Cinema’s Architect: The Joe Kosinski Playbook

I was on a flight to Savannah, Georgia, recently, and couldn't get my Bluetooth headphones to connect to the entertainment screen. That happens to me all the time, so I've turned it into a habit of watching movies without sound. No dialogue, no score, just a chance to study visual storytelling.

On this trip, I lined up Top Gun: Maverick and Tron: Legacy, both directed by Joseph Kosinski. Stripping away the sound let me focus on his cinematic architecture. The way he builds frames, spaces, and movement. Over the summer, I’d seen Joe’s new F1 film, where I'd been scribbling notes on his approach to speed, geometry, and environment.

I developed a project with him, so I’m calling him Joe, but you should call him Mr. Kosinski!

When you watch one of Joe’s flicks, you're stepping into a world constructed by someone who understands how spaces work. Before he started directing, he studied mechanical engineering at Stanford and got his master's in architecture at Columbia.

This bleeds into every shot he constructs. He’s a cinematic architect, drafting emotional blueprints via lines, boxes, horizons, and light.

Joe’s Visual DNA

Let’s break down his elements of style so we can gank them for our own projects:

Depth & Lines: Leading lines create focus and pull you deeper into the frame. Think about those grid patterns in Tron, the runway lines stretching into infinity in Maverick, or the track geometry whipping past at 200 mph in F1. Your eye follows the geometry straight to what matters.

Boxes & Shapes: He frames everything. Characters get boxed into cockpits, light circuits, barred windows. It’s frame-within-frame staging that makes every shot feel intentional, never accidental.

Toolbox Tip: Look for natural frames in your locations like doorways, windows, architecture. Use them to focus attention and create depth.

Horizon Placement: High horizons make characters feel small or trapped. Low horizons give them power and control. Study how Joe positions that line differently when Maverick’s confident versus when he’s struggling.

Movement: His camera moves with purpose. Smooth cranes, motivated reveals, tracking shots follow story logic instead of just looking cool. Every move earns its place. For F1, he adapted aerial cinematography techniques from Maverick to convey speed and danger at eye level—cameras mounted on real F2 cars racing alongside Brad Pitt.

Environmental Storytelling: Every set feels lived-in. Flynn’s hideout in Tron is cluttered with the right kind of junk. The ready rooms in Maverick have exactly the photos and manuals you’d expect. The production design carries narrative weight.

Negative Space: Empty sky, vast digital voids, crowded bars, Joe uses what’s not in the frame as much as what is.

Toolbox Note: Space can isolate or connect characters. Consider which way it leans as you scribble.

Case Study: Oblivion

Oblivion is basically a masterclass in environmental storytelling. Tom Cruise lives in this glass house floating above the clouds—clean, minimal, isolated. When he descends to the wasteland below, Joe switches to brutalist concrete towers and harsh angles. The architecture literally maps the character’s psychological journey from sterile perfection to messy reality.

The Practical-First Philosophy

Unlike directors who lean heavily on digital shortcuts, Joe’s obsessed with grounding spectacle in reality.

For F1, instead of building fake racing sequences in a studio, he engineered custom camera rigs that could mount on actual F2 race cars. Brad Pitt and Damson Idris drove real cars on real tracks during actual Grand Prix weekends, with Lewis Hamilton producing to ensure authenticity. It’s the same approach that made Top Gun: Maverick feel so visceral—practical action that VFX supports rather than replaces.

Practical elements provide actors with something real to react to and audiences with something tangible to connect with. The set pieces feel dangerous because they are.

The Directional Grammar

Joe taps left-right visual language to reinforce story dynamics:

Movement Direction: Heroes often move left to right (progress, forward momentum). But when they’re struggling or failing, they move right to left. Villains almost always move right to left. It’s subliminal but effective.

Frame Positioning: Characters on the left side of frame often have the power or ascendancy in a scene. Villains get pushed to the right when they’re losing control. Look at the bar scene in Maverick as Rooster gets centered when he’s holding court, but Maverick stays off to the side, visually showing his outsider status. When Maverick and Jenny reunite, they’re separated by the bar, but overlap in the frame.

Spatial Relationships: Distance equals dynamics. Who’s close, who’s far, who’s isolated, maps to the emotional geography of the scene.

The Architect’s Process

To win the Tron: Legacy gig, he didn’t pitch with a script treatment. He built a rip reel that looked like the movie he wanted to make. He literally constructed the world into existence to help Disney see the flick and make it easier for them to give him the greenlight.

Joe’s architectural approach never comes at the expense of drama. While prepping the Formula 1 project, he said, “Exciting racing doesn’t matter without great story and characters”. The visuals serve the drama, not the other way around.

His films are storyboarded in obsessive detail. Every complex sequence is pre-visualized to ensure clarity and coherence, especially in kinetic environments like Formula 1 races or dogfights. It’s architectural blueprinting applied to pictures in motion.

What This Means for Your Scribbling

Think geometrically: Before you crank out a scene, consider its shape. Where are the lines leading? What’s the horizon doing? How does the space itself support what your characters are going through? You could even draw the scene like a floor plan before scribbling. This can reveal staging opportunities you might not consider in pure prose.

Ground your spectacle: Even if you’re scribbling the most sci-fi sequence, find the practical elements that actors and audiences can grab onto. What’s real? What can be touched, felt, experienced? Joe constantly gives his actors props and business to work with. Maverick’s always adjusting his aviators or fiddling with controls, Flynn manipulates those glowing discs in Tron, the F1 drivers are constantly interacting with steering wheels, gear shifts, and helmet visors. These tactile moments anchor performances in physical reality, giving actors something concrete to play against and audiences something authentic to connect with.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Use constraints creatively: In Spiderhead, the set had no windows. Instead of cheating with fake exteriors, Joe leaned into brutalist architecture and skylights. Limitations can become strong choices.

Toolbox Tip: What if you scribed your location descriptions with geometric specificity? “Cramped office” becomes “narrow hallway with fluorescent lines leading to a dead-end desk.”

The Real Lesson

Joe Kosinski’s films prove that visual sophistication and emotional storytelling aren’t enemies. His architectural background gave him a vocabulary of lines, boxes, and horizons, but he never forgets that audiences show up for people, not just pretty pictures.

From Tron’s digital grids to F1’s racing circuits, environments are characters. Spaces that reflect and amplify what’s happening inside the protagonists. Joe’s technical mastery serves the human story, not the other way around.

Most scribblers didn’t get a master’s in architecture, but we can still build our worlds with intention while keeping our characters central to the design.

Stream the first fifteen minutes of Tron: Legacy and Top Gun: Maverick. It’s all there. :)