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FILMMAKING www.postmagazine.com 14 POST JULY/AUG 2025 "When you see it bounce. When you have Krypto running or jumping, you feel like (there's) muscle bouncing under the fur volume." The Framestore team focused on making Krypto look like a real dog, rather than a super-powered canine. His ability to fly would resemble a dog taking a big jump. And the landing would follow a nature posture. "(We) grab a lot of references and always as- sume that to be a real dog," Nazé explains. "The best way to appropriate this character is to feel he is a dog and it's not a cartoony dog, doing crazy things." The studio used keyframe animation to create Krypto's movement, which involved animating his four legs, tail and billowing red cape. "It's never motion capture," says Nazé of the film's character animation. "James is someone who loves to shoot fast. He has to go fast, and he's very attached to the storytelling. There's good expertise at Framestore about key-frame animation and the input of the artist also is super important. So for those specific things, we don't do any capture… When you want to get very specific control, really, the best way is keyframe." Superman's Fortress of Solitude also represents a significant portion of Framestore's work. The building emerges from below the Antarctic snow as a massive structure made of crystals beams, and is later shown retracting back into the snow. According to Nazé, the overhead shot of the Fortress emerging, with the camera spins over- head, took more than a month to render. "I have to say, [Framestore is] extremely proud to be the company developing this because, for us, it was very emblematic of the 'Superman' uni- verse," he states. "We got some quick sketches at the very beginning to define more the shape, over- all, of the fortress. But then, quickly, the idea was, 'What about those crystals? How transparent are they?' When you see the fortress growing, and you have the top-down view, obviously that's all CG." Framestore's toolset includes Autodesk Maya, Maxon's ZBrush and Foundry's Nuke, along with many plug-ins. The studio shares assets when working on a film — in this case with Weta FX and ILM — but the level of tweaking an outside studio can apply to an asset may be limited due to the proprietary tools used to create the model. "When you share back an asset, you can adjust it, you can look at it. Maybe you won't be able to mimic everything. It's the same with Nuke. Nuke is Nuke, but all the software, all the pipeline around it, is absolutely different depending on the compa- ny. But if you share back a Nuke script, you can at least open it and maybe it will load some tools. At least you have a base." Changes to Krypto, for example, would be a challenge for a collaborating studio that didn't create the asset. "We have the control," says Nazé of the asset Framestore created. "It means, if you want (the groom) to be a little bit shorter there, or if you want to change something, you can, of course, because you own the asset, and it's done with your tool. But when you send it, that's what it is." In F1 The Movie, Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a race car driver that was predicted to dominate the 1990s Formula 1 circuit, only to have an accident nearly end his career. It's been 30 years, and his former teammate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), is hoping Hayes can help save the struggling Formula 1 team he manages. For Hayes, it would be a second chance at showcasing his tal- ents at racing's highest level. He'll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), a hot-shot rookie in- tent on setting his own pace and hardly impressed with Hayes' resume. The Apple Original Films release was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Joseph Kosinski, who brought Top Gun: Maverick to the big screen three summers ago. Kosinski assembled a team of past collaborators to pull off F1 The Movie's late June release, including director of photogra- phy Claudio Miranda, ASC; editor Stephen Mirrione, ACE; and visual effects supervisor Ryan Tudhope. The film features a musical score by Hans Zimmer. Stephen Mirrione, ACE, worked with Kosinski on 2022's Top Gun: Maverick and Spiderhead. "Joe and I became close on those two and are continuing," says Mirrione of their collaboration. The Formula 1 schedule spans more than 20 international races from March through December. Race teams compete in places such as Australia, Japan, Canada, Spain, Austria, Abu Dhabi, Great Britain, Mexico, Brazil and Quatar. In the United States, there are races in Miami and Las Vegas. The movie incorporates footage from many of the international broadcasts, as well as new material shot specifically for the film. Director of photogra- phy, Claudio Miranda, ASC, would capture original material with real race cars in the days leading up to and after the actual F1 race. Broadcast foot- age would be enhanced with visual effects that included re-skinned cars with new sponsor logos, and entirely-digital vehicles. Framestore and ILM handled the majority of the effects work. Mirrione points out that the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike threw the filmmaking team's initial plan by the wayside. They would not be able to capture any of the narrative material for the film, nor the actors during the race sequences. "Originally, the plan was most of the dramatic scenes were going to be shot in and around a par- ticular track, maybe the week before (or) the week after the Grand Prix itself," he shares. "We would have sets set up there, and they'd be also getting to use the track at various times before the Grand Prix weekend." However, the strike began just after they started shooting in Silverstone, the UK stop on the circuit. "Because we didn't have actors now to do any of that, or actors to do the racing they needed to do… we had to come up with another plan," Mirrione reveals. "Nobody knew how long the strike was going to last." While the strike's duration was unknown at the time, the race schedule continued on. "We would be able to capture a lot of our stunt driving material — the stuff that didn't involve the actors," he shares. "We'd be able to get some of our pit-wall stuff, and we'd get all our broadcast camera stuff. Then, with my crew, we could start cutting that all together for inevitably when we would have to come back the following summer…My crew stayed on and we just augmented how we were doing things. It really became cataloging the race footage. I would then be cutting with storyboards." Mirrione would begin putting together race scenes, taking into consideration story points, the cars' positions, and that material would ultimately be enhanced with VFX. "We're basically doing a pretty good pass of what the race will be, making sure we've got all the story points," he explains. "Knowing that once we get an actual performance from Brad and Damson, and whatever is happening with the moves that their cars are making, that that's going to change slightly…When you've worked on a few VFX movies, you understand that [you're] going to cut things together a little bit looser, a little bit fatter, because until you start to get those shots back, you're not exactly sure what's going to work?" The production had an editorial trailer with Avid systems that would move from race to race as the F1 schedule progressed. There was also an editing suite in the UK that would handle the dailies com- ing in from Silverstone. "I was at Silverstone just for the first week or so, F1 The Movie