F1 Interviews: Ed Sheeran, Joseph Kosinski, and Javier Bardem
The cast and crew of F1 speak about the sounds and songs that drive F1.
F1 roared into theaters this summer starring Brad Pitt as Formula One driver Sonny Hayes, who returns to racing after a 30-year absence to save his former teammate’s (Javier Bardem) team from collapse.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of participating in press conferences with director Joseph Kosinski, songwriter Ed Sheeran, and actor Javier Bardem, and asked each of them a question about the sounds and songs that drive F1.
Joseph Kosinski Interview | F1
Your films are known for iconic soundtracks, from Tron: Legacy with Daft Punk, Oblivion with M83, and Top Gun: Maverick with its blend of score and original songs. With F1, what guided your decision-making about where to place songs versus score to maintain emotion and rhythm?
Joseph Kosinski: Well, anyone who’s been to an F1 race knows that there is almost a constant soundtrack kind of going when you’re at the race. So, it almost has like a festival-like atmosphere. So, I wanted to capture that in the races. Also, F1 is such a global sport. I thought the songs that we picked could reflect the kind of global nature of it. So, I was really excited to be able to pull artists from all around the world to work on this.
Obviously, as our composer, we have the legendary Hans Zimmer, who I also worked with on Top Gun: Maverick. And Hans and I talked a lot about what kind of score is going to be able to punch through this sound mix, you know, because these cars are intense. And it was it was fun because Hans got to kind of go back to his electronic music roots where he started and create a score for the races that was more electronic in its orchestration. So, it was able to kind of punch through, but then in the dramatic scenes go to a more orchestral and melodic place. And no one writes a better melody than Hans Zimmer. I mean, that theme is something that you just can’t get out of your head.
And then for the songs, you know, we were working with some of the best artists in the world. I would show pieces of the movie, and they would come back with options, and it wasn’t just about putting great music. The song had to be right for the scene. And, you know, I was lucky to have a whole bunch of incredible artists. Ed Sheeran, for instance, wrote the end title song and just asked me over email, “Send me some phrases or concepts from the movie that are important to you.” So, I gave him a bunch of lines, and two days later he sent that song back, and it’s just amazing to me that he was able to kind of put that together so quickly and have it be such a memorable piece.
Ed Sheeran Interview | F1
With Hans Zimmer scoring F1 and helping shape the overall soundtrack of the film, did you have any conversations with Zimmer on what musical style, instrumentation, and tone would best complement his score and the other songs?
Ed Sheeran: Yeah, I’ve known him for, I think we met around the time I did The Hobbit song, so maybe like 13 years ago. And we’ve always had a really good relationship. This wasn’t one of those ones where, like, I’ve been in movies before and you can kind of incorporate parts of the score into the song, but I think this one was very much like it needed to be a really big riff-based rock song that essentially kind of chronicles the movie in the verses and has a big chorus. And, I don’t know, in my head, I wanted the post-chorus to sound like a car starting. So, it was yeah, within that. But it’s kind of like his score is very different to the songs. The soundtrack and score, they both complement each other, and there are bits that are woven in, but they are kind of two separate entities, I think.
Was the score finished when you started writing the song?
Ed Sheeran: I think so. Yeah. I mean, I got shown maybe like 40 minutes of the movie, and obviously the movie is about 2 hours and 40 minutes. So, I assume quite a lot of it was done, but I was shown it in a—it wasn’t at the point where it was going to cinemas at all. It was in a stage where it was in edit and post and all of that sort of stuff. I found it exciting when I worked on The Hobbit movie, like watching a film when most of it was just sketches, and you then see the finished result. It’s lovely to be brought in at that point of a movie. As a movie fan myself, being brought in at a point where all the jigsaw pieces aren’t actually quite fitted, because you actually feel like you’re part of building something rather than brought in as an afterthought at the end.
Javier Bardem Interview | F1
Joseph Kosinski has spoken about how important sound was in this film, from capturing live car and crowd noise to selecting music that matches each scene’s tone. When you’re acting in a project where sound is such a defining element, do you feel that changes the energy on set or even influences your performance?
Javier Bardem: Well, I mean, in my case with [my character] Rubén, most of the times I was in the garage while the real races were happening. By the way, Damson and Brad driving themselves in those real races…crazy. Crazy that those two people would do that. I mean, it’s not only that they did it, it’s like they loved it. They couldn’t wait to get in the car, and they were doing laps and laps and laps and laps. And Lewis Hamilton said, “These guys are unstoppable, because we do this and we rehearse and we train, but we stay on the track for two hours. These guys were there like for six, seven, eight hours non-stop.”
Anyway, so the sound that I was receiving as Rubén was “VROOOM” [laughter]. And for me it was like, “Okay, is there any of the dialogue that I’m going to have to do the ADR? Basically all of it, right? Okay, I got it.” But the sound department did an amazing job, and I didn’t have to do much ADR. And it was when I sat down in an IMAX theater and I saw the movie with the sound design that I was like, “Jesus, the detail.” The amount of detail and work that they put into those moments on the racetracks are pretty amazing. Pretty amazing. It’s a work of art what they did.
F1 releases on Apple TV on December 12, and can currently be purchased on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD, or digitally rented. Follow my blog closer to F1’s streaming date for a detailed analysis of the film’s impressive sound work, including more quotes from Kosinski, Sheeran, and Bardem.