The Big Picture
- Director Neill Blomkamp faced the challenge of making the Gran Turismo movie feel like the video game, by shooting intense racing scenes without CGI.
- Multiple cameras were used at a time to capture every detail from various angles, resulting in stunning visuals and immersive scenes.
- Drones were employed to keep the camera steady and replicate the experience of playing the game, giving the racing scenes a dynamic and authentic feel.
Gran Turismo, the video game adaptation from Sony Pictures, is a hard movie to film, with its intense racing scenes which are shot without CGI where possible, and also carrying the burden of needing to feel as if they’ve been taken directly out of the video game it takes its title from. That posed a challenge to director Neill Blomkamp, but as two of the main players involved in the film’s production, Blomkamp covered every base and left nothing to chance.
Speaking with Collider’s Steve Weintraub in an interview that took place before the SAG-AFTRA strike, star Archie Madekwe and the man he portrays on-screen, Jann Mardenborough, the inspiration behind the film, revealed the scale of shooting and the technology behind the film, revealing that the number of cameras set up for any one scene could reach double figures. “It was a first for many of us, pretty much all of us on set,” said Madekwe. “We would shoot sometimes up to 10, 11 cameras at a time. It was so unbelievable the amount of footage we were able to take. David Harbour just told a story earlier of us shooting super wide, and David asking Neill, “Are you gonna come in anytime soon?” He’s like, “Oh, I am in, dude. I’m in.” He was shooting on this unbelievably long lens, and unbelievably close, but wanted to keep the feeling of distance, and these cameras just were so perfect for capturing that.” He went on to say:
“Sometimes they were like football fields away and able to capture unbelievably close and microscopic detail. It was stunning. It just meant, we just knew Jacques Jouffret, our DP, we just knew we were in the best hands possible. It really gave us the opportunity to play so much because the cameras could keep their distance, and you feel totally immersed in the scene”
Madekwe expanded, adding that by employing so many cameras, Blomkamp could ensure every minute detail was captured from every possible angle, leading to some very exciting visuals in the finished product as well as some unexpectedly surprising shots that represented moments from Mardenborough’s life. In his own words, “We also knew that we were capturing so much footage at once, and that is kind of unbelievable. You’re being covered from all angles. It doesn’t matter where you turn, there’s a lens on you somewhere. That means that you’re not just going over and over again, the same tiny scenes, you’ve caught 360 of it in just one take, and that was amazing. That was really cool.”
Behind the Joystick
As for making the film’s racing scenes look like they could be taken directly from the PlayStation series on which the movie is based, Mardenborough explained that director Blomkamp employed a number of drones to keep the camera as steady and fixed as possible, as a gamer would accurately experience while behind the joystick. While now a professional driver, Mardenborough is a gamer at heart, which meant he was ideally placed to tell the director if it felt authentic or not. Madekwe explained:
“The scenes in the movie use a lot of drones. It looks like a Gran Turismo game intro, so it looks very dynamic, but it’s not, it’s real life. These scenes haven’t been used before in a recent movie, nothing is static. And yeah, I’m very happy. It’s shot beautifully, and Neill, all the guys, they did an amazing, amazing job. Personally, I love the scenes in the pits with the rain. It looks intense, it looks real, it looks how it is. There’s a lot going on with the detail. Yeah, I’m very, very happy.”
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Khushi Patel is a science fiction author who lives in Austin, Texas. She has published three novels, and her work has been praised for its originality and imagination. Khushi is a graduate of Rice University, and she has worked as a software engineer. She is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and her books have been nominated for several awards.
