George Miller is a master director who has made some amazing films over the course of his career and his Mad Max universe films are badass!
When you watch those films, you can see that Miller loves to lean into the practical effects and real hardcore stunt work. He loves to capture those epic action sequences in-camera and what he delivers is absolutely insane!
But, you can’t make these movies and not use some kind of visual effects to polish things up. When it comes to Furiosa and Fury Road there are a ton of visual effects, but he uses them in ways you might not notice. He doesn’t use them in obvious ways.
During an interview with io9, Miller offered some interesting insight into the VFX in the film saying: “In Fury Road, in [Furiosa], there are hardly any shots that haven’t been manipulated digitally.”
He added: “For instance, changing the sky. When Steven Spielberg shot Jaws, the sea was changing all the time. If you look at that film one moment it’s choppy, one moment it’s flat. You don’t need to do that anymore.”
So, pretty much every shot in Fury Road and Furiosa have some kind of visual effects added to it, but most of that stuff is really Subtle.
Miller went on to talk about the epic action sequence “The Stowaway,” as an example, saying: “When you’re doing extended sequences like ‘The Stowaway’ sequence, that was shot over 78 days.
“It’s a 15-minute sequence but the skies are consistent. So we took what we thought was a good sky and we can reproduce that sky right through the story.
“So some shots have the real sky because the real sky looked really good. But in the next shot, it might have been where it was a completely different sky so we were able to match that. You can do that.”
Miller circled back to Jaws, saying: “If you were shooting Jaws again today, the sea would be consistent. Even meticulous filmmakers, guys like David Lean when they shot Lawrence of Arabia—obsessively, meticulous with their camera and lighting and so on—you can see where they shot different times of day and so on. You can avoid it now to some degree. It’s a much smoother experience.”
It makes sense for filmmakers to take advantage of these ground-breaking filmmaking tools to bring the visions of their film’s to life on the big screen.
Furiosa is now in theaters, and you should go watch it!
