In an era when CGI is getting so advanced thatfrom the dead to star in it, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael is relived there are still some filmmakers working today who like to tell stories with real-life things.
To tell the against-all-odds story there's loads of car racing sequences and, according to Papamichael, he and Mangold were in complete agreement on how they would be shot: using real cars. To pull off the race sequences, Papamichael said 30 cars were built from scratch. Many of them were able to drive as fast as 90 to 100 miles per hour with cameras strapped to them. So there was very little faking. From the vibrations the drivers felt from driving cars at high speeds, to the reaction of actor Tracy Letts, who plays Henry Ford II in the movie, when he's being whipped around by Damon's Carroll Shelby character in a car on the test track, it's all authentic.