By Iain Blair
It’s been 36 years since Top Gun, directed by the late great Tony Scott, introduced audiences to Tom Cruise as Navy pilot Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
Joe Kosinski
Now the iconic character and heart-pounding aerial maneuvers are back in Top Gun: Maverick. Directed by Joseph Kosinski and shot by his go-to cinematographer, Claudio Miranda, ASC, the Paramount release picks up the story of Mitchell, who, after more than 30 years of service, is still pushing the envelope as a test pilot and dodging any advancement in rank that would ground him. But he does get grounded, and finds himself training a group of hotshot young Top Gun graduates for a dangerous mission.
Kosinski, whose credits include Tron: Legacy, Only the Brave, Oblivion and Spiderhead (all shot by Miranda), assembled a top-flight team behind the scenes that included editor Eddie Hamilton and VFX supervisor Ryan Tudhope.
I spoke with Kosinski about making the film, the post workflow and cracking the secret of the original film’s sound design.
Sequels are notoriously risky ventures. What sort of film did you set out to make?
A Top Gun movie. I went back and watched the original as a director as opposed to a 12-year-old kid in Iowa. What I saw was a drama wrapped up in this incredible-looking action film, and I knew that the dramatic core was the most important part, and that’s what I pitched to Tom. The story and the journey that Maverick would have to go on was the emotional hook of the movie.
They were able to get six cameras into each jet.
What about all that action?
Navy pilots have been shooting their training flights on GoPro cameras and posting them on YouTube, and it’s pretty amazing. I said, “If we can’t beat that, then there’s no point making this film.” It then became this 15-month-long process trying to figure out how we could get cameras inside the cockpits. The original film was only able to get one camera up there, and there are all these space and weight restrictions. In the end, we went with the Sony Venice 1, and we were able to get six cameras up there on each jet.
Can you talk about integrating the post and all the VFX early on?
We did a fair amount of previz, especially for all the really tricky aerial sequences that had to be carefully choreographed — because that was an easier way to talk about it with all the pilots and describe angles and so on. We tried to shoot as much in-camera as possible, but obviously there are certain elements that you just can’t film, like combat scenes with live weapons; it’s far too dangerous. So all that stuff was done with VFX and added later. But it was always based in reality, and we had the Navy working very closely with us, advising us every step of the way on all the flying, the tactics, the technology and so on, making sure it was totally realistic.
How tough was the shoot?
It was really tough and very long. Principal photography was over 130 days, with so many locations. We shot on aircraft carriers and naval bases in California, in Death Valley, and the Cascades in Washington, as well as London and LA. So we were shooting in the heat, the snow, at sea on the carrier for two weeks, all to get the best footage possible. It was grueling but fun.
How tough was it filming Tom and the others actually flying in the jets?
It was a huge challenge. We’d have a dozen cameras in the air, more on the ground, and there would be 15-hour days just to get a couple of minutes you could use in the film. But we got some amazing footage, including Tom actually launching off the carrier in an F-18 jet. He did four or five catapult launches and some landings, and that’s a first for a movie. Only Navy pilots get to do that.
Tell us about post. Where did you do it?
Our post HQ was in Santa Monica at producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s offices. Most of the VFX were done by Method in Montreal, supervised by Ryan Tudhope. All the sound design and temp mixing was done at Skywalker, but then COVID hit, so we did the final mix at Twickenham Studios in London — the only stage available.
Tell us about editing with Eddie Hamilton. What were the main editing challenges?
I’d never worked with him before, but I really admired his work on the Mission: Impossible films he’d done with Tom, especially Rogue Nation. He wasn’t on-set for most of the ground story, but he was there with us when we were on-location shooting all the aerial stuff, as we needed to get immediate feedback on what we had and what we still needed.
He was based in an editorial trailer in the hangar for 14 hours a day, combing through all the footage the moment it came out of the planes. That was the big challenge, as we ended up shooting 800 hours of footage. So then we had two great editors come on at different points for a few months to help out with the huge workload — Chris Lebenzon (ACE), who cut the original Top Gun, and Stephen Mirrione (ACE), who cut Spiderhead for me and who’s cut a lot of films for Stephen Soderbergh and George Clooney. It actually took Eddie three months just to do the first assembly of the third act because all the flying scenes were so complex.
Do you like post?
I love it. I love every part of filmmaking. I love to prep until you can’t take it anymore. Then I love shooting until you can’t stand it one more day. Then at last you’re in post, and I love all those changes and the different rhythms. I love editorial and putting it all together and shaping it.
There are a lot of VFX. Talk about working with VFX supervisor Ryan Tudhope, who co-founded Atomic Fiction, and what was entailed?
VFX can be pretty tedious, and I went through the wringer on Tron, but there are things you can do in VFX that you could never shoot, so as long as it looks real, it works. I worked closely with Ryan who was on-set a lot, and we both had the same goal: to make every VFX shot as realistic as possible. We did a lot of testing to make sure we were on the right track, and no one could tell what was in-camera and what was VFX.
L-R: Joe Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer
Ryan had an amazing team at Method who did all the big, complex sequences, but there was so much to do that we also had a few other companies [including Lola, MPC, Gentle Giant and Blind] work on smaller stuff, cleanup and cosmetic.
Obviously, the sound and music are also iconic characters in the film. What was involved?
You’re so right. The original Top Gun soundtrack was like the demo disc for all home theaters for 20 years; that nature of the sound — the roar of the jets and afterburners and the way you feel it in your chest — was a huge part of this film. We even had a team from Skywalker on the carrier for a week recording the jet engines, so all that’s real, not designed and manufactured. And when Chris Lebenzon came on, he really helped us crack the secret of how they did the original film sound. It was shot on film, and they cut all the sound hard. Nothing was eased in. They put hard cuts where all the splices were in the footage, and that’s how they got that truly explosive sound quality. You got that full volume — boom! — right on the cut to the next shot, and once we began mimicking that on the Avid Media Composer, that film-cutting style made it instantly feel like a Top Gun movie. That was key.
What about the DI? Who was the colorist, and how closely did you work with them and the DP?
We did the DI with colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 here in Santa Monica. He worked with Tony Scott, so I wanted to work with him. He also did the DI on the recent 4K Blu-ray re-release of the original Top Gun, which I helped oversee, so I got a really good look at the original negative. Then Stefan, Claudio and I came up with a nice grain on the Resolve that gave it more of a filmic look and a great nostalgic feel that was a good match to the original.
It’s all warm and golden like the original until the third act. I wanted to flip that aesthetic on its head when they go on the mission, and we went for this very cool palette. In the end, we spent several weeks on the DI, and I couldn’t be happier with the way the movie turned out.
Finally, what did Tom bring to the mix?
Everything. All his enthusiasm, 40 years of experience making movies and working with these amazing directors who are all my heroes. He brings all that to the set every day, so it’s more than just his role – it’s about every aspect of the film.
He’s also a very experienced pilot, so he knew all these aerial scenes were going to be very difficult to capture, and he knew just how much preparation the other actors would need just to get in a jet and fly. They needed a lot of training, and he designed the whole course. That’s what makes all this so special — it’s not just Tom up there actually flying; it’s all of them. Yes, you can use greenscreen, but you can’t fake real flying, and that’s what we wanted. We wanted the audience to feel they were up there with the actors.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
