F1 PRODUCTION
Claudio Miranda, ASC slams on the throttle with some high-octane camerawork in F1 “We couldn’t have cheated any speed tricks to make this movie”
WORDS OLIVER WEBB IMAGES APPLE TV+
F 1 follows Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), one of of retirement to return to racing with Team Apex. He is partnered alongside the team’s hotshot rookie (Damson Idris) and soon realises that he can’t take the road to redemption on his own. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, the film was captured by longtime collaborator Claudio Miranda, ASC. Miranda has shot all of Kosinski’s feature films, beginning with Tron: Legacy in 2010. “I’m always around Joe and we often talk about what would be a great technology for the next movie,” he begins. “Before F1 , we discussed how to make Top Gun: Maverick better and we’re always trying to think how we can make the film. What I love about Joe is that we’re both very similar. We both prefer natural and believe that real is best; everything is sort of Formula 1’s most promising drivers in the nineties, until a near-fatal accident shatters his career. Thirty years later, Sonny steps out secondary from there. We try to aim for reality. I think people somewhat sense it. A lot of people are talking about using AI, but it takes you away from the immersion of the story.”
AT THE RACES When it came to the look of F1 , Miranda and Kosinski wanted to capture the authentic elements of F1 races. “We were really at the races when shooting this,” he says. “Between qualifying times, pre-qualifying times or any little slot that they would give us during the real race. There would be five- to ten-, even 15-minute windows that we were getting. We’d have scenes prepped, then we’d go out there and the cars would run. I think it feels like a visceral movie.” Miranda relied on a selection of Master Prime lenses, Fuji zooms, Voigtländers, ZEISS Loxias and Sony G Series E-mounts to capture the film. “We didn’t want to go into a synthetic world,” explains Miranda. “The studio was originally looking at volumes to start shooting the film, but that was never our approach, even though it might have been other people’s perceived approach. There was concern about how to get actors really going at the speeds that they go. I felt that there’s just no way to get the actors going around 180-plus miles an hour. Joe and I were watching some films together and we both loved Grand Prix . That was a great reference of shots, and
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