Joseph Kosinski didn’t need to direct “F1” except he was capable of do it the exhausting method. That was the germ of an thought for what would ultimately grow to be one of many largest hits of 2025: Create a film about an underdog Method One crew that didn’t faux being at F1 races, however really turned part of them.
“It was kind of like, ‘Yes, this is a little insane,’” stated Kosinski, “‘but if we can pull it off, we’ll get something totally unique.’”
Kosinski doesn’t current as your common adrenaline junkie. He’s mellow and appears like he may work at a financial institution — actually, he pursued structure earlier than discovering a calling in movie as a David Fincher protégé. Kosinski was trusted with blockbusters from his debut, 2010’s “Tron: Legacy,” and in 2022 broke by way of with “Top Gun: Maverick,” which strapped Tom Cruise and different insurance coverage liabilities into precise fighter jets as an alternative choice to counting on CGI.
“I think on ‘Maverick,’” Kosinski stated, “I found out that the audience does appreciate when you shoot something for real. They can tell the difference between something done on a soundstage and done in a real situation. It’s something we are very attuned to and connect to.”
“F1” tells the story of Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a leathery street canine of a driver who will get referred to as again into Method One by an outdated racing buddy (Javier Bardem), who’s now the proprietor of a struggling crew, determined for a Hail Mary. The movie is partially based mostly in actuality; the Hayes character is impressed by Martin Donnelly, whose promising profession was minimize brief in 1990 by a grotesque crash. It’s additionally partially based mostly in a fantasy during which somebody sufficiently old to have seen the 1966 epic “Grand Prix” in theaters can be allowed to sit down within the driver’s seat of a contemporary F1 crew.
Director Joseph Kosinski on the set of “F1.”
(Apple TV)
However the fantasy parts have been designed to be offset by a hyperrealism that’s hardly ever afforded to movie productions — not simply within the capacity to characteristic the precise groups and drivers, but additionally to movie a good portion of the film on the races themselves. It helped that the manufacturing had Lewis Hamilton, among the finest drivers within the historical past of the game, on board as a producer to assist grease the wheels with the Fédération Internationale de l’Vehicle, the governing physique of F1. Even with Hamilton, although, Apple — which in the end spent over $200 million on the film — needed to show to the FIA that they might arrange at an occasion just like the fabled British Grand Prix at Silverstone and never trigger a pileup.
“We had to rehearse the blocking and staging for about two weeks with a stopwatch in front of the FIA to prove to them that we could actually shoot a scene and get off the track before the race started,” stated Kosinski, referring to an important scene when the characters performed by Pitt and Tobias Menzies first meet.
In contrast to “Maverick,” during which navy pilots flew the jets, “F1” options driving from Brad Pitt and co-star Damson Idris, in some sense as a result of it was the one approach to get the pictures they wanted. “They’ve got four cameras in front of them that are whipping around and they’re having to do their lines and perform,” stated Kosinski. “But mostly they’re trying not to die in front of 100,000 people.”
Each division — from the actors to craft companies — needed to learn to function at harmful speeds and with larger stakes. Ben Munro, who did the manufacturing design with Mark Tildesley, defined that, usually, his division would have two weeks to construct a set; in some circumstances on “F1,” comparable to a scene filmed on the McLaren headquarters, they’d have simply 12 hours, in a single day.
“When you try to integrate with the real world, ultimate control becomes harder,” Munro stated. “And as filmmakers, we’re used to being in ultimate control.”
The “F1” crew developed new cameras to seize the movie’s ultra-realistic high-speed racing.
(Apple TV)
The digital camera crew too needed to be adaptable and cell (no VistaVision right here), all whereas determining methods to seize footage at 180 miles per hour that couldn’t be coated with quite a lot of takes. “First, we had to make a camera that didn’t exist yet,” stated Claudio Miranda, the movie’s cinematographer.
Miranda, who gained an Oscar for “Life of Pi,” labored with Sony to develop small, agile “sensor-on-a-stick” cameras with Imax-worthy lenses to position across the vehicles. Protection turned important — there have been 16 digital camera positions to seize as a lot as attainable. With each the racing itself and the hoopla round race weekend, the same old filmmaking mindset merely needed to change: “I’m not always able to shoot sunset for this shot, or backlight for this quarter,” stated Miranda, describing his pondering. “We traded all that in for the realism of the movie. But I think that’s unbeatable.”
Apart from a number of spinouts (and a stray Brad Pitt fan ruining a shot to get a selfie), the manufacturing was miraculously accident-free, regardless of taking virtually two years to movie. Which may be due partly to the truth that, when you squint, it seems {that a} movie crew is comparable sufficient to an F1 crew to suit proper in.
“Everyone had to be prepared for those nine-minute shoot windows in the same way that you’d have to be ready for a pit stop,” Kosinski stated. “There was a really interesting kinship. And we really did feel like the 11th team after spending two seasons with them.”
The second that sticks with Miranda is from the tip of the manufacturing, in Abu Dhabi, when all the true F1 groups bought their vehicles out for one grand scene collectively — a million-dollar setup, to undersell it by a number of digits. “In the beginning, it did feel like we were this annoying little buzzard,” Miranda stated. “I think that’s why I got really emotional when everyone wanted to help us out in the final race and bring the cars out. Because it felt like, at the end, we were kind of loved.”
