For this assignment, I watched a video about the entire process of filming Mad Max: Fury Road. The making of this film is unlike any other action film I have seen before. During the script making/writing of this film, the movie was created all mainly by storyboard. The movie was written like a comic with the storyboard writers creating the film as they went along. This process held a couple of problems, one being that if they wanted to make a cosmetic change to an actor or a scene, they would have to go back and redraw the characters or environment to suit the change they made.  Many people would assume most of the action was CGI (computer-generated imagery), but all of the stunts done involved real actors. Even the scenes of cars being flipped had stunt actors in the cars and cinematographers working the cameras within them. Now of course to add the effect that they were in a lethal chase, they added big dust storms and fire coming out of the cars to give it a more apocalyptic and lawless effect.

          Another aspect of the film that the video I watched touched on was the acting and movement of “polecats” being suspended 6 meters in the air on top of moving vehicles. The producers hired circus actors to perform their stunts in which one man would be dangling on top of this long pole while two men at the bottom were controlling which way it went and how far low it could go so that the actor on top of it wouldn’t get injured. The production team thought they would just have to use CGI, which in the end looked and felt fake, but they ended up being able to use real actors for the scenes in which we would see these polecats. Although the role seems minor in the whole film, it goes to show how much detail goes into a movie such as this one and how much time it takes to get everything perfect for only parts of the film.

          Although some explosions were fake in the film, some were actually done in real life. In one scene before the climax, the director wanted one more big explosion to transition into the climax. To do this, the team used a remote control truck to carry many barrels of oil hidden under what seemed to be just another cargo truck. When it was the right time, the team set off an ignition, causing the oil to blow up behind the truck in a matter of seconds, destroying the 100 foot long truck. Three different cameras on different trucks surrounding the explosion filmed one of the biggest explosions seen in a movie.

          A ton of engineering and electrical work went into this film as well. To perfectly time explosions and cars crashing and landing where the director wanted them to took a lot of math and science knowledge to make sure they could do these stunts in one take to not risk going over budget by spending more money on more explosions.

          Overall this movie is one of the most technical movies I have ever seen. So much thought went into the pre production to make things work perfectly, which is something that is taken for granted by the majority of the people that watched this film. It would be great if people could watch this behind the scenes of the movie to get a perspective of the hard work that is put into scenes that last only a couple seconds, but make the movie so much more enjoyable.