Mad Max: Director George Miller on tech limitations, the origin of the franchise and the future of film
Director George Miller says the Mad Max film franchise that exists today was borne out of limitations.
Originally an emergency room doctor, the Australian director transitioned into film and created the story of a world where limitation is a central theme and abundance a dream.
(L-R): Taylor-Joy with Miller on set. Pic: Warner Bros/Domain Pictures
The Australian director made his first Mad Max film in 1978 with a crew of 35 and a fresh-faced Mel Gibson as the lead.
He says it was filmed on a discarded camera lens from a Steve McQueen film, and the lack of resources to create the project ended up working in his favour.
George Miller. Pic: Reuters
He tells Sky News: “The first Mad Max was definitely borne out of limitations. It ultimately turned out to be very key to it.”
The 79-year-old says the original story was written as a “contemporary story set in the city of Melbourne,” but financial limitations spawned the idea of it being set in a “dystopian future”.
“We couldn’t afford to have car chases in the middle of the street,” he says. “We couldn’t afford [to have] the extra cars or put stuntmen in those cars. We couldn’t have extras in the street, trams or busses and we couldn’t use the buildings so we decided to set it a few years in the future.”
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Miller says they decided to instead focus on what they could use and thus the Mad Max franchise we know today was created.
“We could shoot in backstreets, where there were no extras and no cars, or shoot in really old, decrepit buildings where the people wouldn’t ask you for rent. And that led to the film becoming more allegorical.
“Had we not done that? I don’t think we’d be still doing it.”
Pic: Warner Bros/Domain Pictures
Burnt land and no speed limits
Miller is a cinephile at heart and for Mad Max, he had a vision – for it to be shot on a “big anamorphic widescreen”.
He previously credited his childhood in rural Queensland and the over-powering car culture there as the influences for Mad Max.
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At the time, the area consisted of completely flat roads, burnt land and no speed limits – the results of which Miller witnessed as an emergency room doctor at the age of 26.
“We couldn’t afford the cameras, or the lenses, but there was a set of lenses in Australia at the time, in one particular place that had been dumped out of Hollywood from the movie that Sam Peckinpah shot called The Getaway with Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw”.
All but one of these lenses was “wrecked”.
He says: “The rental house virtually gave it to us for nothing. There was one lens called the 35mm lens, and we used that and it allowed us to get much more dynamics in the shot”.
Pic: Warner Bros/Domain Pictures
Why are moments in the Mad Max franchise sped up?
Inspired by the silent film era, Miller’s aim was to create “pure cinema” and make “‘a silent film with sound”.
To achieve the aesthetic he craved, he played around with frame rates.
In film, video is essentially a number of images (frames) captured sequentially to make the image move. Movies display 24 frames per second.
Miller says his plan was to shoot everything at high speed but, because of financial restraints, could not use speed ramps as it would cost the equivalent of a day of filming.
When he started to edit Mad Max he noticed “something was too slow” and to achieve the look he desired, began removing frames from the sequence.
“It looks a little bit like the old silent movies and sped up. By the time I got to Mad Max two, we would shoot at 20 frames or 18 frames. And so, I started to do a lot of that.”
Pic: Warner Bros/Domain Pictures
Reflecting on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, he says: “Nowadays digitally I shoot most things at 48 frames because you can ramp it up and down from 48 frames, provided you’ve got the resolution, you can do so much more with that.”
The film Mad Max was released in 1979 and put Mel Gibson on the road to stardom.
Oddly, at that time the film distributor in the US, American International Pictures, opted to dub the strong Australian accents used by the actors for fears that they would not be understood by American audiences.
A far cry from misunderstanding the Australian accent, the country’s actors have become some of the most well-known faces in Hollywood nowadays.
Pic: Warner Bros/Domain Pictures
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Miller’s latest release, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga serves as a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road.
It was written before the Tom Hardy film began in production in order to “fully understand” the characters on screen.
It stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Imperator Furiosa and Chris Hemsworth as Dementus.
Miller says it feels good for the prequel to finally be in cinemas.
“We had a magnificent cast and crew who gave their very best. We tried to get the best story we could have on the screen using all the tools we have and hopefully it means something significant to people.”
Pic: Warner Bros/Domain Pictures
Miller on the future of film
The Australian director decided against using de-ageing technology for the role of Furiosa and instead cast Anya Taylor-Joy to play the character first depicted by Charlize Theron.
It is not that he is against using AI technology in fact, Taylor-Joy recently revealed they used software to mix her face with that of the child actor, Alyla Browne, for her scenes.
Miller says the beauty of cinema is that it constantly changes.
“From the very beginning of cinema, which is 130 years old, there’s always change. The silent era and sound. Then there was Technicolor, then there was the digital dispensation in the early 90s. Once that’s come along, things have changed so rapidly even since then.”
Always attracted to the tech behind the scenes, Miller cites the digital ability to make Sheep-Pig talk in Babe or Mumble tap dance in Happy Feet as game-changing moments for him.
“By the time we got to do Fury Road, I realiSed, ‘Oh my God, we could do things that we never dreamed of doing back in the celluloid days’.
“Technology will keep changing and advancing… I don’t think we should limit ourselves if the tools are available. It’s always been the case, and cinema has to adjust.”
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in cinemas now
A woman who saw a man falling from an upper tier at Wembley Stadium says a similar incident at an Oasis concert over the weekend in which a fan died makes her wonder whether lessons have been learned.
Stephanie Good, 39, said a man fell during a Euro 2020 match between England and Croatia at Wembley in June 2021.
He landed “right next to where we were” on the “stairwell between rows of seats”, she said.
Named as Jon, he reportedly survived but suffered two broken ankles, a fractured femur and fractured pelvis just before kick-off.
Ms Good said she tried to give feedback but was unable to and felt the “emergency response was really lacking”.
Oasis, meanwhile, said they were “shocked and saddened to hear of the tragic death of a fan” at their Wembley concert on Saturday.
The man reportedly fell from the stadium’s upper tier.
In his 40s, he was found with “injuries consistent with a fall” and pronounced dead at the scene, the Met Police said.
Ms Good, an NHS manager from east London, said what happened at the Oasis gig was “so similar” to what she witnessed that it made her wonder “were lessons learned”?
Liam and Noel Gallagher on stage for the first Wembley night of the Oasis reunion tour. Pic: Lewis Evans
During that incident, among stadium staff “nobody seemed to know what to do”, she told the Press Association.
She thinks the man may have been trying to attach a flag to the front of a stand and “somehow managed to fall straight over”.
She said: “They (staff) didn’t seem well-trained in terms of how to respond to a really big emergency.
“Their stewards were kind of paralysed a little bit by fear, or they just weren’t well trained and didn’t know how to call for paramedics.
“It was us who were sort of shouting at them that they needed to get some paramedics.
“The first person on the scene wasn’t a stadium paramedic or St John Ambulance. It was an off-duty firefighter who had seen the guy fall and ran down to just try and offer some help.”
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Regarding the follow-up, Ms Good said staff moved spectators to other seats but did not ask for witness statements.
She added: “They didn’t seek any input from people who’d seen the incident or the aftermath of it. They didn’t seem interested in speaking to anybody about it.
“I was a bit concerned, because I felt that the emergency response was really lacking.”
She then tried to get in touch to give feedback, but was unable to do so and did not receive a response to a message on social media, she said.
A Wembley spokesperson said: “Wembley Stadium operates to a very high health and safety standard, fully meeting legal requirements for the safety of spectators and staff, and is certified to and compliant with the ISO 45001 standard.
“We work very closely and collaboratively with all relevant event delivery stakeholders – including event owners, local authorities, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority and the police – to deliver events to high standards of safety, security and service for everyone attending or working in the venue.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs has been denied bail ahead of his sentencing on prostitution-related charges.
Judge Arun Subramanian said the hip-hop mogul had failed to show sufficient evidence he is not a flight risk and also cited admissions of previous violence made during his trial.
Combs, 55, has been in prison since his arrest in September last year.
During a two-month trial, jurors heard allegations that he had coerced former girlfriends, including singer and model Cassie Ventura, into having drug-fuelled sex marathons with male sex workers, while he watched and filmed them.
Diddy fell to his knees after the verdict was delivered last month. Pic: Reuters/ Jane Rosenberg
In July, he was found guilty of two counts of transportation for prostitution – but cleared of more serious charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking, which carried potential life sentences.
The rapper’s legal team hailed this a “victory” and immediately applied for bail ahead of sentencing, citing his acquittal on the top charges.
After this was denied, they submitted another application last week. Judge Subramanian has now rejected the request again.
In denying the motion for bail, the judge found Combs had failed to show sufficient evidence to counter arguments he is a flight risk, writing in a court filing: “Increasing the amount of the bond or devising additional conditions doesn’t change the calculus given the circumstances and heavy burden of proof that Combs bears.”
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He also found that an argument by the music star’s legal team that the squalor and danger of the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC), where he is being held, did not warrant release.
“The public outcry concerning these conditions has come from all corners,” the judge wrote. “But as Combs acknowledges, MDC staff has been able to keep him safe and attend to his needs, even during an incident of threatened violence from an inmate.”
As well as Combs’s bail application, his legal team has also filed a motion calling for him to be acquitted or given a new trial on the prostitution-related charges only.
The judge has not yet responded to this application.
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How the Diddy trial unfolded
How long could Diddy be jailed for?
Combs is due to be sentenced on 3 October and could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
Discussions on sentencing guidelines which followed the jury’s verdict suggest it is unlikely he will be jailed for this long, with an estimate of around two to five years, taking into account time already served.
However, it is ultimately up to Judge Arun Subramanian to decide the rapper’s punishment.
On Friday, Donald Trump was asked during an interview about a potential pardon for Combs following speculation about the issue.
The president said it was unlikely, adding that the rapper was “very hostile” during his presidential campaign.
Combs, who co-founded Bad Boy Records and launched the career of the late Notorious BIG, was for decades a huge figure in pop culture – a Grammy-winning hip-hop artist and business entrepreneur, who presided over an empire ranging from fashion to reality TV.
As well as the criminal conviction, he is also facing several civil lawsuits.
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