Apple Had to Invent a Camera for the F1 Movie Because Broadcast Ones Weren't Good Enough
I have no idea if the Brad Pitt F1 movie will be any good, but there's no question that the creators have taken the cinematography to heart. The director, Joseph Kosinski, is famous for his work on Top Gun: Maverick , after all, which was absolutely dazzling. To that end, Apple, the film's primary financier, developed a special camera using the guts of an iPhone to capture onboard footage, because the Formula 1's typical broadcast cameras weren't good enough for Hollywood duty.
Obviously, filmmakers strapped many different kinds of cameras in different positions on the fictional APX GP cars that Pitt and his co-star Damson Idris drive in the movie. However, they needed something to get that familiar offset overhead onboard shot that we see in F1 broadcasts. The cameras that normally capture that angle during actual racing record at a resolution too low for the big screen, and don't offer granular control for things like color grading that movies require. Apple's solution was to pack the camera system of an iPhone into one of the small winglet pods that hang off the air intake above the driver's head.
Wired and YouTuber Bobby Tonelli published deep dives into the little module this week, and it contains a lot of tech. You've got an iPhone 15 Pro's camera sensor, backed by one of Apple's A-series processors. There's also an iPhone battery in there, as well as a neutral density filter to control the intensity of light reaching the sensor. The lens is assuredly of a higher quality than something you'd find on the back of a consumer smartphone. The camera pod can be easily removed, and plugs into an iPad for adjustments over a USB-C cable. Bobby Tonelli via YouTube
In addition to all that, Apple had to test the unit to ensure it could stand up to the rigorous stresses of, you know, being fixed to one of the world's fastest race cars, that can hit up to 220 mph in straights and pull over 5G in corners. It also had to match the lightness of the camera system that F1 cars normally run, because we all know that they pay quite close attention to weight in this sport.
Naturally, all footage the system captures is in Apple's lossless ProRes format, but the camera cannot be controlled wirelessly, as that's supposedly against FIA regulations. So, the production team had to connect an iPad to the little camera pod over a USB-C cable to make necessary adjustments, as well as start and stop the recording. At left, the APX GP F1 car drives around the Silverstone Circuit during the 2024 British Grand Prix weekend, for content capture. At right, Brad Pitt gets out of the car during filming at the 2024 Mexican Grand Prix. Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto, David Davies/PA Images
This view into the solutions required to make a film with footage from F1 cars is fascinating; it's also exactly what happens when you've got the world's biggest tech company bankrolling the whole thing. Again, I don't know if F1 will enter the echelon of great racing movies, but I do suspect it'll at least be beautiful to watch, and that counts for a lot.
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