Apple Original Film’s “F1” is many things.
It is, for one, the story of Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a washed-up Formula One driver who is recruited by a failing team, to help a hotshot young driver (Damson Idris, in a breakthrough performance) focus and get their team on the path to glory. It is also, under the stylish direction of Joseph Kosinski, a true technological marvel. Among other things, Kosinski and his team figured out ways of putting actors on the tracks, alongside the actual racers, and the audience inside the driver’s seat for an immersive, one-of-a-kind experience.
Part of that immersion comes from the movie’s dexterous sound mix.
“There’s nothing quite like the energy of a real F1 race – the crowd, the cars. We wanted it to be special and different and definitely raised the bar and made us all realize the level we’re going to have to work at to get this right,” Kosinski told TheWrap during the latest installment of our How I Did It video series, presented by Apple Original Films.
Kosinski was joined by Gary Rizzo, the re-recording mixer on “F1,” for the sit-down. “This was one of the most complex sound tracks that I’ve ever worked on,” Kosinski said — which is saying something considering some of Kosinski’s earlier films were “Tron: Legacy,” “Oblivion” and “Top Gun: Maverick.”
The process started with the “F1” recording team at actual races, traveling around the world with the production, placing microphones on the real F1 cars. As Kosinski noted, there are four different engines across the 20 cars. “We had to record all those different engines to make it sound authentic as possible. Luckily we had Gary and a team of people and I knew they were up for the challenge,” Kosinski said.
“There are microphones placed all around the track, so you could actually listen to any one particular car as it’s coming around any one particular curve on any one particular track,” Rizzo explained. “Being able to narrow it down to that level of specificity was a treat.”
Luckily for the “F1” team, they had seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton as one of the film’s producers. “What I learned with Lewis was how much he uses his ears when driving to understand where he is on the track, where the other cars are around him. You can play him the sound of an engine and he can tell you what track that car is on, based on the shifting pattern and even hearing things like the pit wall, which side of the car is on,” Kosinski said. “He quickly showed us where we got it right and where we got it wrong, and the precision required to pull this off.”
Adding to that authenticity, Rizzo explained, was the use of real-life F1 announcers in the film. “As soon as I heard those voices in this film, I knew that at least the hard-core F1 fans would lean in a little bit closer and smile a little bit,” Rizzo said. “That signature and that thumbprint brought the authenticity to a whole other level.”
Get more behind-the-sounds details from Rizzo and Kosinski in TheWrap’s latest How I Did It, which you can watch in full above.
“F1” will stream on Apple TV beginning Dec. 12.
