Top Gun: Maverick was inspired by a horrible cartoon that you need to check out

The medium of animation knows no boundaries – and it was precisely these limitless possibilities that cinematographer Claudio Miranda needed Top Gun: Maverick. But what to do when your main character is human and not Shrek? The answer was a bit of reverse engineering.

At a recent dinner for the 2023 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, where Miranda received a Best Cinematography award for his work lonerthe cameraman revealed that his unlikely inspiration for the long-awaited top gun Sequel wasn’t a modern aerial view, but rather gravity-defying action animation. Looking back at old stunts, including the revolutionary stunt work in Tony Scott’s original 1983 film, might have meant emulating what those films already did. That’s not Tom Cruise’s path, nor was it Tom Cruise’s goal loner

Director Josef Kosinski. But when Miranda discovered Damian Nenow’s 2010 short film ways of hatehis bar was set.

Nenow is not as well known a company as anyone involved with it Top Gun: Maverickbut he is an innovator: most recently, the Polish animator led the helm Another day of lifean animated documentary/narrative hybrid about the Angolan civil war that received a release from GKIDS in 2018. ways of hate uses a similar bold line style to turn a vicious fighter jet dogfight into a reflection of the toxic effects of anger on the human psyche. While withdrawn, it’s easy to see why Miranda discovered Nenow’s work. The animated camera pans in and out of the cockpit as the planes move low to the ground in a way that Top Gun Academy instructors would find incredibly irresponsible. Perfect for Maverick.

As Miranda said indiewire

if he could get the planes in loner what the aerial combat would look like in Nenow’s horrifying war portrait, he would then show a live-action film to an audience that had never seen it before. He did. the state-of-the-art camera work built into the fighter jets he used to withdraw loners photography is very technical and detailed, but even more fascinating to me than the mic is the macro: the animation enabled a veteran live-action filmmaker to dream big. Miranda’s storied career is littered with an embrace of digital technology – his work on David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button made him the first cinematographer to be nominated for an all-digital production, and he went on to direct the highly animated film Tron: Legacy. But in a field that’s constantly at war between digital/animated work and practical or cinematic techniques, here’s a guy just looking for pure inspiration. And he found her in an animated short you can watch now.

The cherry on top of Miranda’s award-winning moment at the NYFCC dinner: Top Gun: Maverick Star Danny Ramirez was in attendance to present the award and revealed that during filming he slept with the DP, who spent his nights in headphones on the tablet and watching YouTube videos that “would make him giggle.” This is how the true masters work, ladies and gentlemen.