‘F1’ Director Joseph Kosinski on Speed Onscreen

If director Joseph Kosinski does not feel a need for speed, he at least possess a flair for it.

His is the cinema of speed. From Tron: Legacy to Oblivion to the megahit Top Gun: Maverick and now his brand new film F1, Kosinski has become the modern master of cinematic motion. Few working directors possess his flair for the kinetic. So what’s his secret?

“Just shoot it for real,” he told me.

That’s what he does. In Top Gun: Maverick, Kosinski stuck his cast in the cockpits of real F18s, and filmed the actors’ genuine reactions to intense G-forces. In F1, a story of an aging racing legend (Brad Pitt) recruited by the worst team in Formula One to help train their talented young driver (Damson Idris), Kosinski ratcheted up the intensity and the authenticity.

“Brad and Damson trained for four months to work their way up to these open wheel race cars,” Kosinski explained. “And we developed a prototype camera that is very very small and light but still IMAX quality that we were able to strap to [their cars] and put in front of their face and capture that experience.”

Over the course of a 15-minute phone conversation — just 15 minutes, as I was reminded by a publicist before we began (and, as you’ll see below, after we ended) — we discussed some of the technological innovations Kosinski and his team developed for F1, as well as his thoughts on the nature of miracles, a topic that comes up in both of the director’s last two movies. Fittingly, this whole chat went by very fast.

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There are certainly some stylistic similarities between F1 and Top Gun. You mentioned the cameras mounted to the vehicles, the closeups on the faces of the actors. You’re working with [cinematographer] Claudio [Miranda] again, who you’ve worked with many times. In terms of this visual aesthetic you two have developed through the years, what were the things that worked previously that also worked for F1 and what things maybe didn’t work, or had to be tweaked or changed for this project?

The things that didn’t work were the cameras we developed for Top Gun: Maverick were at that time about as small as you could get, and they worked in an F18 because that’s a big, powerful vehicle designed to carry heavy things. But that camera system did not work on a race car, because every kilogram you add to the car slows it down. That’s working against the whole point of shooting it for real.

So we went to Sony, who built the Venice Rialto system for Top Gun, and we worked with them for about a year to create a new lightweight miniaturized version that had the same image quality but was much smaller and worked in this race car.

We worked with the Mercedes-AMG Formula One team to build our race car, and as we’re building it, we worked into the design 16 different mounting points for our cameras and special bays underneath the radiators to hold the batteries and the recorders and the receivers. So it was a custom-built race car designed for shooting this movie. We made six of them.

And then on top of that, y’know, on Top Gun, the six cameras that were in the cockpit were all fixed. The focus was fixed, the angle was fixed, and they would go up and shoot and come back, and we got what we got. On this movie, I wanted to be able to operate the camera to pan it left and right real time while we were shooting. So that was another innovation. We worked with Panavision on a servo-controlled head that allowed us to pan with the action and pull focus remotely as they were driving. It was a pretty sophisticated system that allowed us to capture something that no one had ever been able to do.

Yeah, that panning shot you’re talking about is so striking and distinctive. It really stands out in the film. You described the rig the makes that work, but maybe you can talk a little more about why you felt it was so important to be able to pan in the film. Because it is cool, especially the first time when suddenly the camera starts moving from that closeup of Brad Pitt’s face.

Yeah. Well … the pan shot is kind of like turning your head. It’s a very natural way to take in the world. But what I liked about it was when you’re looking at the nose of a car rocketing down a track and then you pay 180 degrees and you see Brad Pitt looking at you with his hands on the wheel, you realize that he truly is controlling this thing by himself. The typical Hollywood thing is to cut: A shot of the car driving down the street, cut to a closeup of the actor’s face moving the wheel, then cut to another angle from outside the car. We’ve all seen enough movies to know that those things aren’t connected, that it’s really an actor driving on a tow truck being towed, and a shot of a stunt driver driving down the road.

When you have a connective pan like that, it shows you that this car is running free on its own, and the actor’s actually driving. It just makes you feel like you’re there and it feels real because it was. The other thing is I can connect the action to the actor, and it just inherently makes it more emotional when you’re watching the film.

Right. So you made the cameras lighter, and you went from fixed angles to being able to pan around. Were there any technological hurdles that you couldn’t quite conquer this time, that you’re hoping to improve upon next time?

Hmm … like things that we weren’t able to do? I mean, we’re always trying to make things smaller and lighter. The smaller we can make these cameras, the more flexibility we’re going to have to put them in places. So we’re actually working with Sony on the next generation of this camera that we shot with. It’s going to be even smaller and much lighter. So that’s already in development. I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet [laughs] but I’m sure whatever project I do next, we’ll find a way to give the audience a perspective they haven’t had before, and a reason to go to the movies. That’s the main thing.

I was reading some interviews you gave for your earlier films, and you’ve sometimes spoken about your education in architecture and design. I’m curious how that background influenced the creation of F1.

Yeah, my undergrad was in mechanical engineering and product design. And it did prove to be pretty helpful, especially in the early conversations with the Mercedes engineers, because we were building our own custom race car. I would be on Zoom calls with aerodynamicists and thermal engineers, and looking at blueprints of these cars and talking about how to extend something 400 millimeters to match the wheel base of an F1 car, and where cameras could and couldn’t go based on the heat from the engine and the radiators, where to route the cables. All that stuff, it was good having that background.

Obviously they’re the experts, but to be able to have a conversation and problem solve and talk to them about the creative intent and figuring out what we needed these cars to do, it’s always helpful. I get to get a little taste of that engineering I studied back the day, but at the same time get to do my day job. So it’s great. It’s great to have a background outside the world of film for the kinds of films I make.

So I rewatched Top Gun yesterday after I saw F1. And I realized that in both movies characters talk about miracles; miracles that need to occur in order for the stories to work themselves out.

That’s interesting.

Are you a believer in miracles?

I am. Yeah. I mean this film was, four years ago, it was an idea. I was literally just sitting at home dreaming about “What would it be like to tell a story in this world?” I wondered if it would be possible to actually shoot in the middle of it. What would that feel like? And now, four years later, to be at the premiere with 4200 people, including all of the drivers and team principals, to watch it on a big screen, it does feel surreal. It does almost feel like a miracle. Anytime a film gets made feels like a miracle to me. There’s so many reasons to say no to anything. And this is an original film in a slate full of a sequels. It doesn’t seem likely. So yeah, I would say I do.

Formula One is televised, and there’s a popular reality series about the sport on Netflix. You mentioned that it all started with this idea you had; what were you hoping that the film could do that those other ways to watch F1 racing maybe couldn’t do?

I think a movie can take you on an emotional journey in a way that is different from a live-action broadcast or a documentary; to really get inside a character and understand what they want, what their goals are, the pressures on them, the emotional journey. That’s what makes a great film; there’s nothing else quite like it.

So that’s the most important thing, telling a great, emotional story. That’s what we tried to do with Top Gun: Maverick, and it’s what we tried to do with this film. All the bells and whistles of a great action sequence are meaningless if you’re not invested in the characters and what’s happening onscreen. So it always starts with the story, and everything else grows out of that.

I am admittedly not an F1 aficionado. I enjoyed the movie, but I am curious — you mentioned attending the premiere with all the drivers and principals. Obviously, every subjective reaction is going to be different person to person. But generally speaking, do you see different reactions to the film from people like me who are kind of F1 novices versus those people who are actively involved in or really following the sport?

Of course. Yeah, absolutely. If you’re a driver who lives it every day, you’re gonna be watching with a very different eye than someone who knows nothing about the sport. What’s been pretty consistent are people really enjoy the story, enjoy the performances, regardless of your knowledge. But yeah, of course [F1 driver] Lewis Hamilton’s gonna watch the movie differently than someone who knows nothing about the sport.

What’s been most encouraging is we had to do blind previews when we were testing the film, which means you invite an audience that doesn’t even know what film they’re gonna see. There was one woman in our focus group who said when she heard she was going to see a movie about Formula One, she wanted to get up and leave. [laughs] She’s like “I don’t know anything about F1, and I have no interest in racing. But once the film was over, I wanted to tell  all my friends about it. In fact, I want to go see a race now.”

To me, that was the most encouraging thing, that a good movie can give you an interest in something that you never knew even existed. That was good to hear.

They’re both huge stars, obviously, but can you compare the processes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt?

Well, I think they’re more similar than people would expect. They’ve got their own personalities; Brad’s maybe on the exterior seems to be a little more laid back. But he’s just as driven, just as hardworking. And they both understand the filmmaking process from beginning to end. There’s a reason why they’ve both had three decades at the top.

Their taste, maybe, is a little different, but both very good. They both worked with directors that are some of my heroes. So it’s more similar than I think people think. Everyone asks about the differences, but I found it to be very much the same.

I would absolutely recommend people see this movie on a big screen. But there are so many different formats to chose from these days; IMAX, Dolby, 4DX … if you were going to see your own movie in a theater, is there one you would pick?

Don’t make me do that!

[laughs] I’m sorry.

I did so many formats for this movie and I put just as much care into all of them. So it really depends on the person. The moving 4DX version, I have friends who swear by that and love to go see things in 4DX. I know people who love ScreenX, which gives you images on the side walls. And last night’s premiere was in IMAX — which I will say, this is the first IMAX I’ve done where the entire film is in the full IMAX format. So any of those premium formats is good. But last night’s premiere is pretty epic.

All right, thank you. I’m sorry to put you on the spot like that.

That’s okay.

And they told me 15 minutes, so I’ll just leave it there and say thank you very much.

[publicist’s voice from the background] You nailed it!

Oh wow. You know what? That’s another miracle right there.

It is.

See? That’s another reason to believe in miracles.

Yup, it’s miracle number three.

F1 opens in theaters this Friday.