Film School: Centre-Framing in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Weaponising composition, colour, and editing to create story.

Cuts every 1.8 seconds, frenetic movement, multiple threads – and yet you can always follow the action. Vashi Nedomansky‘s video analysis reveals the secret – the action is always in the middle of the frame, so your eye never has to wander:

Jorge Luengo Ruiz cuts together a bunch of the film’s push-ins, pull-outs and fast-motion shots:

Fandor breaks down the film’s stunning colour palette (going, funnily enough, in the opposite direction to director George Miller):

This is what the director shot. He might have intended something else, but this is what I feel about this footage.
Margaret Sixel to NPR

In this 5-minute clip, editor Margaret Sixel‘s chat to NPR is revealing about both Fury Road and film editing more universally:

Further Viewing

Maria Lewis‘ glorious thread spans everything from the bananas production to the powerfully feminist significance of Fury Road (alternatively, here it is in reader form):

What a thread on ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ https://t.co/P9W0SvhbMS
— viewinder (@viewinder) November 27, 2020

Behind-the-scenes, pre-CGI Fury Road production Mad-ness (via Reconsidering Cinema):

https://twitter.com/coenesqued/status/1105021582433382400

Will Ross‘s thread elaborates on the centre-framing technique, explaining axial cuts and visual landmarks – these are just some highlights:

If you’ve seen Fury Road (and you really, really should), you probably know that it’s incredibly dense: even outside the action sequences there’s tons of subtext and backstory to pick over. But within the action scenes a gargantuan amount of information is relayed. pic.twitter.com/hD95dokQIr
— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) September 29, 2022

So he had an idea and gave his cinematographer John Seale marching orders: when filming material that’s going to be cut quickly, keep the most important information in the center of the frame, so that the shot doesn’t cut before your eyes can find the subject. pic.twitter.com/RcYn4PD3if
— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) September 29, 2022

At times the choreography between camera and subjects is stunningly elaborate in its attempts to keep subjects in the center, or to gracefully move from one focus to center another within a single shot. You probably didn't even realize it was happening a lot of the time. pic.twitter.com/3gypg89gF7
— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) September 29, 2022

In quieter scenes, though, Miller tends to loosen up a bit, allowing his subjects to fall into balance across the frame. He encourages us to relax and search each shot freely. A shifting style of compositional balance is used to control tone and pacing. pic.twitter.com/snrkf533RA
— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) September 29, 2022

The truck is generally located across the right side of the frame throughout the scene, but in the two camera setups used for shots like the ones in the last tweet, it's occupying almost the same space in the frame. OK, so: why? Because Miller is orienting us with axial edits. pic.twitter.com/WSzF0y16WY
— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) September 29, 2022

As the scene goes on, Miller takes off the training wheels. He doesn't give us the clear geographical landmark for reference, and he speeds up the edits to take full advantage of the visceral power of rapid cutting. Chain pull, guy fall. pic.twitter.com/NjRWV9EhHD
— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) September 29, 2022

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Weaponising composition, colour, and editing to create story.

Further Viewing

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