BTS: F1: The Movie

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F1: The Movie give the sensation of racing at 200mph from a driver’s eye view driver thanks to two sets of new cameras custom engineered for the film.

 

If Formula 1 owners Liberty Media were to succeed in attracting more viewers to its live race broadcasts it needed to add dust and grit to glossy promo F1: The Movie. The target was to capture the experience of being in a race car at 200mph. Who better to do that than the filmmakers who had propelled Top Gun: Maverick to box office glory?

The marketing of both projects trades heavily on the authenticity of actors embedded within dangerous high-octane action. To elevate the experience above previous car race movies like Le Mans, Ford v Ferrari, Rush and Days of Thunder (whose producer Jerry Bruckheimer is a producer on F1) the filmmakers custom engineered bespoke cameras.

Director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda used as their template the camera system they built into Super Hornets and F-35 fighter planes for Top Gun: Maverick. This was the Sony Venice used in its space saving mode which separates the body of the camera from the sensor.

Of course, on a fighter jet, you can put on 40 or 60 pounds of camera gear and it won’t affect the plane’s performance but on a Formula 1 car, every kilogram makes a difference.

As Kosinki puts it, “Putting weight on a car is to slow it down, and that works against the experience we’re trying to capture.”

He and Miranda chose to film the drama scenes of F1 on IMAX certified Venice and briefed Sony to develop a custom camera with the same colour science and 6K resolution to match whilst also being small and light enough to squeeze up to four of them into the tiny cockpit alongside a driver. The units also had to withstand the immense G-forces of F1 racing.

The new camera - which Miranda and Sony called the ‘Carmen’ - is basically “a sensor on a stick,” according to Miranda. The filmmakers had 15 camera positions on each car that they could choose from. During each run, with multiple cars racing, they could capture up to 12 unique angles at a time. No longer locked into a fixed POV the camera team had real-time control of panning, tilting and focusing. These specialised cameras are described as the smallest moveable 6K camera ever designed to take the viewer into the cockpit.

It gave Miranda the freedom to create every angle the director wanted. For example, it enabled them to film Brad Pitt driving the race car then pan to track another car as it overtakes – all in one shot.

Some shots will be familiar to F1 fans from race broadcasts, others are entirely new and cinematic. Incidentally, some of these new angles may even be coming to F1 live race broadcasts.

Capturing the footage also required wireless technology that could relay the footage across miles of track without interfering with the race broadcast signal.

 

New Apple designed on-board cam

The Sony cameras were not the only cameras used on the production. A signature angle captured during every F1 race broadcast is one from an on board camera pod that is on the side of the car. While these cameras were in the right place, they were only intended to capture footage for broadcast needs, an aesthetic that is very different than footage shot for a motion picture let alone an IMAX one.

Miranda worked with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and Apple’s engineering team to develop a way to bring an iPhone camera system into real F1 cars.

Apple’s solution matched F1’s on-board camera pods in design and durability. The solution consisted of an Apple-designed iPhone camera sensor powered by an Apple silicon chip, running iOS and a special camera firmware.  This on-board camera system was indistinguishable from the outside, matching all of the Formula 1’s onboard team’s specifications.

During filming at Grand Prix weekends, these cameras were placed on two or three actual Formula 1 cars during real races, capturing the excitement and exhilaration of a race in a way that’s never been done onscreen.

“I think we were able to capture something you can’t even get from the broadcast of a race,” Kosinski says. “We’re able to put cameras in places the broadcast can’t. We’re shooting with film-quality cameras that give you a different perspective and experience from what you’re used to seeing on TV. When all is said and done, I hope audiences get at least a fraction of what Lewis [Hamilton] is experiencing when he’s in a Grand Prix.”

Production embedded at Grand Prix

The production embedded Pitt and the fictional APEX GP team at real F1 race weekends over the past two seasons. These included Silverstone; Hungary’s Hungaroring; Monza; Spa in Belgium; Mexico City; Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi. Splinter units shot in Zandvoort in the Dutch Grand Prix and at Suzuka, Japan.

The way the film production integrated into a race is best illustrated by the 2023 British GP at Silverstone, where two black-and-gold APXGP cars lined up on the grid for the race’s formation lap behind the 20 F1 racers —"without viewers at home suspecting a thing” it’s claimed.

The cars themselves were Formula 2 race cars built and modified specifically for the film by Mercedes to look like F1 and containing multiple camera mounts for fitting recorders, batteries and RF transmitters.

Twelve cars were built (six for driving and six for crashing) designed to marry the need for speed with the rough-road realities of a film production.

Miranda chose very specific places on the car where he would place the camera sensors, and the engineers found room to install the camera bodies in the cars’ floors.

“There is a small area in the floor, in front of the radiator boxes and the intakes, and we could just about get three camera bodies in there with the batteries and all of the RF equipment to support it, and not an inch to spare,” explains action vehicles supervisor Graham Kelly.

Miranda also used the DJI Ronin 4D, gimbal-stabilised camera, to capture additional action shots.

 

Race choreography

Lewis Hamilton was consulted on the race sequences, advising when cars would be in third gear at a certain corner, what tires should be used and when to brake. He apparently did this for every turn of each race sequence. Luciano Bacheta, the 2012 Formula 2 champion who headed Pitt and Idris’s training, also served as the film’s race choreographer putting those plans together.

“If the story calls for Sonny to go through the pack and overtake, it has to be justified; he can’t just overtake for no reason and his opponents can’t just fall out of the way,” he says.

Knowing the story point in the screenplay, Bacheta would write out choreography, then drive it in a simulator and refine it, before getting to the track.  

 It’s really interesting from a racing driver's perspective to park the idea of being a racing driver and go into what we want to achieve to make the racing film,” says camera car driver Jonathan Kennard   “It's all about making sure that the camera car is in the right place at the right time. I’ll be driving to the racing line, braking at strange points where I wouldn’t normally brake, darting around to make sure I capture what we’re going for.”

Some challenging shots even involved Kennard making sure he hit a point on the circuit where the helicopter pilot came close to the track to pick up and continue a dramatic shot.

The sound of speed

Microphones on real F1 cars captured the sound of a thousand horsepower. And because a Team Red Bull car sounds different than a Ferrari car, which sounds different to a Mercedes they put a lot of effort into capturing multiple cars on the grid.

The film’s sound mixer was Gareth John, Oscar winner for his work on Dune: Part Two. “As a film crew, you’re used to working in a very controlled environment, being able to lock everything down and having a quiet place to shoot. A live F1 track is the polar opposite. It’s a hostile environment, with all the noise that’s going on and the RF interference affecting radio mics.”

Hans Zimmer and co-composer Steve Mazzaro, supplied the score that melded orchestra and synths.  “For me, the orchestra was always the human that sits inside that machine, and the electronics is the machine. Having spent a lot of time talking to Lewis about what it's like to actually be in inside the machine, that really influenced how I wanted the orchestra to sound, how the tunes were written, and the grace and the beauty and the power of those incredible cars.”