Academy Award–winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda has been pushing the limits of his craft for decades—and the Apple Original Film F1 The Movie might be his most technically advanced project yet.

But even budding filmmakers can tap into the same apps he used to capture the movie’s breathtaking shots. Here he reveals his app toolkit for F1 The Movie.

Blackmagic Design’s video-editing apps and digital film cameras have been used on the biggest blockbusters. For F1 The Movie, Miranda turned to the Blackmagic Camera iPhone app to capture a particularly challenging shot: Brad Pitt flooring it at the Daytona 500.

The quick, tight shot would have been difficult to capture with a traditional camera. “Originally it was intended as a temporary solution, but it was good enough to make it into the film,” Miranda says.

Artemis Director’s Viewfinder lets filmmakers preview how a shot will look using different cameras, lens focal lengths, and LUTs (cinematic color-grade filters).

“It’s essential on set for aligning shots and communicating angles with production designers,” Miranda says. That was especially true on a technically challenging film like F1 The Movie.

“The director, Joseph Kosinski, would send me his shot list with the angles we shot during scouting, and I would have profiles for all of the cameras we were using, each with different lenses and format sizes,” he says.

Using the LiDAR sensor on iPhone and iPad Pro models, Polycam simplifies the process of creating 3D floor plans of any space. Simply scan the room with your device’s camera and the app will show measurements of every wall, window, and fixture.

“Polycam’s ability to generate plan views was a nice surprise. It let me create rough blueprints, which I can print out or annotate on an iPad, integrating nicely into pre-production,” Miranda says. “On F1, it helped me quickly measure distances to see if equipment like a crane would fit.”

Sun Surveyor helped Miranda visualize the position of the sun throughout the day—and was essential for ensuring consistent lighting.

“It’s fantastic for revisiting locations—especially useful during scheduling disruptions. It lets me visualize sun positions even after scouting,” Miranda says.

Designed by a camera technician, pCAM Pro - Film+Digital offers over two dozen advanced cinematography tools, including focal length matching, light and chroma effects, triangulations, and color-temperature conversions.

“I use pCAM frequently for depth-of-field and field-of-view calculations,” Miranda says. “Some of the cameras on F1 did not have a focus motor, and we would need to set depth of field with the f‑stop to ensure the actors were in focus.”