Joseph Kosinski didn’t need to direct “F1” until he was capable of do it the arduous method. That was the germ of an concept for what would ultimately turn out to be one of many largest hits of 2025: Create a film about an underdog System One crew that didn’t pretend being at F1 races, however truly turned part of them.
“It was form of like, ‘Sure, it is a little insane,’” stated Kosinski, “‘but when we will pull it off, we’ll get one thing completely distinctive.’”
Kosinski doesn’t current as your common adrenaline junkie. He’s mellow and appears like he might 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 means of with “Prime Gun: Maverick,” which strapped Tom Cruise and different insurance coverage liabilities into precise fighter jets as an alternative choice to counting on CGI.
“I feel on ‘Maverick,’” Kosinski stated, “I came upon that the viewers does admire while you shoot one thing for actual. They’ll inform the distinction between one thing completed on a soundstage and completed in an actual state of affairs. It’s one thing we’re very attuned to and hook up with.”
“F1” tells the story of Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a leathery street canine of a driver who will get known as again into System One by an outdated racing buddy (Javier Bardem), who’s now the proprietor of a struggling crew, determined for a Hail Mary.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 reduce brief in 1990 by a grotesque crash. It’s additionally partially based mostly in a fantasy by which somebody sufficiently old to have seen the 1966 epic “Grand Prix” in theaters could 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 had been designed to be offset by a hyperrealism that’s not often afforded to movie productions — not simply within the capacity to function 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, the most effective 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 finally spent over $200 million on the film — needed to show to the FIA that they may arrange at an occasion just like the fabled British Grand Prix at Silverstone and never trigger a pileup.
“We needed to rehearse the blocking and staging for about two weeks with a stopwatch in entrance of the FIA to show to them that we might truly shoot a scene and get off the observe earlier than the race began,” stated Kosinski, referring to an important scene when the characters performed by Pitt and Tobias Menzies first meet.
In contrast to “Maverick,” by 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 bought 4 cameras in entrance of them which can be whipping round they usually’re having to do their traces and carry out,” stated Kosinski. “However largely they’re attempting to not die in entrance of 100,000 individuals.”
Each division — from the actors to craft companies — needed to discover ways to function at harmful speeds and with greater 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 instances on “F1,” equivalent to a scene filmed on the McLaren headquarters, they might have simply 12 hours, in a single day.
“While you attempt to combine with the actual world, final management turns into more durable,” Munro stated. “And as filmmakers, we’re used to being in final management.”
The “F1” crew developed new cameras to seize the movie’s ultra-realistic high-speed racing.
(Apple TV)
The digicam crew too needed to be adaptable and cellular (no VistaVision right here), all whereas determining the best way to seize footage at 180 miles per hour that couldn’t be coated with quite a lot of takes. “First, we needed to make a digicam that didn’t exist but,” stated Claudio Miranda, the movie’s cinematographer.
Miranda, who received an Oscar for “Lifetime 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 digicam positions to seize as a lot as doable. With each the racing itself and the hoopla round race weekend, the same old filmmaking mindset merely needed to change: “I’m not all the time capable of shoot sundown for this shot, or backlight for this quarter,” stated Miranda, describing his pondering. “We traded all that in for the realism of the film. However I feel that’s unbeatable.”
Aside 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, in the event you squint, it seems {that a} movie crew is analogous sufficient to an F1 crew to suit proper in.
“Everybody needed to be ready for these nine-minute shoot home windows in the identical method that you simply’d must be prepared for a pit cease,” Kosinski stated. “There was a extremely fascinating kinship. And we actually did really feel just like the eleventh crew after spending two seasons with them.”
The second that sticks with Miranda is from the top of the manufacturing, in Abu Dhabi, when all the actual F1 groups bought their vehicles out for one grand scene collectively — a million-dollar setup, to undersell it by a number of digits. “At first, it did really feel like we had been this annoying little buzzard,” Miranda stated. “I feel that’s why I bought actually emotional when everybody needed to assist us out within the closing race and convey the vehicles out. As a result of it felt like, on the finish, we had been form of cherished.”
