The Mad Max films are renowned for their apocalyptic car creations and the new film Fury Road is no exception.
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Behind the lens it takes teams of people, including Cameron Manewell, months to put together the vehicles and have them ready to traverse the desert terrains featured in the films.
Mr Manewell was an action vehicle mechanic on the Fury Road film and dropped into Maitland Reading Cinemas yesterday for the launch of the film.
“I worked on [the project] in 2009 and 2010,” Mr Manewell said.
“I had worked with two-door Falcon hardtops before and had produced replica Mad Max vehicles.
“One of the art directors got in touch with me and I joined the team.”
Mr Manewell had a workshop at Raymond Terrace at the time he was contracted to the film.
He did some of the preliminary work on the Mad Max cars at his Raymond Terrace shop, unbeknown to local Mad Max fans.
The rest of the modifications to create the apocalyptic-style vehicles were done in a workshop in Sydney.
“The film is very action-driven,” he said.
“We had to heavily modify all of the vehicles and some of them had to be added to when they got to one of the locations in Namibia because of the conditions.”
Mr Manewell said the best cars in the film were the iconic Ford Australia Interceptor and the custom-built Gigahorse.
“The Gigahorse is an engineering marvel,” he said.
“It took 10 months to make.”
As a mechanic Mr Manewell was in Broken Hill when the cars and stunt motorbikes were put to the test.
He was also on set at Penrith Lakes where some of the location shoots took place.
Mad Max: Fury Road premiered in Sydney on Wednesday and Mr Manewell was front and centre to see his work on the big screen.
He said the added bonus of working on a film set was the opportunity to meet big names including Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron.
Mad Max: Fury Road is now showing at Maitland Reading Cinemas.