Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment No viewer of F1 should be surprised by the amount of real-life action weaved into Joseph Kosinski's riveting film. As the decorated artisans behind the box-office smash told a packed house in Los Angeles, following a special THR screening last month, everything from its look to its pace to its sound was drawn directly from races around the world - both in research for the story of a retired former prodigy (Brad Pitt) returning to the sport to save a flailing team from the brink, and in the literal material collections. "We were capturing all of the broadcast cameras that Formula One shoots with at all the tracks," said Oscar-winning editor Stephen Mirrione, who won at the Critics Choice Awards for best editing on Sunday. That alone amounted to thousands of hours of footage. Related Stories News Chelsea Handler Zings Ex 50 Cent at Critics Choice Awards After Rapper Turns Toward Diddy's Son Lifestyle How 'KPop Demon Hunters' Star Audrey Nuna Avoided a Wardrobe Malfunction at the Critics Choice Awards Thousands of additional hours of footage, meanwhile, were dedicated to the actual filming of the narrative drama - thus F1's grand, unique challenge was cohesively merging those two strands of the process. Take, for example, the cars that Pitt and costar Damson Idris drove - they were technically F2 vehicles, which could approximate the look of a real F1 car, but did not sound quite the same. "Our job was to basically replace the sound of all the production cars with real F1 sounds," said re-recording mixer Juan Peralta. "Then our biggest challenge was to make every race different, so that you're not just hearing the same thing over and over again. These cars, even though they're fast and they're amazing, don't sound very interesting after two hours." Thus, the racing sequence in Hungary sounded like "a music video." In Las Vegas, it sounded "underwater," playing out in the chaotic head of Pitt's Sonny. Then it's off to Abu Dhabi, where the sound design goes "all out - we do everything." However crafty these elements get, though, it's based in the pulse-pounding realism of what F1 has to offer. "One thing that was really great that [we got] were the [actual] crowds - they had stands of thousands of people," said supervising sound editor Gwendolyn Yates Whittle. "You just can't create that sound." (Her team shared in the Critics Choice Award on Sunday for best sound.) The focus on authenticity extended to the performances. Pitt and Idris worked with a lauded stunt team, including Luciano Bacheta, who served as lead sequence coordinator and a stunt driver. The process began with teaching them how to drive the cars safely, efficiently - and finally, with some flair. "I'd say to Brad, 'I'm behind you, look for me, and when I try and come past you, there are no rules - you can push me off if you want,'" Bacheta said. "And he did. He got a kick out of that." The extensive prep then helped the team pull off exceedingly tight windows of actual shooting time on the tracks. "When we got to Las Vegas, where we only had 10 minutes to get Brad's coverage at night - freezing cold, like 2:00 AM - he was so prepared and able to do it," Bacheta explained. "Las Vegas is one of the two tracks where he hits top speed of 180 miles an hour. He was able to do it all in pretty brutal conditions." As all of this footage and craft was coming together, songwriters and music producers Blake Slatkin and John Mayer started watching cuts of the film in preparation for the song that would end the film, "Drive," to be performed and co-written by Ed Sheeran. (It's been shortlisted for the best-song Oscar.) "So often I think of myself as a boutique - and I do boutique things - but I like being in touch with that part of me that wants to go to the movie theater in the summertime and walk out with a spring in my step and go, yeah, I'm a part of something big," Mayer said. Finding that inspiration through F1 was easy enough. "All it really is is trying to make an audible 'Fuck yeah!' You just want to walk out of theater and go, 'Fuck yeah!'" as Slatkin put it. "We could spend weeks doing our part and trying to get it to sound perfect, but at the end of the day, it sounds like the ethos of: We're having fun. We don't give a shit. We're just naturally rocking." Of course, as the F1 team will tell you, it takes a lot of work to get there. THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day Subscribe Sign Up Writer Roundtable Writers Roundtable: Bradley Cooper, Guillermo del Toro and More Talk Crafting "Infectious" Dialogue and Scripting as Grief Therapy trailers James Marsden Returns as Cyclops in Third 'Avengers: Doomsday' Trailer Heat Vision Hugh Jackman Is a Murderous Outlaw in A24's Violent 'Death of Robin