How Ford v Ferrari Recreated Mind-Blowing Racing Scenes | Cinematography Breakdown

This episode of Indy Mogul is brought to you by Storyblocks. We've had some contact with our cameras but here in the cars -- Wait did you say we had contact with the cameras? Yeah we didn't lose a camera or like What does contact. Hey what is going on Indy mogul my name is Ted today I'm here with Phedon Papamichael the cinematographer behind the movie Ford Versus Ferrari. Today we'll be breaking into the movie in terms of the cinematography, the lighting, the lenses, the camera, and breaking into everything about the visual style and a couple of scenes so Phedon, what was the overall experience of shooting Ford V. Ferrari. Well it's my fifth collaboration with James Mangold so I I knew what it meant working with him I mean he's he's like a brother to me I'm you know we did Identity and then Walk the Line or 3:10 to Yuma, Night and Day which also had a lot of action you know so I was I'm into cars, I'm into that period, the movies that inspired me are from the sixties I grew up in Europe so you know French new-wave Brigitte Bardot cool cars I was aware of this story and I was aware of the GT this is ten miles so that the GT40 I mean I've always had a connection to it I mean grew up Munich Germany watched Formula One and I watched Niki Lauda you know have his accident burn live in this car on TV when I was 12 so we we found our way and we approached a very similar to the way we do any dramatic film which is tell the action through ten miles and the driver and tell and reveal and show a lot of action through his perspective and we don't really punch in we don't use multiple cameras which a lot of action movies do the long lens and the wide lens at the same time. We like to physically get close. To me that what's interesting about cinematography is capturing these little moments that the actors give you. And well the visual style of the film there's a lot of inspirations here what were the main things that inspired the look? You know we have so many tools right now that we could apply you know drones and hair colors and cable cans and amazing camera cars with Russian arms and we've all seen you know we're so exposed to incredible action scenes Fast and Furious Nine and Bourne and we just realized you know nothing beats really sending an actor out there on the car that is you know either driven by him or driven like it's called a pod car which is like basically this with an extended chassis where a precision driver is driving it but the actors sitting in the car. Watching Grand Prix and Le Mans, Steve McQueen's Le Mans pretty early on settled on okay it's gonna be a widescreen movie too for aspect ratio I wanted to shoot anamorphic and I wanted to shoot the Alexa LF I felt just the characteristics and the flares of the anamorphic just looked sexy and the cars look good you know and that's also a look that conveys a little bit you know that period because you use that glass that's not quite as sharp and clean and little glows and the practicals on the headlights you know it's just body I wanted. The issue was they don't cover the sensor so Dan Sasaki this lens guru at Panavision he's saying to us "Well you know I can expand them and then you know they can cover it" I'm like well can you really expand them because we're gonna shoot in like two weeks basically it'd be a prototype you know there had never been done what was the final look it really interesting fall-off, a shallower depth of field, the way things rendered it was it was beautiful, it had exactly the qualities I was looking for. Let's go see exactly what that lens and camera combination looks like in a couple clips let's play the first clip. Well this is the introduction hanger for the second the duce in the Michigan factory of course the the movie was all shot in Los Angeles so we took a band and warehouse downtown it was quite the elaborate set because we, you know, it's a manufacturing plant and we had to buy like 30 of these Ford Falcons and create these assembly lines. And so all of this was built in production design? All this was done all these lamps, assembly line, really prepared for this one scene and the craziest part is that we only had one day to shoot the scene so this was a very very labor-intensive set all this here it's all completely covered and sealed by LED light panels. So none of that is actually real sunlight coming in? This is-- No those are, that's like, a huge box. Okay let's let's draw this out hold on one second, so what is the scene look like? You know so here you have this big factory right the Sun in reality this is east and it starts here and it's gonna arc during the day here by creating a big box that's basically a scaffolding it's completely sealed but then putting these light mats everywhere here just a gigantic wall of LEDs you you have consistent ambience which is streaming for here you're not dealing with big Condors or flyswatters that are blocking the Sun you needed the control of it so here we'd left some spaces so we bring in some beams as you go to some of that other angles and we did put atmospheres so you get a little bit of hard light introduced coming through very often people tell me you like natural light and why do you use so many big it's like because we inspired but what the natural light does but we unfortunately you know unlike a still photographer that can pick that beautiful moment I mean we actually have to maintain this moment did you rig all these lights here too all of that is period practical fixtures that our department provides the fixtures and then we provide the sources at very end of the factory there's actually a big green screen so you can extend it because you know we only have 30 cars it's supposed to look like they're assembling thousands of cars okay the second scene here we go ready alright next scene yeah so this is the interior shelby america which you know was shot in the aircraft hangar at ontario but in reality when Shelby got funding from Ford he moved his little shop and then his to LAX to big hangar and started you know developing for gt40s and then they would use the runway at LAX they waited for the last plane to leave at 1:00 a.m. let's say to Tokyo and then they would go out on the runway and test the cars so that's actually true but this is a very interesting shot of a lot of people ask me about because he's listening to me race and we wanted the effect it's actually people go wow that's amazing who came up with that idea guy ago it's actually scripted that was in the script so then we were like okay great well okay it script it so how do we do this and you know we thought of many different ways I'm like okay well maybe we get these cutouts and we take a very sharp or hard light like an open-face you know so you know we had a little cutout basically like cut out little cars and like I mean you know for six feet long and you know and then we're gonna do it like that but it's just having a light on a dolly and moving it across this is cardboard yeah that like literally like a four-bed cardboard and cut out the cars and like that's what that is actually no that's not what it is I go like that I don't know yeah so but here in reality was a big car trailer parked and I'm like let's just see what if we just use this actual car trailer wait this complication on the day of yeah yeah this planning beforehand no no I mean that happened to be there and we got a you know extra slack of cable and I had like four or five guys actually mount this and then literally just physically pull it like run with it and we did it with real cars in the real hangar and I looks great you know I mean if you were stars doing it it would look like this doesn't reload and look like they know where they're doing you know okay I'm with the lighting in this space I used a lot of these practicals fluorescent tubes then nabis this this light that you're seeing over here with the round light that's a period light fixture and they're abusing those we call them the double headed monster then I use them everywhere so that's what I use to motivate their key light was I'm doing some color separation to something the sources that are hitting them warmer and I'm playing these sort of work light fluorescent banks bluer I mean here you see again that work light just right down the middle because I'm also trying to put the sources in the shot and as I'm darling and moving you see that the flares it keeps the image more alive and it creates these wonderful optical effects you know it's a classic old-school Hollywood filmmaking you know we didn't try to get too fancy with it you really don't want to overpower with visuals I mean they're real quick on a remind everybody about our wonderful friends over at story blocks which is the most reliable source of footage for people doing backflips for real though we got Indy mogul can rest easy knowing that literally anything we want to find can be searched over at story blocks in fact great recently we needed footage of the big bang for a video and because there weren't any cameras around then we went to story blocks which I apparently had cameras back then because thought of being but a boom big bang shot and since star blocks offers a subscription plan for unlimited downloads for something like seven hundred ninety thousand HD and 4k clips we didn't have to waste time arguing over which clip to use because there was plenty of perfect ones that we were all happy with so we just downloaded a whole bunch of them solid work best in the Edit later and at just seventeen dollars a month for unlimited video it is absolutely worth it get started today by going over to story blacks comm slash Indy mogul what you're gonna put in the link in the description down below but now back to the episode all right well here you see our pits so this where the cars are driving on it's actually a little airstrip so all these pits were build it's a notch set for the cars pull over all the mechanics are working all the people above that's all real it's all built it's probably you know 300 yards long everything you see left-hand the frame when we shot it you have the wall the very well with advertising maybe one roll of people just along the wall and behind them is green screen so here you have our big Raceway over here is big in the Pettibone's with blue screen panels is all blue screen here and then at the end you have blue screens too but enough so the cars can drive out because the runway actually keeps going for quite a business but problem because of errant ation of the runway is that the Sun comes up here and then goes here and then so in the morning it'd be all shot at where we're shooting so but I would take advantage of that I would do all the dusk scenes that were required the overcast scenes the rain scenes while the Sun was not hitting us directly then usually like at noon or 12:30 of the Sun would come over top we try to break for lunch in the worst part of the day and then come back from lunch when the Sun was here and here and here and here in setting that's why you have all these beautiful day scenes for the end and the where people are like wow you shot everything in gold now or it's like yeah because we come back from lunch and we'd lose light really fast and it was setting pretty quick to have you know condors here Condor here comes in each basket to Aries sky panels which were 360s the biggest ones they're not a hard light but they give you a lot of this ambience and then in addition I would use two movers basically like to have on a rock and roll stay or what yeah these are staged like their remote control you can adjust them you can and then you've wid those I could pick off specific things like spot that moving in highlight a certain area like I don't like that kind of you know create pools of Lights here for example you see I mean business ambience which also needs to light the rain and create a glow on the rain rain always wants to be backlit create these kicks and these little flashes of light on the floor and stuff like that those are most of the movers yeah then you know you pick out certain things you know here all this stuff there is actual water in town a lot of the water is actually coming spraying off the cars that are driving and front and next to them so what you're seeing on the headlights and all that that's real water but for the wider shots like this you know bay is digital rain being added here the trick really what made it look best is this kind of stuff this mist on your on the ground tracking with them you're in a camera car which stuff looks the most dynamic and the best one you're really close to the car is really low on why that you know when you penny car in the long lens just doesn't look fast there's situations where the tracking less than the foot inches I mean we've had some contact with our cameras but here in the cars a good contact yeah yeah we didn't lose a camera or like this contact with BT really you're getting you know clipping that boxer happens now these close-ups like they extreme close-ups a lot of em are also done just with hard mounts then we would also just have them being driven around in this pop car and that's why you're getting you know a lot of the real interactive light you get all the light moving across his face and the vibration that you see is also something that's happening for real I mean it's it's you know these cars are really shaking tell me about the camera car is if it's possible to kind of draw what some of these rigs look like the pod cars like you have this where the driver who's controlling is sitting up here but then you have these hostess traits where you know you get profiles you have hook mounts or suction cups here that are putting your camera here like shooting forward you know we have our camera car which is everything is here is like pipe rigs and you can put little cameras low in the back but we called it the Frankenstein carb is much more controllable than something with an arm and the arm could swing and all that so you can actually have this car like that shot we see where two cars are like almost touching the Liao's that precision drivers really to cut it close and really have these cars come up inches away and we have many shots where the cameras are mounted in the front and then a race car will just cut in super close and end up like in front of it were the taillights like just coming in and flaring his lenses and and he will hit the brakes and then and then you know this car can fall back and he can accelerate away and another car can cut in and in in pursuit so you know you can create a lot of really great dynamic driving shots that way well if I didn't thank you so much for breaking down the movie it's absolutely insanely shot obviously we could go on friends starting leave beautiful we could go on forever also a huge thank you to star a black start saving both time and money just like us by heading over to store.com slash Indy mogul Indy mobile thank you so much for watching of course and of course we will catch you guys next time not a single camera was lost know what about people nobody

Channel: Indy Mogul

Views: 134,830

Keywords: best cinematography, production design, car mounts, hostess trays, podcar, camera, arri alexa, panavision lenses, james mangold, car film, driving shots, racing scenes, filming in vehicles, studio rig, featurette, feature film, behind the scenes, footage, anamorphic lenses, film school, editing, sound design, tips and tricks, hollywood, vanity fair, insider

Id: o377W_ZwW5E

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 13 2020