George Miller Used This Oscar-Winning Director’s Technique on ‘Furiosa’

At long last, audiences are able to witness a return to George Miller‘s high-octane universe in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The director returns this time to tell the origin of Mad Max: Fury Road‘s standout character, originally played by Charlize Theron, in a tale of violence and revenge. The fifth installment of the franchise stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular lead opposite Chris Hemsworth, and brings a character-forward addition to the saga.

In 1979, Miller’s feature directorial debut unwittingly launched an iconic cinematic universe with Mad Max. Far removed from the game-changing CGI and the big-screen spectacle that is Fury Road, Miller tells Collider’s Steve Weintraub about humble beginnings, working for a year in a cramped apartment with co-writer and producer Byron Kennedy and exhausting their post-production funds. From there, the filmmaker would go on to cement his place in Hollywood history, but the world of Mad Max would never be far behind him.

With Furiosa in theaters now, Miller sits down to discuss how the craft of moviemaking has changed over the years, and how he’s embraced “digital dispensation” in his films. Not one to shy away from the ever-evolving tools and techniques of the trade, Miller talks about the abilities afforded to directors and crew members, as well as new methods he learned from other filmmakers like Academy Award winner Bong Joon-ho (Parasite), that he then adopted for the set of Furiosa. Most exciting of all, Miller reveals plans for more from the Mad Max universe, another Fury Road prequel that may depend on the success of this one.

For all of this and more, check out the full interview in the video above or in the transcript below.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The origin story of renegade warrior Furiosa before her encounter and team-up with Mad Max.

Release Date

May 24, 2024

Director

George Miller

Writers

George Miller , Nick Lathouris

Studio(s)

Village Roadshow Pictures , Kennedy Miller Mitchell

Distributor(s)

Warner Bros.

Read Our ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Review

COLLIDER:Your resume is incredible, but there are going to be a lot of people out there who have actually never seen anything you’ve done before. If someone has never seen any of your work, what is the first thing you’d like them to watch and why?

GEORGE MILLER: You might as well start with the one we’ve just finished because it’s probably got the best of my skills or whatever knowledge I have in them. And also, this being a prequel to the previous film we made, Fury Road, it runs directly into that story. So you could start with this film and then go backwards, as it were, with all the films we made. It also depends on who the person is. If you like fables and kids’ films or family films, you could watch the Babe movies or the Happy Feet movies. But probably this one if you’re an adult.

George Miller Shares the Low-Budget Behind-the-Scenes of ‘Mad Max’

The movie launched an ongoing, decades-spanning franchise.

Of the projects you’ve made, which one changed the most in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?

MILLER: The first one. The first film I made — the first Mad Max. That was made at a time when I didn’t know much about films. I was very interested in film. We really prepared that film in great detail. It was such a low budget that even though I storyboarded we couldn’t afford a photocopier, so I couldn’t photocopy the storyboard to show the rest of the crew, so we had to write it out in words. Someone showed me the screenplay of the first Mad Max, which is, I think, only 93 minutes long. The screenplay was 274 pages long because it described every single shot, every crane shot, or whatever. That’s the one that changed most in editing.

What we shot and what I wanted to shoot didn’t happen quite in the right way. We ran out of money in post-production after three weeks and couldn’t afford the editor, so I spent a year in the small apartment that Byron Kennedy and I were renting from a friend of his. I was in the kitchen cutting the picture, he was in the lounge room cutting the sound. He’s very expert on sound. We were amateur filmmakers, really. I cut on a hand-wound machine. It wasn’t even a flatbed. But that year I spent cutting that film, I learnt more than anything else. And we couldn’t reshoot, so we had to make the most of the footage. Anyway, the answer is that’s the one that changed the most.

As I progressed making films, and particularly when we came across the digital dispensation, first with Babe and then with films like Happy Feet, I really got to understand that it’s much more plastic. The frame is much more plastic. Now you can do a lot more. You can shoot live-action animals and make them talk, you can use motion capture to make penguins stand. When you do a Fury Road, you can just take all the rigging that you use on the stunts and stuff and erase them — much, much safer. So as time goes on, the films that are shot tend to match the preparation better, if that makes sense.

100%.

George Miller Confirms There Will Be More From the Mad Max Universe

I know this is not out yet, but I know that what I’m about to ask you is what every person’s going to ask after they see it, which is, do you still have more in the world of Mad Max that you would like to tell?

MILLER: Yes, we do. Mainly because to tell the story of Fury Road, which happens over a very compressed amount of time, you could argue that the first act of Fury Road and the last act are almost playing in real time over three days in order to tell that story on the run. Picking up all the backstory, all the exposition on the way, everybody working on the film — not only the cars, but all the designers, all the prop makers, everybody — had to understand the backstory very intimately in order for it to be coherent. So, we had to write the story of Furiosa and the 18 years, as it turns out, before we meet her in Fury Road. We also had to write the story of the year of Max in the year before we encounter him in Fury Road. So, we have that story. We wrote that as a novella, Nico Lathouris and I, and so that’s the story we have yet to tell.

What are the chances that that will be your next project?

MILLER: There are a couple of other things I want to do, but it really depends on how Furiosa goes. If Furiosa gets enough traction that people respond to it well, we have that story ready to go because we know it so well.

I will do everything in my power to make this happen. I’m just throwing that out there.

MILLER: [Laughs] Yeah, alright!

This Method of Bong Joon-ho’s Inspired George Miller on ‘Furiosa’

Joon-ho earned Best Director for 2020’s Parasite.

I’m always fascinated by the editing process because it’s where it really all comes together. For something like this with Furiosa, did the film change a lot in the editing room? Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

MILLER: I’m happy to say that the more I make films, the less deleted scenes we have. I think it’s so hard to shoot good footage that you shouldn’t be exploring your film in the shoot. I should say that’s rigid, but you shouldn’t be fashioning the story and the structure of the story during the shoot. Most of it should be thought out and prepared beforehand. Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t moments that you shoot, some of them you love, but you know you’re gonna have to lose because the whole is always privileged over the parts. There’s no question about that. So, this was pretty tightly shot.

The other thing that we did on this film that I’ve never really done before, or only partially done before, I picked it up from Bong Joon-ho. Our great first assistant director, P.J. Voeten, who we worked with together a long time, he worked with Bong on a film in Korea, and he pointed out, and I’m not sure if all the Korean directors do it, but they cut the film, they assemble the film as they’re shooting, and it makes a big difference if you can do that. So, we started to do that on this film. What you do is you’re basically getting a really decent cut as you’re going along. As you’re shooting, you can do that. Technology allows you to do it nowadays, and you learn two things. One is when you’ve got what you need and what you don’t need to shoot. So that process allows you not to go ahead and shoot things just to explore them, if you like, on the most expensive part of the film, that is during the shooting state. That doesn’t mean that when you’re working with actors and working with the crew you don’t explore it by what they’re doing, you just don’t do it with the story as much, if that makes sense.

I think Guillermo del Toro told me he does something similar, and a few other filmmakers. It’s also going back to what you said earlier. When you were editing on a Moviola or whatever it was, you couldn’t do that. It’s only the technology of today.

MILLER: When we shot Road Warrior, we were shooting in a remote part of Australia. We wouldn’t see the dailies until the end of the week. So, at the end of the week, all the dailies that we’d shot would be there at the cinema. Everyone would turn up in the cinema and we would watch the dailies. We didn’t have video split, so the only person who saw the film was the camera operator through the viewfinder, and the rest of it you’d get as close to the camera as you could. But particularly if the film’s quite kinetic and you’re moving, you’re relying completely on the camera operator to let you know, “Oh yes, I think we’ve got it.” That was very, very key. Nowadays, you can see a pretty big screen. You can see several screens at the same time with all the cameras and it’s in color, and now you can start putting the film together. The digital age is so different from the celluloid analog day.

Yeah, I don’t think people really understand what it was to make films before digital technology in terms of video village and things like that.

George Miller Suggests a Mad Max Double Feature

Before I run out of time with you, do you envision at any point releasing a version of this and Fury Road sans credits? Meaning Furiosa ends and it starts right with Fury Road?

MILLER: I think we can. I never realized, I can’t think of any film that does this, but this butts directly into Fury Road following Furiosa’s story. Literally, one runs into the other. So there’s no reason, if someone has got the appetite to, they couldn’t sit down and watch one film, finish it, and then watch the second film. I remember going to the cinema as a kid and I remember seeing things like Lawrence of Arabia or South Pacific or whatever, and there was an overture at the beginning. They’d play the overture, almost like an orchestra. There was an interval, they called it intermission, almost like the theater. You’d stop, you’d go out and get whatever you wanted to do, your popcorn and your milkshakes and your ice cream, and then you’d come in and then you’d pick up part two. So, you can almost do this with these films, only because one film runs directly into the other.

I would love to see like on the Blu-ray or 4K where it’s edited without that.

MILLER: We take the credits out. Yeah, why not?

There are going to be people at some point who are going to watch Furiosa without having seen Fury Road. This is a minor spoiler, but during the credits, you show footage from Fury Road. How much did you debate including that footage and not including the footage for the people who maybe would watch Furiosa not having seen Fury Road?

MILLER: A lot. The thing is, what you’re getting at the end credits on Furiosa is you’re getting a sample of what happens. So if you haven’t seen Fury Road, you’re not getting the experience of Fury Road, you’re getting, like, a little mini trailer of it. So, it’s quite a different experience. One is hopefully an immersive experience and the other is a kind of a little taste of it. It’s like if you’re listening to some sort of extended piece of music, a symphony or a rock opera or something, and you just play a few sample bars of it at the end. So, these were all things I thought about. But I thought because it feels — I’m sure there are other examples but I can’t think of any — like there’s a direct flow from the end of one story into another one, I felt it was worth doing. And if you haven’t seen Fury Road, it really won’t make very much difference at all.

Furiosa is in theaters now. Click the link below for showtimes.

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