Wednesday 11 November 2015

Mad Max- Fury Road Facts

100 facts on Mad Max: Fury Road
Director- GEORGE MILLER
Producer- DOUG MITCHELL
Co writer- BRENDAN McCARTHY
EDITOR- MARGARET SIXEL
VFX AND THE VFX STUDIO- PETER JACKSON, TOM WOOD AND ILOURA
SFX SUPERVISOR- ANDREW JACKSON
SUPERVISING STUNT COORDINATOR- GUY NORRIS
CINEMATOGRAPHER- JOHN SEALE
FILM STUDIO- WARNER BROS
PRODUCTION DESIGNER- COLIN GIBSON
COSTUME DESIGNER- JENNY BEAVEN
  1. The film had to be delayed after the beginning of the Iraq War as trouble was caused with shipping and security in Namibia. 
  2. The film was going to be shot in 2D and 3D however changing the lenses proved to be an issue so the film was converted to 3D in post production
  3. Filming was delayed twice and pushed back 2 years
  4. The filming first concluded in December 2012
  5. In Nov 2013 the team had to shoot additional scenes
  6. Warner Bros. insisted on getting a script because there wasn't one in preparation for shooting- only storyboards by Mark Sexton
  7. When did the stars sign up to be in the film?
  8. The film was originally going to be produced in Australia but the rain prevented it.
  9. There was $7 million spent on TV advertising
  10. The crew spent 6 months in the Namibian desert
  11. Cameras had to be waterproof and dust proof
  12. Heat was a design issue
  13. Seale shot most of the film on Arri Alexa cameras, supplemented by far less costly Canons for the crash shots.
  14. CGI was used sparingly mainly to enhance the Namibian landscape, remove stunt rigging and for Charlize Theron’s left hand which in the film is a prosthetic arm.
  15. Originally, Mel Gibson was going to have a role as a drifter in the film, but this never came to fruition.
  16. Once into the testing, Seale found the contrast range between the interiors and the harsh desert exteriors a challenge for the cameras. 
  17. Charlize Theron shaved her head for her role of Furiosa, and had to wear a wig for A Million Ways to Die in The West.
  18. Rumours flew that Charlzie Theron and Tom Hardy, who plays Max, did not get along at all, and that Theron got to the point of not even speaking to Hardy on set.
  19. Constant weather delays and location issues caused the film to be delayed more than once, including cold when it was supposed to be hot, and vice-versa. Reshoots also delayed the final product on countless occasions.
  20. Miller has Peter Jackson’s WETA handling visual f/x, makeup and costume designs for Fury Road.
  21. Miller used post-production techniques to degrade the footage, increasing its grain and contrast, and crunched the focus digitally.
  22. Warner Bros. and Miller agreed to a full 12 month delay so he could continue work on Happy Feet 2 but he’s certainly not shy about the frustrations of making this movie a reality.
  23. Miller had spent a long time away from the genre, with his last three films being Happy Feet, Happy feet 2 and Babe: Pig in the City.
  24. Dean Semler had a programme of testing the 3D cameras that were being developed for the movie according to criteria set by Miller.
  25. The 3D camera rig had to be small enough to go through the windows of the truck where a lot of the action takes place. 
  26. Seale explained a raft of cameras would be needed because Miller did not want to be delayed by a simple lens change which, on a 3D rig, results in a time consuming optical realignment.
  27. It was the first digital film that Seale had ever done and it was at short notice.
  28. Seale admits there is a price to pay in lighting compromises for multi-camera shooting, but it is a price he believes it is worth it.
  29. The switch to 2D shooting was a major shift in approach, making the shoot much more straightforward, but loading post-production with a 2D to 3D conversion.
  30. The camera crew were all over the vehicles with handheld Canons. They'd have wide angle lenses close to actors, and they were bumping around and trying to hang on while the thing was belting in across the desert.
  31. It was said that unwanted camera men in the shot were to be painted out, but that proved to be expensive so that style of photography went out the window and was replaced by the Edge arm, which could get to most of the positions we were able to get to when we were strapped to the vehicles
  32. Production began in 2009
  33. DOP John Seale would use multiple digital cameras to capture incredible practical stunts with more than 150 vehicles conceived by production designer Colin Gibson
  34. Hundreds of visual effects artists, spent considerable amount of time crafting more than 2000 visual effects shots and helping to transform the exquisite photography into the final film
  35. More than 1500 shots overseen by visual effects supervisor Tom Wood and producer Fiona Crawford
  36. Additional work was completed by Method Studios and BlackGinger, with early previs delivered by The Third Floor
  37. The film has been promoted as being a live action stunt driven film
  38. There is little CGI in the film
  39. There’s 2000 VFX shots in the film
  40. The Citadel location was produced via a combination of principal photography in Namibia, shooting in Sydney and visual effects work from Iloura informed by actual rock cliffs
  41. Jackson considered reference locations in Jordan, including the famous Wadi Rum Mountains, but ultimately found suitable cliffs in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
  42. We had the chopper standing by for 10 days waiting for the right filming conditions in the mountains. We didn’t have one cloudy day for a week and a half, but the day we went was just perfect.
  43. Iloura spent significant time re-working the cliff textures and geometry to form the Citadel to the required final look
  44. The rock-platform balcony went through a huge number of iterations
  45. The water flow from the pipes made use of a Houdini simulation for wide shots, with some practical water on set from a rain machine
  46. The water machine sprayed out more than a mist - it was more like rain. The rain splashes on some rocks causing a slight flow and everything above that was VFX
  47. A combination of real photography in Namibia of various cars and additional greenscreen and stage shoots was combined with CG car take-overs, digital doubles and complex fluid and dust simulations by Iloura for the storm.
  48. Additional VFX elements were shot to help tie pieces together and provide for more foreground dust
  49. Although the driving sequence could have been achieved almost completely in CG, it was important from the director’s point of view to shoot actual vehicles driving to retain realistic camera movement
  50. On location in Namibia, production approximated where the twisters in the toxic storm would be located, and then had vehicles drive accordingly
  51. Tom Wood was working on concepts and the look of the twisters and suggested the idea of flames being swept up into the swirling dust cloud
  52. Wood engaged some concept artists to flesh out the storm shots and the twister moments, which Miller then approved
  53. The twister moments were all shot in predominantly bright sunlight on a very flat empty piece of desert which proved difficult trying to control the dust layers and lighting.
  54. They had dust kicked up from the car and they were all glinting and very directionally lit, which then had to be suppressed
  55. They would track the vehicles and put CG replacements in with new directional lighting - or flashed from live to CG and back again, so there could be lightning flashing from all different directions and dust shadowing the cars that they couldn’t have on set
  56. Iloura’s CG cars - also used in other crash shots - were built from photogrammetry surveys, again processed in Photoscan 
  57. Early previs for the shot had the War Boys’ bodies as fixed figures spinning up into the air - this was based on Miller’s initial desire that they followed real dynamics and physics, since a great deal of crash reference footage the director had sourced tended to show that movement.
  58. Wood also sourced crash footage, including from Isle of Man TT motorcycle races.
  59. Iloura applied real life movements (having no control over your limbs) to digi-doubles of the War Boys in rag-doll sim software Endorphin when they were flung off the vehicles, however Miller didn't like the end result
  60. Ultimately Iloura went back to Endorphin with more elaborate sims and key frame animation for the final flying War Boys shots.
  61. The cast and crew spent 10 months in Namibia
  62. Both Iloura and Jackson’s Fury FX group took on the canyon shots, which involved significant environment augmentations
  63. For the rock wall detonation, the initial plan was to use CG sims to achieve the effect.
  64. The War Rig stuck in swampy mud sequence was actually filmed in the Namibian desert in bright daylight, but was then transformed into a blue environment by colorist Eric Whip
  65. Jackson’s rational was that an overexposed image would contain more detail and less noise, and on the Alexa would roll off into the highlights while not quite clipping, and therefore be suitable for grading from day to night.
  66. Editing shots from broad daylight to night time had the team doing versions where the sky was more de-saturated and more cyan
  67. A way of getting the exposure to work had shots that start a little darker and then gets brighter
  68. A mobile refinery being pulled by a Mercedes limo truck explodes with an enormous fireball right in the middle of a throng of chasing vehicles. Conceived as a practical effect, the refinery was blown up in Namibia, with Iloura then composting in the other cars and Max on a foreground pole
  69. The main truck was driven remotely, surrounded by camera cars and a helicopter, and blew up
  70. Andrew Jackson went back out and shot equivalent plates for all the chase vehicles to be around the exploding truck
  71. Originally the final chase was shot on very flat desert and Miller wanted to see the start of the canyon around it - and then composting the vehicles around it, with Max on a pendulum
  72. CG car models in previs were built to the same size and specifications as the practical vehicles in order to work within the limitations of how the cameras and actors could fit within that space
  73. It was also important that the cars did not exceed a given speed so that the action depicted would be true to what they could legally and safely shoot.
  74. The previs had to carefully track where everyone was at a particular beat and help work out the transitions so the characters would be at the right place at the right time
  75. The crash sequence made use of numerous Namibia plates, including stationary action that would be enhanced with moving backgrounds, canyon augmentation, a War Rig and other vehicle crash stunts.
  76. A large amount of dry wall rocks and dust and crashed down and was filmed it at 240 fps on an IPhone 6 for the slow mo bit at the end just because Andrew Jackson didn’t want to do CG dust - he wanted to do real dust
  77. Theron wore a prosthetic and a green sleeve during the shoot that the visual effects team then painted out, adding in a central mechanical piece where necessary.
  78. To fight, Charlize Theron wore a green glove and was asked not to use her left hand
  79. Scenes with foggy skies were replaced in editing to match scenes with blue skies
  80. In Baselight, Whipp (colourist) was able to use a ‘mishmash’ of tools to make the sky replacements work.
  81. Initially Whipp took some on-set footage and experimented with looks, but the hardest part was tracking the sometimes shaky plates
  82. Whipp says that for some shots he had to track the camera by hand.    
  83. Traditional roto and luminance keys were used by Whipp and his team where foreground action would take place in front of skies
  84. Realising early on that the film would require significant visual effects work, Jackson engaged an in-house team to perform postvis.
  85. The other thing that came out of the postvis process was, when your shots are half a second to a second long, the postvis was virtually good.
  86. Much of the expense is likely attributed to the road-ripping vehicles and the creative, but savage weaponry that will appear in the film.
  87. Tom Hardy apologised to director George Miller for not better understanding the filmmaker's vision on set and being frustrated with his process.
  88. Film Editor Margaret Sixel was given over 480 hours of footage to create MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. 
  89. The final edit ran 120 minutes and consisted of 2700 individual shots.
  90. By using “Eye Trace” and “Crosshair Framing” techniques during the shooting, the editor could keep the important visual information in the film vital in the centre of the frame
  91. Liam Fountain auditioned for Max but lost the part to Tom Hardy. Liam Fountain played Max in the 2011 short film Mad Max Renegade, which takes place between the first two films.
  92. Once production began, principal photography took the better part of a year — most of 2012, to be exact.
  93. The film has generated $374 million at the box office worldwide, had 22.90 million shares on torrent networks over the 2015 summer.
  94. Thanks to years of delays and cost overruns, Mad Max: Fury Road ended up costing (according to Entertainment Weekly) $150 million to produce.
  95. There is a fifth addition to the franchise in the works, Mad Max: Furiosa, which Miller could shoot right after he finishes Fury Road.
  96. Mad Max: Fury Road was released May14th 2015 (UK)
  97. Jenny Beavan (Costume) brought in collaborators from the U.K., and employed local workers to create (and distress) the film’s largely leather garments and masks.
  98. The crew had a bunch of little cameras aside from the Alexa Ms. John tested Canon 5Ds and ran them past the visual effects department. While the quality obviously wasn't up to that of an Alexas, the visual effects department said they could be used
  99. Hardy was cast as Max in June 2010, with production planned to begin that November.
  100. Once committed to a production, Seale accepts the parameters of the job and works within them, a process he calls locking your brain down.

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