In an era when CGI is getting so advanced that one movie is bringing back James Dean from the dead to star in it, the cinematographer Phedon Papamichael is relieved there are still some filmmakers working today who like to tell stories with real-life things.
Known for his numerous collaborations with Alexander Payne (he was nominated for an Oscar for his crisp black-and-white photography in Payne's "Nebraska") and James Mangold, Papamichael's latest work with the latter director had audiences on the edges of their seats over the weekend.
"Ford v Ferrari" rode critical acclaim and award-season buzz to win the domestic box office over the weekend with a $31 million haul. That's quite a feat for a movie catered to the 30-and-over crowd.
The movie, based on a true story, follows the car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and the driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) as they try to build a car for Ford that's fast enough to beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.
To tell the against-all-odds story, there are many car-racing sequences, and according to Papamichael, he and Mangold were in complete agreement on how they would be shot: using real cars.
"I think it's very important to put the audience in the point-of-view of the driver," Papamichael told Business Insider hours before the movie had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
Though visual effects can pretty much recreate anything these days, there's nothing like the real thing — and you can feel it when watching Miles get behind the wheel in this movie.
To pull off the race sequences, Papamichael said 30 cars were built from scratch. Many of them were able to drive as fast as 90 to 100 mph with cameras strapped to them. So there was very little faking. From the vibrations the drivers felt from driving cars at high speeds to the reaction of the actor Tracy Letts, who plays Henry Ford II in the movie, when he's being whipped around by Damon's Shelby in a car on the test track, it's all authentic.
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"That's all real," Papamichael said of the Henry Ford II scene, for which the actors were placed in a rig with an interior made to look like a Ford race car (the person really driving the car is in front of the rig, off camera). "We had them do two takes, but the first take was perfect, to be honest."
And to execute the thrilling scenes in pit row at La Mans, Papamichael said it was all shot on a 200-yard set.
"We had to coordinate all those cars taking off at the pits," he said. "We only had four or five takes, and some cars would stall, like a real race. It was a great challenge but also a great achievement."
In the entire movie, only one car was created through CGI (the rest of the visual effects in the movie were to place crowds at the races), Papamichael said.
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"The CGI car is in the shot where we come in from high in the sky down to the car," he said. "Everything else are real cars."
The cinematographer said making a movie like "Ford v Ferrari" was what still excites him to continue in the business. He gets offered to shoot Marvel movies all the time but always declines, he said.
"I wouldn't be inspired by them," he said. "I don't want to be on a stage with blue screen for weeks and weeks at a time. It's not interesting to me."
What interests him is chasing a shot that seems impossible. His favorite in "Ford v Ferrari" is one he didn't think was going to work out: The long shot of Miles' tragic final test drive at the end of the movie barely made it in the can.
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"That was the Honda test track out in Mojave, but out of necessity, we only had one day, and we were losing the light, and I was like, 'Let's just jump in.' We literally had one round on that track. We were just winging it and it came out beautiful," he said. "Sometimes you have to get lucky."
"Ford v Ferrari" is playing in theaters.
