Naman Shrestha
Serving as a prequel to the 2015 Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron starrer ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ and the fifth installment in the ‘Mad Max’ franchise, ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ is a post-apocalyptic action-adventure movie co-written and helmed by George Miller. Billed as the origin story of the titular character, it tells the coming-of-age story of Furiosa over roughly two decades, way before she ends up becoming the Imperator. When the warlord, Dementus, and his men snatch the young Furiosa from her home in the Green Place of Many Mothers, she is nothing more than a prized possession of the warlord and his horde.
Soon, Furiosa is taken to the Citadel, where Immortan Joe presides. While the two tyrants, Dementus and Immortan Joe, go to war over the control of the Citadel, Furiosa devises a plot for her revenge and a way to return home. Led by the stellar performances of Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, the dystopian film also features other talented actors in supporting roles, including Tom Burke, Lachy Hulme, Nathan Jones, and Josh Helman. The arid sites in the backdrop of most of the high-octane action sequences are associated with the entire franchise, making them the ideal locations.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Filming Locations
Chris Hemsworth and the rest of the cast members of ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max’ spent their time in Australia to shoot the entirety of the movie. Primarily shot in New South Wales, principal photography got underway in June 2022 and wrapped up in October of the same year.
During the shooting, Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays the titular character, opened up about the working environment in an interview with The New York Times. Anya shared, “I’ve never been more alone than making that movie…I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”
Sydney, Australia
For taping ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,’ the production team took over several places across the Australian state of New South Wales. Most of the pivotal scenes were recorded in the capital city of New South Wales — Sydney. The filming unit reportedly set up camp in the Disney Studios and made the most of the advanced facilities of the film studio. Situated on Building 16/38 Driver Avenue in Moore Park, a suburb of the eastern metropolitan region of Sydney, it has a total of nine different sound stages, production offices, several exterior film locations, and water facilities.
All the aforementioned amenities make the production complex an ideal shooting location for an action movie like ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,’ which requires a lot of visual effects. In and around Sydney, the film crew turned the streets of suburbs such as Terrey Hills, Melrose Park and Kurnell into film sets for various important scenes.
Broken Hill, Australia
The small village of Silverton and the city of Broken Hill also served as filming sites for the George Miller directorial. The movie’s production designer, Colin Gibson, “was a great fan of the as-real-as-possible” route that Miller took while making the fourth installment of the franchise, ‘Mad Max: Fury Road.’ Therefore, he found it really interesting that the director decided to raise the stakes up a notch while helming ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.’
Talking about how the topography, natural lighting and isolated location of Broken Hill complemented the filming process, producer Doug Mitchell told Time Out: “If you were affected by The Road Warrior, as I was, there is just something about the landscape. No matter what the weather was like this time, we were going to shoot in Broken Hill. It was a great feeling to be there.” In a conversation with The New York Times, Miller revealed that to achieve that level of grandiosity in the film’s visual scale, they had to not only create about 145 vehicles but also employ heavy CGI.
Hay, Australia
Certain portions of the film, mainly a few stunt sequences, were shot in the town of Hay, which is located in the western Riverina region of New South Wales. Besides physical props, the team made use of a lot of special effects to showcase Warlord Dementus’ marauding horde of bikers. In an interview with Total Film magazine, producer Doug Mitchell shared some insights into the filming of a high-octane sequence involving the War Rig, which the team described as “Stairway to Nowhere.” He shared that to tape that particular scene, nearly 200 stunt artists had to be present on the set every day of the shoot, which wrapped up after 78 days. Ultimately, the final sequence came down to 15 minutes.
During a conversation with ComicBook, the filmmaker George Miller was asked if he had any particular shots that he was proud of. He responded, “There’s one that when I saw it, even when we were shooting…when Dementus is on foot, running away towards the end, and he’s running into the mist. And then you hear a rumble, and you’re not sure if it’s score or what. Then you realize it’s the vehicle that Furiosa’s in. Just as it creeps into frame, he disappears into the mist and then reappears again. That’s the shot where I saw it, I thought, ‘That works elegantly. That tells the story very well.'”
Read More: Mad Max: Fury Road, Explained
