Bringing Apple Original Films’ F1 to life was no easy feat. “I was always told, ‘Racing movies don’t work,’” said director and producer Joseph Kosinski during Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles panel for the Apple Original Films blockbuster.
Talking about what inspired him to start the challenging project, which would require well over two years of research just to capture the feel of Formula 1 racing, Kosinski added: “I always wanted to make a racing film. I grew up loving films like [John Frankenheimer’s] Grand Prix and Le Mans [starring Steve McQueen]. But these [types of movies] are a hard thing to get made, and it really took putting the perfect team together in Jerry Bruckheimer, Ehren Kruger, Brad Pitt and Lewis Hamilton. Because I knew getting it made would be difficult, but Apple was an incredible partner on this.”
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In F1, Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a renowned Formula 1 driver during the 1990s who has an on-track accident that nearly ends his career. Three decades later, he’s a racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling team on the verge of collapse. Cervantes convinces Sonny to take one last shot at saving the team and becoming the best in the world. The only things holding him back are memories of the past and his teammate Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).
Aside from putting together the right cast, Kosinski also had to partner with the film’s supervising sound editor Al Nelson to get a more meticulous feel on and off the track. In partnering with Formula 1, Kosinski and Nelson had the opportunity to get everything they needed to tell the story as “authentically and dynamically” as possible. Some of the ways they did this was by talking with racing magnates, engineers and crew members who were operating complex technical machines in an intense setting.
“We would be brought out to the F1 Grand Prix, and [their team] would say, “Where do you need to be? How can we get you there?’ They put us in the pit lane, the turns, the garages and everywhere we needed to be with our microphones. It was amazing.”
Kosinski also talked about how the pressure for accuracy affected Pitt and Idris, who had to do numerous scenes in under 15 minutes in less than three takes. “It took [about] two years of prep going to all these races to scout out camera positions, talking to the teams, trying to figure out if it’s even possible to shoot a film in these seven- to nine-minute windows of time that they were going to give us — which is a crazy way to make a film,” the director added. “You’re talking about telling actors that you’re going to have two or maybe three takes with these scenes to get it right, when we normally have hours or days to shoot a scene.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
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