whole stage, but you probably wouldn’t make that choice where you try to make things more consistent. And the fountains in the background give it a fantastic view.”
The balcony scene is also emblematic for one of Miranda’s largest and most underrated forces, his talent to showcase movie stars. Although it is not necessarily difficult to find a way to shoot Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in ways that show their charisma, in “Maverick” and “F1” Miranda take their star power to an extra level through its accurate lens selection and lighting. Simple pictures of pitt that go against a long lens take a mythical greatness in Miranda’s hands; It is the kind of pleasant classic style that used to be more common during the Hollywood system’s heyday but which has become more and more rare in recent years.
The precision in Miranda’s images is all the more impressive considering how often he had to take them on the go, as the drama was arranged between breaks during real races where Kosinski and his crew were piggybacking on Formula 1 events to take advantage of their resources and scale. “They don’t give you mercy,” Miranda said. “If you are not done in ten minutes, you have to get the car from the track. There were scenes we shot that we had a chance to get, and it was nerve -wracking.”
The company’s ability to perform difficult images in narrow windows was largely thanks for careful repetition and planning. “We had to have everything really snapped up,” Miranda said. “It was a collaboration between many people across different spectrums, not just my gripes and the camera department and the art department, but Formula One and Mercedes and more – half of the people who helped us were not even in the film industry.”
The friendship between Formula One and the “F1” crew led to some of the film’s most extraordinary images, images that Miranda said would have been unattainable otherwise and that spoke to the special nature of the cross -industry’s collaboration. “One day it was a red flag moment and they said some of the teams would help us,” Miranda said. “The all did. They all took out their cars, and they were all out for real – it’s not a CG shot. I almost cried, it was such a emotional moment. “
