Claudio Miranda entered “F1” with the same goal he had on “Top Gun: Maverick” — render action sequences as kinetically as he could and capture as much as possible in-camera. Working with a big budget, high-quality equipment and premium access to the world of Formula One, Miranda began planning the shoot about a year before filming actually began, taking the time to study the cameras “and prep on all our crazy ideas.”
“Our high bar is always ‘How can we get it in-camera?’” Miranda said. “We’re not really interested in other synthetic approaches. The high bar is reality. Then the trick is to figure out how to do it. Joe says that we can get the actors to drive these cars, and I go, ‘Well, how do they drive these cars at 200 miles an hour?’ We couldn’t do that with traditional filmmaking equipment.”
That traditional equipment, such as biscuit rigs and tow dollies, wouldn’t be able to reach anywhere near the breakneck speed of true Formula One races. So he thought back to his previous collaboration with Kosinski, when they captured high-speed action and audiences turned out in droves. “In ‘Top Gun,’ we found out how immersive the audience felt when they were in the jets,” Miranda said.
Over the course of the two-year “F1” shoot, the director of photography — who during the SAG-AFTRA strike detoured to take over the second-unit photography as a way to keep moving forward — was provided access to various tracks and races. His team replaced Formula One equipment with their own special cameras to get the footage they needed. Apple made the crew a series of onboard cameras they could use on the cars’ wings during real races, while Sony developed its own series of one-off cameras that Miranda referred to as “sensors on a stick.”
The DP said that Formula One prefers “a very tight shutter” on the auto-mounted cameras it uses, because that allows viewers to identify the copious advertising on each car. “Cinematically, I like it a little bit more open shutter that gives you motion blur and all that stuff, so we found a compromise there.”
The “F1” crew fit their shoots into short time slots allotted to them during actual Formula One events, which let them put their cars on the track during warmup laps. This often meant filming what they needed in 15-, 10- and even three-minute chunks. It was a tough job, but it made the movie feel all the more real, eliciting genuine audience reactions and evoking the true environment of an “F1” race.
“We kept it small and played nicely,” Miranda said. “We weren’t trying to be ‘Big Hollywood’ in their world. We were trying to be a little version of Hollywood.”
This story first ran in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
