Mad Max Research

Task:

Produce a fact file for the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road.

1. The film was directed by George Miller
2. Seale describes Miller as both a 'single minded film maker and one of the nicest people you will ever meet'
3. The 3D camera rig had to be small enough to go through the windows of the truck but this was difficult as 3D equipment is very bulky.
4. The cameras had to be waterproof and dust proof because of the harsh desert locations and shooting conditions.
5. An active cooling system was required as the cameras generated to a lot of heat.
6. They switched to 2D shooting which was a major shift in approach. It made the shoot much more straightforward.
7. Production involved the use of Alexa Plus, Alexa M, Cannon 5D, Edge arm, Phantom and many other cameras.
8. The film editor of Mad Max was Margaret Sixel.
9. Sixel was given 480 hours of footage that needed to be cut down and edited.
10. The final edit lasted 2 hours and consisted of 2700 individual shots.
11. The film took 16 years to make from when the idea originally came around.
12. Almost every shot in the film was centre frame.
13. The film was originally planned for shooting in 2003 in Namibia but had to be delayed after the beginning of the Iraq war caused trouble with shipping and security in Namibia.
14. Production began again in in 2009.
15. Mad Max: Fury Road was released 30 years after the last film, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
16. Charlize Theron shaved her head for the role in this film and had to wear a wig for A Million Ways to Die in The West.
17. Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy did not get along at all, and Theron got to the point of not even speaking to Hardy on set.
18. Constant whether delays and location issues caused the film to be delayed multiple times. Reshoots also caused delays.
19. Liam Fountain auditioned for the part of Max but lost it to Tom Hardy. He played Max in the 2011 short film Mad Max Renegade.
20. The film was shot in sequence and the storyboards were completed before the script.
21. Over 80% of the effects seen in the film were real practical effects, stunts, make up and sets.
22. CGI was used sparingly mainly to enhance the Namibian landscape, remove stunt rigging and for Charlize Theron's left arm which is prosthetic in the film.
23. Mel Gibson was originally going to have a role as a drifter in the film but never came to fruition.
24. They were shooting in the Namibian desert for six months. However, some of them spent up to 10 months in the desert.
25. The 150 vehicles seen in the film were conceived by production designer Colin Gibson.
26.There was over 3500 storyboards for the film.
27. The film project entered "development hell" after having to deal with 3 production delays, financial troubles and post 9/11 travel and shipping restrictions.
28. The film had a $125 million budget.
29. During filming the President of Warner Bros. Jeff Robinov flew out to the set to evaluate the situation and apparently the report was not glowing - it turned out that the production of Fury Road was at least 5 days behind schedule.
30. The studio then assigned producer Denise di Novi to supervise production and report any further problems.
31. Warner Bros. also decided to keep an eye on the budget as Miller had a history of going over budget.
32. In 2003, the script of the film, which was insisted to be made by Warner Bros. after panicking about it, had little dialogue.
33. After Miller decided to abandon filming in 3D, the studio then decided to create a 3D version in post-production.
34. The film was originally supposed to shot in the Australian desert but, for the first time in decades, it rained and grass and plants grew and so shooting had to be moved to Namibia.
35. The CG cars were built from photogrammetry surveys, processed in Photoscan.
36. During production, an edge arm was used to film 95% of the footage. An edge arm costs $500,000.
37. Almost every shot in the movie was center framed. By doing this, every shot occupied the same space and so editor Margaret Sixel could amplify, accelerate and cut so simply and quickly with the confidence that the visual information would be understood.
38. During the sandstorm scene, DOP Andrew Jackson felt that there at least had to be real vehicles seen driving as this allowed an element of realism to remain in the camera movement.
39. The 150 vehicles involved in the film were rigged, driven and crashed in real life due to the efforts of special effects supervisors Andy Williams and Dan Oliver and supervising stunt coordinator Guy Norris.
40. Hundreds of visual effects artists, led by overall VFX supervisor Andrew Jackson, spent considerable time crafting more than 2000 visual effects shots in the movie.
41. Plate manipulation was carried out by colourist Eric Whipp, including distinctive graphic styles and sky replacements.
42. The Citadel location was produced via a combination of principal photography in Namibia, shooting in Sydney and visual effects work from lloura informed by actual rock cliffs photographed in Australia and re-worked using photogrammetry.
43. The helicopter they had for mountain shots had to stand by for 10 days just so they could get the shot in good conditions.
44. They started using photoscan first to build textured terrain models, and then experimenting with the software they began to build anything they wanted.
45. On the rock-platform balcony, the crowd below was actually only 150 extras who were then extended into 30,000 sims.
46. It was supposed to be an animated 3D film, but it ended up being a 3D live action film.
47. In 2013 the producers had to go back and film additional scenes.
48. They spent over $43 million on TV advertising.
49. Filming originally concluded in 2001.
50. The stars signed up to be in the film in 2010.
51. They followed real dynamics and physics, since a great deal of crash reference footage the director had sourced tended to show that movement. This was based on Miller's initial ideas.

52. Jackson incorporated a dust element shoot for swirling action close to camera and streams of sand blowing off the vehicles, this was to ensure the toxic storm looked somewhat grounded.

53. They blew up a part of the quarry for the scene they desired.

54. The scene for the night time part, was actually filmed in day light however, it was transformed to a blue environment by colourist Eric Whipp based on a suggestion made by Jackson.

55. To create the day to night time scene they went a little more stylized and graphic with it.

56. Conceived as a practical effect, the refinery was blown up in Namibia, with Iloura then compositing in the other cars and Max on the foreground pole.

57. They took the mobile refinery out in the desert and drove it remotely, surrounded by camera cars and a helicopter, and blew it up.

58. Jackson went back out and shot equivalent plates for all the chase vehicles to be around it.

59. The final chase sequence was also one in which The Third Floor delivered previs, under previsualization supervisor Glenn Burton. 

60. The final car chase consists of a lot of characters and a lot of switching vehicles and concurrent action.

61. 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.

62. The sequence of the final crash made use of numerous Namibia plates, including stationary action that would be enhanced by moving backgrounds, canyon augmentation, a War Rig and other vehicle crash stunts.

63. Jackson even engaged Eric Whipp's iPhone at one point to film extra elements to be comp'd into the War Rig crash.

64. Miller wanted to use real dust for the end, so they went one floor up on a balcony and put a whole bunch of dry wall rocks and dust and crashed them down and filmed it at 240 fps for the slow-mo bit at the end, because they did not want to use CG.

65. The frenetic pace and complexity of the shoot in Namibia meant that backgrounds and skies were not always consistent from shot to shot.

66. Whenever they changed the sky, they tried to make it as graphic as they could.

67. The problem they had with Namibia was that there was a weird foggy atmosphere which rolls in the morning.

68. A CG car was used most dramatically in one scene, in which a twister picks up a vehicle and a group of War boys into the air.

69. George Miller also made Happy Feet 2.

70. There is assumed to be another Mad Max, after filming Fury Road, called Mad Max: Furiosa.

71. Tom Hardy apologised to Miller for being frustrated with what Miller wanted during shooting, he apologised at a venue.

72. Furiosa (Charlize Theron), was the hero of the story which is unusual as it is normally the male.

73. Due to Hardy apologising for his behaviour towards Miller, it shows how much he appreciates the film after the finished product.

74. Mad Max: Fury Road outruns Hot Pursuit for the title of top-spending movie of the week.

75. Fury Road repeated its No.1 position on the strength of a slightly lower estimated $7.5 million spent on 957 national airings across 42 networks.

76. Concerns diminished when the complicated 3D shooting rigs developed for the film were scrapped.

77. Apparently, Miller also used post techniques to degrade the footage, increasing its grain and contrast, and crunched the focus digitally. He did not want clean shots; he wanted the audience to feel as if they had sand in their eyes.

78. In the period of time between June 21-September 9 2015, the five most pirated films - led by Warner Bros. were downloaded on torrent networks worldwide 85 million times.

79.The film generated $374 million at the box office worldwide.

80. It also had 22.90 million shares on torrent networks over the summer.

81. The jacket Max (Tom Hardy) wore, was a replica of Gibson's jacket in the Mad Max's he had the role in.

82. Miller was looking for someone with 'an animal charisma'. Miller says about Tom Hardy, 'he felt so much like the character.'

83. Tom Hardy heard about the film on the casting circuit, but 'didn't think I'd be in the running'. He assumed it would go to an Australian actor.

84. Former Skins star Nicholas Hoult, 25, hadn't watched the original films before he was asked to audition, but when he did, he 'was blown away by the fact that so many things I'd seen in pop culture were basically based upon this world that George created.'

85. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley admits that it was a tougher shoot than 2011 Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

86. The film was announced back in 2009, but it was another two years until they started filming.

87. Mad Max: Fury Road is not a CGI film.

88. Its foundations are laid on a past franchise, but Miller hopes the movie marks a new direction, and has already penned two more films, should this one be a success.

89. Mad Max: Fury Road is a continuation of the 1979 'Mad Max'.

90. Tom Hardy, during the scene when he is attached to the vehicle, would of been difficult for him due to the dust, sand, etc going into his face and eyes.

91. When Jackson was looking at the storyboards, he could not understand where each shot was located, due to the amount of storyboards there were.

92. Miller had a script prepared but he knew it wasn’t good, he already knew how everything would of been set out, he had it all planned out in his head.

93. Whipp believes that trickiest part was the day to night section.

94. Whipp was able to use a 'mishmash' of tools to make the sky replacements work.

95. A positive of using a postvis process is how shots are half a second to a second long.

96. The camera used to film the final crash sequence was the Phantom Camera and it takes 300 frames per second.

97. The motorbikes they used were Freestylers.

98. The trailer of Mad Max didn't show the whole film, unlike any other film.

99. Brendon McCarthy worked with Miller to produce the storyboard.

100. It took 18 years to storyboard and draft.