It’s not every day that a craftsperson wants their work to go unnoticed. But Ryan Tudhope, “F1’s” visual-effects supervisor, did. Like “Top Gun: Maverick” before it, “F1” features a compelling mix of in-camera action with digital effects meant to heighten and augment—not overwrite—what was captured practically. The strategy paid off for “Maverick,” with Tudhope, Seth Hill, Bryan Litson and Scott R. Fisher earning Oscar nominations for Best Visual Effects.
“Just because you can do anything with visual effects doesn’t mean that you should,” Tudhope said. “Or at least you should know that when you do that, you open yourselves up to a lot more risk of the audience seeing what your tool set is. I still believe in the suspension of disbelief in movies, and I believe that whether you’re a costume designer or a makeup artist or you’re lighting a set or whatever your role is, you don’t want to be noticed. I’m just super proud of moments where audiences just have no idea that we did anything.”
The visual-effects supervisor said that he himself had been a follower of Formula One racing prior to the production, but that his appreciation for it only grew throughout his team’s three-year-plus journey on the film. He wanted everything to be grounded in the world and the history of the sport.
“Every car crash, we took a lot of time to get those right just because there’s a sensitivity around it,” he said. “This happens to real people. It was important to us that every crash was based on something that had really happened in the history of F1 as a way of honoring the sport and not inventing things that would maybe not happen.”
While “Top Gun: Maverick” required Tudhope to wait for jets to land before he could review footage they’d shot in the air, the cameras laid around F1 tracks gave him live feedback of any given sequence, allowing him to assess them in real time. He noted that “F1” contained 2,500 VFX shots in total, “which is pretty equal to a big-budget visual-effects movie. It’s just that our effects were attempting to be much more hidden.”
Subtle uses of effects include shooting with lighter Formula Three cars and digitally reskinning them so they look like F1 cars, to avoid damaging the film’s primary vehicles. When summer brought no rain for a sequence at the Italian Grand Prix, Tudhope’s team added a digital wetdown to footage filmed with clear skies, simulating the needed downpour. He even used some shots captured at the film’s earlier Silverstone, U.K., race for the Italy-set scene, replacing the backgrounds through digital augmentation.
The VFX supervisor said that he had a visceral reaction while watching the final product. “It’s the best thing in the world,” he said. “It’s what we live for, being near the cutting room and seeing that project start to take shape. Being a part of that process is just such a blessing.”
This story first ran in the Below-the-Line issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
