Senna recounts the extraordinary life of Ayrton Senna da Silva, the iconic Formula 1 driver who transcended motorsport to become a global symbol of courage, talent, and relentless determination.

The six-hour Netflix series traces his rise up the ranks of the FIA Championships with stunning cinematography, including white-knuckle racing scenes captured by Azul Serra, ABC (Association of Brazilian Cinematographers), and Kauê Zilli, ABC.

The show spans four decades of his career which ended in tragedy at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Showrunner and director Vicente Amorim and director Júlia Rezende marshaled a largely Brazilian crew and often simultaneous shoots over seven months on location in Brazil, Argentina, Northern Ireland and Uruguay.

“When we realized the scale of the project we decided to split the cinematography into two,” explains Serra (New Bandits, A Small Light). “We put all the drama that happens outside the car in a different category from all the action on the track while ensuring that both felt part of the same project.”

With extensive use of a LED volume and location work, logistically, it was easier for the production to manage the schedule in separate sections but there was a creative logic too.

“Our directors and showrunner wanted the show to have really bold visuals,” Serra says. “We took that a stage further by differentiating the racing sequences to feel crisper, sharper and, if anything, more hostile to the flesh and blood of the drivers. We contrast that with narrative scenes which feel a little softer, with a hint of glamor and more depth of field.”

Serra's choice of camera for the race sequences was not simply subjective regarding image quality but multi-faceted. “I felt in this case that RED cameras were more versatile for filming the racing performance. F1 cars are so low to the floor that there is limited room for us to grip so the weight and size of the KOMODO was essential for us to rig multiple bodies as crash cams.

“Another key consideration was capturing shots for VFX. Since VFX will always want plates in the highest definition the KOMODO 6K S35 sensor and 8K large format of V-RAPTOR was important. We also valued the variable frame rate for slow motion photography and especially important for capturing extremely fast action was that both cameras offer a global shutter for undistorted images.

“To be clear, we are not recreating a video game. We wanted the audience to be embedded in the performance so that every time we cut to a race they have this feeling of being in the cockpit with him.”

The Oscar y Juan Gálvez racetrack in Buenos Aires effectively served as the main studio for live action race shoots. The production team dressed the track for multiple different racetracks including Suzuka (Japan), Imola (Italy), Estoril (Portugal) and Silverstone (UK), over different periods, augmented by VFX.

While KOMODO was rigged on the race cars, V RAPTOR was the A camera for filming race sequences from the track, pit lane and from a follow-car. “We always used V-RAPTOR as the first option with KOMODOs playing the second, third and fourth camera rigged to the cars,” Serra says.

When it came to shooting in the LED Volume on stages in São Paulo, Serra adhered to this shooting style. Second unit DP Cory Geryak joined the camera team here to share his experience shooting virtual production.

“It was really clear for us that we had to use exactly the same mentality on stage as on the races including camera positions and angles,” Serra says. “We didn't want to use impossible movements or have the feeling that the camera was somehow flying around. It was always to emulate that the camera was gripped onboard the car. Our mentality was to approach both real and virtual worlds exactly the same way. So, we retain the same shutter speed, the same slow motion, the same visual parameters and positioning for KOMODOs and V-RAPTOR.”

Layered on top of the visual design was a set of four looks to subtly represent different phases of Senna’s story. This evolved from extensive research that Serra did in nine months of preproduction.

“Senna’s life was really well documented from when he started to race carts as a kid in the 1960s to his teenage years on Formula 3 and into his championship winning period. We could trace the progression of his look from a specific film emulsion of the sixties to the 1990s which marks the beginning of digital video. It’s almost a history of visual photography which we intended to emulate.”