Production
Due to the film's low budget, only Gibson was given a jacket and pants made from real leather. All the other actors playing police officers wore vinyl outfits.
Originally the film was scheduled to take 10 weeks – six weeks of first unit, and four weeks on stunt and chase sequences. However four days into shooting, Rosie Bailey, who was originally cast as Max's wife, was injured in a bike accident. Production was halted for two weeks and Bailey was replaced by Joanne Samuel. This caused a delay of two weeks.
In the end the shoot took six weeks over November and December 1977 with a further six weeks second unit. The unit reconvened two months later and spent another two weeks doing second unit shots and re-staging some stunts in May.
Shooting took place in and around Melbourne. Many of the car chase scenes for Mad Max were filmed near the town of Little River, just north of Geelong. The movie was shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens, the first Australian film to use one.
The film's post-production was done at Kennedy's house, with Wilson and Kennedy editing the film in Kennedy's bedroom on a home-built editing machine that Kennedy's father, an engineer, had designed for them. Wilson and Kennedy also edited the sound there.
Tony Patterson edited the film for four months, then had to leave because he was contracted to make Dimboola. George Miller took over editing with Cliff Hayes and they worked on it for three months. Kennedy and Miller did the fine cut.
George Miller wanted a gothic, Bernard Hermann type score and hired Brian May after hearing his work for Patrick (1978).
Read more about this topic: Madmax
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