There’s nothing like a bit of macho melodrama to annoy moviegoers in theater seats, and legendary Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer knows this unspoken truth better than anyone.
Only three years later Top Gun: Maverick breathing new life into the action film genre, Bruckheimer reunited with director Joseph Kosinski and writer Ehren Kruger on F1: The moviea pedal-to-the-metal popcorn blockbuster that quickly became the most successful sports film of all time and the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career.
Did Apple have its eye on a lucrative live sports deal all along? Maybe. But as Bruckheimer told me before F1When Apple TV debuted on December 12, the iPhone maker was as enthusiastic (if not more) about the filmmaking process as any traditional movie studio.
“Apple wanted to make the movie we made,” Bruckheimer explains in London. “They wanted it for real. Cue Eddy, who is [senior VP of Services] at Apple, is a huge sports car enthusiast, and he’s actually on the board of directors at Ferrari, so it really helped that he was someone who was really passionate about the sport, who loved F1 and wanted to make sure we did things right.
They are a brilliant company and they have done a phenomenal job working with us.
Jerry Bruckheimer
“And when Joe [Kosinski] called Brad [Pitt] and told him the story, Brad said, ‘Look, the only thing I’m going to tell you, it has to be done for real. I have to drive. And that’s how Apple wanted to do it. That’s why we wanted to do it, and that’s how we made the film.
“So Apple was of course involved in the development of the film. We had script meetings and they [were constructive about] every script that passed through them. They are a brilliant company and they have done a phenomenal job working with us.
When I ask if there was anything different or special about working with Apple in particular – as opposed to a company like Walt Disney Pictures, Bruckheimer’s co-producer on the five Pirates of the Caribbean films – he is quick to praise Apple’s talent for developing innovative camera technologies: “Well, the good news is that Apple is a technology company. And they gave us the iPhone camera [to film with]an improved version of it.
“So we had one of the [Apple’s] cameras on nine drivers in real cars – not ours [mock] cars; real racing cars. And some of the images you see are [captured at] 220 mph, whether it’s Max (Verstappen) driving, Lewis [Hamilton] drive, or Brad [Pitt] and Damson [Idris]both of whom drove themselves.
The “improved iPhone camera” that Bruckheimer is referring to is actually an Apple-designed version of the cockpit camera used in real-life Formula 1 broadcasts. The problem with these cameras is that they capture images at a lower resolution than needed for a multi-million dollar Hollywood blockbuster. So Apple built its own high-resolution, shock-resistant cockpit camera using iPhone parts, including an iPhone battery and a camera sensor powered by an anonymous A-series chip (Sony also developed a new Rialto Mini camera for the same purpose).
As Wired notes, the custom firmware used to run this Apple-made camera actually led to two new features in the iPhone 15 Pro: log encoding and support for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) workflow. Talk about a mutually beneficial partnership.
Before letting Bruckheimer get back to planning Top Gun 3, National Treasure 3And Pirates of the Caribbean 6 (yes, really), I ask him if he ever saw Apple CEO Tim Cook jump into an F1 car while filming the movie:
“First of all, [he] I can’t get in the car,” laughs Bruckheimer. “The seat is molded to your body. I mean, it takes an F2 driver almost a month before they can get into an F1 car. This shows how difficult these vehicles are to drive. It takes 35 people just to start the car! It’s an incredible sport – very expensive, and the technical knowledge is incredible.
I’ll take that as a “no” then.
F1: The film will be broadcast on Apple TV on December 12.
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