F1 The Movie Behind The Scenes

Is everyone celebrating here? Yeah, all of them. Which I'll be in by then. You'll get wasted with me bugging the date. Against him, he means. Take him over to the car. My first moment of filming is at Silverstone race weekend in front of 120,000 fans and we had to prove to F1 that we could slot ourselves into the race weekend because it is military precision, it is to the minute and so we had a 20 minute slot where we could go out on quality day in front of the fans and film ourselves. Rather than having a stunt driver actually controlling the cars, in this film Brad and Damson are driving the cars by themselves. These are not special effects rigs, these aren't movie cars that are made to look like real race cars. These are race cars from the start that we developed working hand in hand with AMG Mercedes. They're designers and engineers to build a race car specifically for making this movie. Formula 1 is a team sport, it always was, and maybe that's why you failed at it. We're first introduced to Kate, she's working for Apex and they're a losing team. It's been two and a half seasons and they've got zero points, so the vibe is not good at the beginning of the movie. I think her confidence is pretty low because the car that she has designed is referenced as a shitbox and is not doing well and there's problems with the car, so I think she's kind of losing confidence in herself and she's the technical director of the team, so that's a big responsibility. Joe Ganczewski and Jerry Buchreimer are bringing the excitement that we all shared and had while watching Top Gun Maverick on a big screen into the racetrack and into the Formula 1 world and to a point where we are so inside the real F1 world that it's kind of crazy when we were shooting it to be among all the real drivers in the real racetracks in the real competitions having Brad and Damson driving the real tracks with the real cars it can't get better than this. The reason why I wanted to be a part of it, aside with working with all the creatives was I really related to Joshua, I really felt like I knew him and it became a compulsion of mine to protect him and to show him to the world in his best light. I could relate to being an underdog, a rookie, a young actor and having a need to want to prove yourself so badly and I think that is what Josh was going through. Race day! I think one version is shoe to face looking out and just look out to the wide and then the other version is fingers on track. It's such a crazy idea Joe, Joe Kaczynski our director, must have been sitting around after the success of Maverick going, what do I do next? I know, I'm going to do the most visceral, experiential racing movie ever made. I'm going to integrate the entire film into the F1 season I'm going to put real actors and real cars on tracks on real race weekends and we're going to make a movie. Somehow he pulled it off. It's so audacious, I can't believe we actually got to get away with it. The first time I met with Joe and Jerry, I had said to them, in Top Gun people were flying those planes for real how are you guys going to do F1 green screen, right? They both deadpan looked at me, they're like, no you're going to be driving the cars for real. And I put my poker face on and I was like, I could do that. A sweat, for real. Sort of like a sweat of blood. But you know, we trained for about four or five months behind different disciplines of race cars and by the time we got into the cars that we used for the movie, you know, going from Grand Prix to Grand Prix, racing amongst the real crowd you know, we were ready to go and the interesting thing about driving was we had all these cameras on the car so unlike Lewis and Max when they're in a car and they can see everything, we could barely see and sometimes we'd be going 180 miles per hour while saying lines at a specific place on the track. With emotion. With emotion, trying to look cute while we did it. So it really was, you know, a huge challenge but the feeling after completing it and you know the taps on the back of the shoulders and you know, the respect we received from the world of Formula One, second to none. What Joe wanted is real authenticity he wanted to make the best racing movie ever made. In order to do that, you have to put your actors in the cars. It's dangerous it's exciting but it's the only way to make the movie. And when you see the film, you'll see both our actors actually driving these really powerful engines and cars. Booming down. Yeah, it's two cars fighting maybe right side by side so then you can shoot. We do the boom for the focus pole and the element and then I guess you shoot the car as references. They're going to have to be replaced anyway. And you're going to have to make it wet. I need a way to chase through the dirty air. We need to build our car for combat. You want me to redesign so you can follow closer. How am I supposed to make that safe? Working along Brad, he's so natural. That was something that I really found when I was in the scenes with him. He's just so natural, it's crazy. Sometimes it's like, I feel like it's like it's hard to tell when he's acting, like it just seems so natural. And very in the moment. He's a very in the moment actor and I'm very in the moment actor and that's so much fun. Joe very wisely said, I'm going to make an F1 movie. But to do that, I'm going to have to get someone who everyone else is going to trust, who's going to sanction it, who's going to be able to guide us. And that he went to seven time world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton. Who has a love for movies as well as well as other art forms. And he was actually the first the first one to platoon this crazy idea. He was the first one he got in. And from there, Lewis opened up the entire ecosystem to us and introduced us to each team, every driver. We were in drivers meetings, team principals and everyone Stefano at F1, I mean everyone just opened the doors for us to tell this story. It was quite incredible and unprecedented. That's just getting started. We would sit for hours with Lewis. I mean, I remember one 12 hour meeting that our ending came out of where we would just say, what about this? What's this like for you? What if we went this way? No, no, no. That's not right, but you could do this. And we kept pulling from historic moments through F1 and how to tell this underdog story of this team that has very little to fight with. How are they going to become competitive? Now let's get to, we've shot the movie a year and a half later and we're putting it together. Lewis would come in and he could tell you if you're in the wrong gear at turn six. I mean, the race knowledge is just unfathomable. He could tell you on whatever track we're on, yeah, when you're heading down the straight, there's a reverb that comes off the left wall. You need to add that sound in. I mean, the detail is extraordinary. It's just extraordinary. This is better than my garage. I've been racing for 32 years and I I've loved the sport since I was five years old. And when we came across the, there was this moment where I got to speak with Joe about this potential project, Joe and Jerry, who asked me to come on board and I jumped at the opportunity. And to be honest, I'd been really trying to figure out what could be a stepping stone from racing one day. A kind of a side stepping stone of something I'm also really passionate about. And movies is one of those things that I, as I said, I love pretty much as much as I do racing. And so I got this opportunity to go back in the background where I got to meet up with Jerry and Joe at Jerry's office, the legend himself and meet with Brad and go through this script and it was all a big learning process for me. I'm learning how they like to work, all the processes that go in place to build and create a movie. I'm excited for people who actually don't know anything about Formula One to watch this movie because they'll instantly see that there's so many themes that are relatable to real life and that it's not just a racing movie. You know, there's characters in there that you would know that you'd walk past on the street. We all know a Joshua who has this huge challenge and he's trying to overcome adversity and prove himself to the world. So when people leave the cinema, they're going to feel how they felt back in the day when they watched those big movies. They're going to wish they were of that world. There's so many different nationalities and accents in the movie and they seamlessly come together so that is really nice to see in a movie. And then it reminded me of when I was younger, that feeling where you're cheering and it really evokes this feel good feeling with the music and everything and these people who are losing, learning and doing well. It just was like a movie I would have seen when I was younger that I would have remembered every line and so I really hope people feel that nostalgia feeling of that's what movies, that's why movies are so great. You remember them forever and the feeling that you felt. It's also like a family movie too. It's quite age appropriate. And a date movie also because it's a little romance and there's something for boys and girls in there. I think I just hope they feel like it was worth the money to go to the theatre because the sound and the camera work.