Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475973
I didn't realize it was your first music video? "My first music video ever! So I kind of came up with the concept of shooting it inside Maverick's hangar, with his plane, and the (Porsche) 911 from the film, and Maverick's bike, and then her out on the runway at Inyokern Airport, which is the airport where Maverick lives in the movie, with her piano on the runway and the fly-by with the P-51. And we shot it in July of last year. It was like 114 degrees, and I was just so impressed with Lady Gaga's commitment in the performance she gave. It reminds me of Tom in some ways, just the energy that she puts into her performance and gives everything she absolutely can into every take. It was a tough shoot because it was so hot. But it was it was a lot of fun." Music videos tend to be very tight shoots? "Yep! We shot it in one day. One day at Inyokern." Sony was proud to associate their Venice camera with the film. "It was the Venice 1 camera on those. The second gen hadn't come out yet. So it was it was actually the first film, I think, to use Venice, gen 1. Claudio (Miranda) and I had tested the prototype, and Claudio was really involved in the de- velopment of the camera. So I think we were the first to use it." Did Claudio Miranda shoot the music video with the Venice camera too? "Jeff Cronenweth is the DP on the music video. And I've worked with him before. I wanted the footage to be able to cut in with the film, so it felt like using the same camera made sense. One thing we were able to do on the video that we didn't do on the film was shoot anamorphic with Gaga out on the runway. On the film, we had to shoot spherical, because of all the aerial stuff, and we needed a more compact system to capture the aerial se- quences. And I didn't want to mix lenses on the film. But in the music video we did mix (lenses) because I had the black & white interior and the color exterior, so we shot the outside anamorphic." I noticed the use of black & white versus color in the music video, with color appearing more as the video evolves. You're saying it was more interior versus exterior? "Yeah, it was a little bit. It's basically the inside. I like the idea of Lady Gaga kind of playing two characters, like an '80s pop star on the inside in the black & white version, and then kind of more the star she is today with the exterior stuff. And that was kind of the concept of the video." Is it tough putting together a video like this, editorially, where you're trying to balance the film's footage with maybe not giving away too much, but also balancing the artist's presence in it too? "Yeah. We started with assembling her performance and then worked the footage in from there. It was really a collaboration between myself, Gaga and Tom (Cruise) to kind of find the balance that conveyed the emotion of the film and showed how the song plays into some really important scenes in the film, and Gaga's performance as well. It is a balance when you've got something built for the film, because it needs to do a couple of different things. I think in the end, we ended up with some- thing that introduced the world to the song and you get a hint of how important it is and integral it is to the film." This came together last summer. Was there a hard deadline, knowing the film's release was delayed? "I mean, we shot it last summer and de- livered it. It came out this May, so like ev- erything with the pandemic, time wasn't the issue. So no, it wasn't under any kind of time constraints at all." Are there any additional visual effects in the music video or are they all from the film footage? "You know, the music video is all live-ac- tion, including the P-51 flyover. That's all in-camera. That was 100 percent in-cam- era. All real. No visual effects! And that's Tom's airplane that flies over Lady Gaga's head. That's his P-51!" Who edited the video? "Actually [two] editors worked on it. It was Stephen Mirrione and Eddie Hamilton. They're on Avids." Eddie Hamilton was the lead editor on the feature too? "He is the lead editor on the film. And yeah, he worked a lot on integrating the film footage into the edit, so it was really a collaboration between the two of them." Where were they doing the editorial? "Stephen cut out of an editorial house in Santa Monica, and Eddie cut out of editori- al in the UK, because he's currently editing Mission Impossible 7, so he was able to kind of fit it in between his film duties." As far as the visual effects, there were a number of vendors that contributed to the feature, including Method Studios, Lola VFX and Blind. Can you explain how the work was broken up? "Yes, Blind does more of the 2D motion graphics work. Method does the heavy lifting 3D work. And Lola specializes in cosmetic work." Company 3 did the finishing on the film. Did they do the finishing on the music video as well? "Yes. Stefan Sonnenfeld did the color on the film and on the video. We shot the whole thing in color, but convert it to black & white." What's next for you? "I made another film called Spiderhead that (was released) June 17th on Netflix. That we shot and finished while we were waiting for Top Gun to come out. Right now I'm developing a couple of things. Most likely, the next is a Formula 1 movie that I'm producing with Jerry Bruckheimer and Plan B and Lewis Hamilton. I'll be directing. So we're working on that right now." www.postmagazine.com 17 POST JULY/AUG 2022 Method, Lola and Blind all contributed VFX to the film.