The groundbreaking film technology of Top Gun: Maverick
Never tell Tom Cruise “it’s impossible”. (Photo: Abuja Rock)
More than 30 years after the original film, Tom Cruise flies high once again with Top Gun: Maverick. A great story and no shortage of shirtless dudes playing sports on a beach aside, the legacy sequel spared no expense in making sure it was filmed in the most authentic way possible.
Tom Cruise—being Tom Cruise—takes filming stunts seriously. Way too seriously that he’s probably one of the worst nightmares of any insurance company. The man has never heard of limits—whether it's climbing the windows of the tallest building in the world or dangling off a plane taking off.
What’s that? Mr. Cruise wants to actually fly and film inside an F-18 fighter jet that costs roughly $65 million and he also wants the rest of the cast to do it as well?
They did exactly that and it all had to be real. The actors went through months of military training in order to prepare them for the flight sequences. I’m convinced that Cruise’s most hated letters are “CGI”.
Cruise explained that he didn’t just want to put an actor inside an F-18. “Not only are they going to pass out, there are so many things happening in that airplane. You have cameras. You have lighting. You have performance. They’ve got to be pulling Gs. They’ve got to be low. They have to have that experience in that aircraft. You see it. You feel it. You can’t fake it.’”
The need for speed
In order to capture exterior shots of the F-18s, a regular drone or a cameraman on a helicopter won’t cut it. These jets can go up to Mach 1.8 (1,190 mph). Helinet Aviation, a provider of aerial services for film and TV production, invented the first ever “CineJet” to keep up with the speed of the F-18s while at the same time, getting the most coherent shots possible on film.
The CineJet is capable of recording up to 8K image quality and is designed to accommodate any future technological innovations, such as new camera lenses and faster engines. It also provides GPS data and ground-to-air audio communication made possible by a specially developed multiple antenna array.
As for the interior shots inside the jets themselves, that’s an entirely different beast.
The film crew strapped 6 Sony Venice cameras inside the cockpits, each one having a different angle and lense. Claudio Miranda, the film’s director of photography used the Rialto extension of the Venice cameras which separates the sensor block from the camera body tethered by a cable. This was done to accommodate the cramped space and ensure that the cameras wouldn’t lose picture quality while filming remotely.
It’s worth mentioning that after all that, the 6 cameras were also capable of shooting IMAX quality videos. Moreover, they had to make sure that it was running on batteries so that it didn’t need to share with the jet’s power.
The actors didn’t have communication with the crew on the ground either. This meant that they had to turn on and operate the cameras, direct themselves with their lines and cues, make sure that the sun was over their shoulders, and had the rest of the equipment working all while flying an F-18 jet.
When it was all said and done, the flight footage reached around 813 hours.
Read also: How technology help bring back Val Kilmer’s voice for Top Gun: Maverick
It’s no question that what the cast and crew achieved with Top Gun: Maverick is something no one has seen before. Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the film’s producers, claims that the filmmaking techniques done here will probably never be attempted again.
The next possible thing for Tom Cruise to do is to shoot a film practically in space. Given his track record, he’ll most probably do it.
