There’s nothing like a bit of macho melodrama to get bums in the movie theater seats, and legendary Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer knows that unspoken truth better than most.
Just three years later Top Gun: Maverick Breathing new life into the action movie genre, Bruckheimer reunited with director Joseph Kosinski and writer Ehren Kruger on F1: The Moviea popcorn blockbuster that quickly became the most successful sports movie of all time and the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career.
Did Apple have its sights set on a lucrative live sports deal all along? Maybe. But as Bruckheimer tells me before F1At the debut of Apple TV on December 12, the iPhone maker was as excited (if not more) about the filmmaking process as any traditional movie studio.
“Apple wanted to make the movie we made,” explains Bruckheimer in London. “They really wanted him. Eddy Cue, who is [senior VP of Services] at Apple, he’s a big sports car enthusiast and he’s actually on the board of Ferrari, so it really helped that it was someone who was really interested in the sport, who loved F1 and wanted to make sure we did it right.
They are a brilliant company and they did a phenomenal job working with us.
Jerry Bruckheimer
“And when Joe [Kosinski] called brad [Pitt] And he told the story, Brad said, ‘Look, the only thing I’m going to tell you is that 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 movie.
“So Apple was involved in the development of the movie, of course. We had script meetings and [were constructive about] every script that passed through them. “They are a brilliant company and they did a phenomenal job working with us.”
When I ask if there’s anything different or special about working specifically with Apple, as opposed to a company like Walt Disney Pictures, Bruckheimer’s co-producer on the five pirates of the caribbean movies: He’s quick to praise Apple’s ability to develop 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 [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 from Max (Verstappen) driving, Lewis [Hamilton] drive, or brad [Pitt] and Damson [Idris]who were driving on their own.”
The ‘enhanced iPhone camera’ Bruckheimer refers to is actually an Apple-designed version of the cockpit camera used in real-world Formula 1 broadcasts. The problem with those 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 unnamed A-series chip (Sony also developed a new Rialto Mini camera for the same purpose).
As Wired points out, the custom firmware used to run this Apple-made camera actually led to two new features on 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 plan again Top Gun 3, National Treasure 3and Pirates of the Caribbean 6 (yes, really), I ask him if he ever saw Apple CEO Tim Cook get into an F1 car during the filming of the movie:
“First of all, [he] I can’t get in the car,” Bruckheimer laughs. “The seat adapts to the body. I mean, it takes almost a month for an F2 driver to get into an F1 car. That’s how hard these things are to drive. It takes 35 people just to start the car! It is an incredible sport, very expensive and the technical knowledge is incredible.”
So I’ll take that as a “no.”
F1: The Movie begins streaming on Apple TV on December 12.
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