This is a chase scene from 1924. It's from the movie "Sherlock Jr.," and in it, Buster Keaton seems
to almost get hit by a train. With extremely limited special effects, the filmmakers had to come
up with an innovative way to create the illusion. So they shot the sequence backwards, then reversed the film. Since then, Hollywood has developed countless ways to make car chases feel more real and visceral to audiences, from modifying cars to placing cameras right in the seat of the action. And without each of these innovations, we wouldn't have gotten
to the ultimate spectacle that is the "Fast & Furious" franchise. Let's take a look at how
the car chase has evolved over 100 years in Hollywood. This is the scene that set the standard for all modern car chases. It's from the 1968 Steve
McQueen movie "Bullitt," and it's iconic partly
because of the characters -- Bullitt: Look, Chalmers,
let's understand each other. I don't like you. Narrator: But also because of their cars. This mean-looking Dodge
Charger is a muscle car, a type of car that exploded in popularity during the late '60s in the US. This new, sleeker generation
was basically built for informal drag racing, with big V-8 engines and rear-wheel drive. The hero car in "Bullitt"
was a Ford Mustang, the first major pony car -- a more compact, sporty
take on the muscle car. And it's this combination of streamlined design and V-8 engines that made these cars powerful
and maneuverable enough to pull off daring stunts, like racing through the
hills of San Francisco at 110 miles per hour. "Bullitt" also had another advantage, smaller and more rugged cameras, which allowed shooting to
happen in actual streets. Before this movie, most directors shot chase
scenes on studio sets, since they were dealing with
cameras that looked like this. To fill in the backdrop, filmmakers would use rear projection, where you project a moving image onto a screen behind the actor. Like in this chase scene from the first Bond movie, "Dr. No," where Sean Connery's steering doesn't seem to match the
movement of his convertible. "Bullitt" was one of the
first big Hollywood movies to rely on the lighter
Arriflex 35 II camera, so the crew could shoot
entirely on location and also take audiences inside the cars. They mounted cameras on the hood, sides, and interiors of each vehicle, so viewers could feel
every bump and lurch. This dynamic camera style
was most famously used in the chase from the movie
"The French Connection." The filmmakers mounted cameras on the hood, front bumper, and dashboard of Gene Hackman's Pontiac. These multiple angles, along with handheld-camera work from the backseat of the car, showed all the action from
the driver's perspective. The result makes that Bond
chase look like a casual spin. [Bond theme plays] But higher-stakes car cases
can also be more dangerous. "The French Connection" chase was filmed on uncleared streets in New York, without permits, among
other drivers and passersby. These barely avoided collisions? They happened for real. And this crash was entirely unplanned. At the wheel of the white
Ford was a civilian driver who was uninvolved in the shoot. All this happened even with
actors sometimes driving slower than what you see on film, a standard trick used to reduce risk. See how some cars' exhaust pipes are blowing smoke faster than normal? That's because filmmakers
on "French Connection" used a technique known as undercranking, where they film some of the
scene at a lowered frame rate. Capturing fewer frames makes
movement look faster -- basically the opposite of slow motion. You can also see this
in "Vanishing Point," released the same year. Barry Newman's character bets he can drive his Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours. That'd require a constant
pace of some 80 miles an hour. But in many sequences, like
this hot race with a Jaguar, the actors were only driving at 50. So the filmmakers created
the illusion of speed by undercranking the camera
to half its normal frame rate, making the cars look like they're flying. [engines roar] Undercranking is still used today, most notably in the 2015
movie "Mad Max: Fury Road." But heavy undercranking
works best for settings that don't have a lot
of people moving around. "Mad Max" and "Vanishing
Point" were perfect fits, with scenes that take place in the desert. In scenes that have lots of pedestrians, the effect can make human
movement look jerky and fake, like what you see in old silent comedies. So city chase scenes can only use the technique sparingly. The Paris chase in the
1998 thriller "Ronin," where Robert De Niro's
Peugeot pursues a BMW, didn't use undercranking at all. To actually drive at
these daredevil speeds, you pretty much always
need a stunt driver. So the filmmakers have to find ways to make it look like the actor, not the stunt driver, is controlling the car. In "Ronin," they had right-hand-drive cars fitted with fake
left-side steering wheels. The actor, in this case Robert De Niro, would pretend to drive for the close-ups, while the stunt driver to their right did all the actual maneuvering on a steering wheel
positioned out of shot. But having the stunt
performer in the other seat limits the angles you can shoot. And what if the stunt driver
can't be in the vehicle at all? The solution came from a movie with exactly zero car chases: "Seabiscuit." The stunt team on that
movie built a special rig for filming horse-race scenes. Eventually, that rig
evolved into a smaller, more versatile version
designed specifically for filming car chases. Known as the Biscuit, it's basically a vehicle that you can put other vehicles on, one that can be reassembled
into different configurations, like a giant Lego truck. The rig makes it look like an
actor is doing the driving, while a stunt person actually
steers from the driver's pod. This pod can be mounted
anywhere on the platform, so filmmakers can basically
get any angle they want. The Biscuit rig made it possible to film some of Hollywood's
most famous car scenes over the past two decades, from this scene in "The Hangover" to the many chases in "Baby Driver." Take this scene in the movie "Drive," where a guy chasing
Ryan Gosling's character hits the back of his
Mustang to make it spin out. After shooting the whole
thing with two stunt drivers to get all the exterior shots, they filmed it again with Ryan in the car and the car on the Biscuit rig to get the close-up and interior angles. A stunt driver drove the Biscuit while talking to Ryan through a radio to help him mimic all the movements on his steering wheel. In the resulting scene, it looks like Ryan is in
control of the vehicle. And because he is immersed in the action, we as the audience are too. Finding ways to make chase scenes feel more and more immersive calls for increasingly
creative rig systems. Like in the movie "Extraction," with a 12-minute fight and chase sequence designed to look like one continuous take. To pull this off, director Sam Hargrave strapped
himself with his camera to the hood of a chase vehicle. From there, he could follow the action from behind, unclip himself, and then move the action into the car for a seamless outside-to-inside shot. This progression of bigger
and bigger chase spectacles has led to the "Fast & Furious" franchise, where each movie tries to top
the car stunts in the last. [engines roar] Today's filmmakers build on all the tools we've previously seen but have to deal with a whole
other set of challenges. First, cities have become more restrictive about productions filming
risky chase sequences in their streets, so it's become commonplace to shoot chases in an entirely different
city than they're set in. "Fast and Furious: Tokyo
Drift" was, despite its title, mostly filmed in LA. The movie's VFX team created an entirely CG Shibuya Crossing, the focal point of a
major chase in the movie, and used computer simulation to create fake crowds and traffic. Similarly, the zombie chase
in "Fate of the Furious" was set in New York City but filmed mostly in Cleveland, with digital set extensions
adding detailed architecture to disguise the city streets. The cars themselves are
another common hurdle. Chase cars aren't built
the same way today. Since the decline of the muscle car beginning in the late '70s, models have been getting safer and safer. Today's cars have onboard computers that make them shut down
if they start to drift or do a power slide or J-turn -- basically, all moves
that would be dangerous for your average driver but make up the basic ingredients of a Hollywood chase scene. "Black Panther"'s filmmakers
ran into this problem when filming the Busan chase scene. They had to have Lexus send
them a computer programmer to tweak the cars'
computer systems on set, overriding the many safety features. This happened on "Baby Driver," too. The team had to fly in a
technician from Germany to make the Mercedes-Benz slide around and crash through a fence
without shutting down. This customization goes
beyond computer programs. Cars have always been reinforced
and modified for stunts, but recent movies take
customization much further. For cars used in production for the "Fast & Furious" movies, the crew removes the airbags from the cars and disables features
like traction control and the antilock braking system. They also fortify the frames
and bodies of the vehicles so they can withstand
heavy-duty stunt work. This can also mean building
new cars from scratch, like the flip car that
Luke Evans' character uses as a weapon in the London
chase from "Fast 6." The Formula 1-style car
has a special ramp design, so that when it drives into other cars it makes them go flying. They also designed the car with both front and
rear hydraulic steering, which made it possible for the car to change
direction at high speeds and look like it's gliding over the road. But just as it took 100
years to get the tech to where we are now, it can still take months to
build up an epic car shot, even a short one. For the upcoming "F9" movie, director Justin Lin said this four-second
shot with a Toyota 86 took eight months of prep, four days of production, and over 100 crew members. So even if these cars are going fast, it's the slow work of production that's gotten chase scenes
to where they are today. [car engine sputters]
[tires squeal]
That 'The French Connection' chase scene in NYC was not a closed set or even known to the city is completely insane!
I would take that awful Bond scene with the rear projection any day over the incredibly awful last shot from the FATF with the car going through the building. Looking stupid due to a lack of technology is one thing, but looking stupid while having very advanced technology to help you not look stupid is something much worse.
How are they not even going to mention To Live and Die in L.A.?
I like how nothing else happened between early 1970s until 1998. Or am I missing something?
Does it mention the slow chase in Way of the Gun?
"jaquire" they arent even trying to pronounce the word now and have supplimented their own words.