Suki’s S2000 Jump

well hello there begins and earthlings wherever you are whatever you're doing and whoever you're lucky enough to be doing it with today we're going to look at Sookie's s2000 and it's big scene in too fast too furious this sequence involved a total of four cars a Supra a GTR and at rx-7 but today we'll focus on the Honda s2000 those of you paying attention will remember that Johnny Tran used an s2000 in the first film we had two of them for that movie with the hero one being rented from RJ Tamara and one s2000 used as a backup for 2 fast 2 furious we would need more of these cars because of the stunts we had planned we ended up buying two more s2000 plus a third one that was already damaged which we would later turn into the McRib car now that we had four cars they would all need to match and that process started with paint jobs body kits and audio/video systems which were done at West Coast custom for these cars under the hood of the hero car was a cop tech supercharger a cold air intake a full catback exhaust system and not much else our Jerry is always a fan of tasteful and subtle modifications and that was clearly evident when we got our hands on this car still even with the short list of modification there was much to be done for this movie the producers simply had to one-up the last movie and so they wanted the cars to be wild essentially they needed to be exaggerations of the characters persona and so to do this we had to embrace the tuner culture the pink paint and custom airbrushing was done by an artist named simply NOAA which gave the car the Flair that it was going to need it was kind of manga inspired but it certainly fit the character when this movie was made back in 2002 wild audio systems neon lights and multiple TV screens were standard fare at every car show as such the picture car team set out to incorporate those elements the modification plan included a host of gauges the thought being that since the scene was going to be filmed at night the gauges would give the car a cockpit style interior this meant a total revamp of the cars interiors and keep in mind for every hero car we built we had to make at least three clones of it to serve as stunt cars and as a backup car for the hero card all this process started at Eddie Paul's warehouse in El Segundo California once we got the cars to Florida they were sent to shamrock Auto for their fuzzy pink interior treatment we literally use material you normally find in bathroom floor rugs in this clip you can already see that the seat covers have started to fade from the Sun now that we were in Florida we could start hooking up the propane tanks and electronics that help the cars produce different color flames each of the cars that produce flames were equipped with a similar setup but it was very complex the hero 2 car had special mounts for cameras and lighting only the hero car had a supercharger the rest of the car has had a cold air intake in a 50-dollar Universal muffler this car had an important role in the film it was slated to be one of the focal points for the infamous bridge jump scene we all remember that scene Suki lines up against Ryan and two other transient characters of the film and the race is on at one point they approach a bridge that has been partially raised and each character designs how badly they want to win of course this never happens anywhere other than in Hollywood movies and so predictably we all know what's coming the film to seen though is going to require more than just digital effects the producers wanted to see a real car do the job since it was too dangerous for a stunt driver we had to do the next best thing we made the car into a giant remote-controlled vehicle the system they design is absolutely brilliant using radio-controlled pneumatic and electric motors and servos we're able to control the throttle the brake and the clutch activation the catch was we can only use 2nd gear the entire system is controlled by the stunt team inside a chase vehicle this close-up shows how complex the system was you can clearly see the steering wheel rig designed to quickly turn the car steering wheel easily and without fail this system could not have worked with an airbag steering wheel so is one of the reasons why we change the steering wheels on these cars the whole system is operated using a Playstation like steering wheel and pedal assembly using car mounted cameras and video screens the stunt team can drive the car remotely so long as they stay within a hundred feet or so of the s2000 of course video camera quality back then was not all that great and remote transmission of the video signal was a little bit on the poor side all of these factors certainly complicated the process what you're watching here is actually the very first test of the setup note that this setup was not used on the hero car it was used only on the jump car this particular test session was filmed on the back lot of the picture car warehouse located in Hialeah Florida what was interesting was that it was right next to a busy street and no one stopped to watch the process if that had been going on today you could bet there would be a big crowd and then have to put up barriers so you couldn't even see what was going on oh how times have changed starting off in second gear means basically that the car was going to bog at launch which also means of course that they're gonna have to rev the engine up sufficiently in order to keep the car from stalling and so you're going to hear that in a moment I also want to take a listen to how the car actually sounded versus the way it sounded in the movie they're gonna when they pull back around over here you can see them come to a full and complete stop here as they do one more loop and then listen to the cars engine you'll see it something [Music] while they're making it look easy here what you didn't see is that there were a couple of hours of this going on as they try to calibrate everything to work predictably the breaks out of work predictably the steering had to work predictably and there had to be no loss of signal so testing the range in this parking lot was the safest way to do it of course but if you take a look in the background you're gonna see some rigs and some coaches and all that kind of stuff so if things had gone wrong this car would have been trashed in the process and then of course we would have to revert to one of the backup cars that we had but once we were done they were satisfied they gave us the thumbs up and we were good to go at one point I switched from video to photos and hopped into the back of the chase vehicle my eyes kept getting drawn to the video monitor and I can't imagine being the chase vehicle driver you become so fixated on the car in front of you it's hard to pay attention to the road ahead those of you had TV screens back in the day and we try to drive and watch like live television like racing it would have been virtually impossible to do it it was craziness so if you look closely this picture you'll see Kim the red emergency kill switch and the toggle switch to engage and disengage the clutch belt it was a wild setup at the end of the test session I stopped for a moment to ponder the fact that we were probably going to destroy a very very nice car and that made me sad for a moment when I walked back inside the warehouse I realized that as we were getting ready to shoot the rest of the scene this silver stone metallic 2001 had minor damage but if there was one car that was going to be destroyed it was going to be this one because we were gonna cut it up into pieces to make the McRib and here is that process the McRib process was painful to watch a car that might have been otherwise fixable was gutted to turn it into the McRib platform we did this to many of cars you look in the background here you'll see an rx-7 you're gonna see in the clips what else you see back there 240sx we did this with a lot of cars it was just really painful to watch when a car gets turned into a Mik rig it's basically disemboweled all the guts come out of the car it they are completely gutted all the electricals taken out of the car all that suspension the drivetrain the interiors taken out the car except for the dash the steering wheel and sometimes the pedals it's a long process and has to be done safely and some of the materials have to be disposed of properly and it's very complicated to do the goal of it is to build a shell to turn this car into a shell that was suitable for mounting on that platform of that van that you just saw called the McRae cars that were going to be driven in the movie we made sure we take good care of those cars the fluids are changed all the maintenance is done and safety inspections are done the final preparation of the jump was building the ramp the angle of the ramp is carefully calculated nothing is left to chance the angle the speed of the car the stopping distance etc is all factored answer if you're wondering what you needed math for in school this is why I think a lot of people still think that we actually jumped the car is using the bridge itself as a ramp that's just not true one side of the bridge was only slightly raised but the ramp itself served as the launch platform the other side of the bridge was flattened the ramp was built from scratch by our team and then bolted to the top of the actual bridge and this was done so we could limit the angle the distance of the jump the speeds that were going to used all these things were factored in to make sure that this was going to be a safe jump keep in mind that while the suki car was going to be remote-controlled the slapjack Supra was going to have a live driver the final ramp now complete you could see that we were ready when the big night came we had multiple cameras running to capture every angle because we simply couldn't leave anything a chance the jump went off perfectly and the car landed more or less how we expected to surprisingly it survived the jump the chase vehicle wasn't so lucky its brakes were less than adequate and it just didn't stop in time and what about 15 feet further than we had planned and just nosed over the edge of the launch range since the launch ramp was just about 6 feet tall the impact was still pretty significant the guy working the rig received minor injuries to his wrists and arms on the air background had we done the jump just using the actual bridge and not the launch ramp the chase vehicle dropped into the canal about 80 feet below and who knows what would have happened fortunately movie production teams are very smart and very good at what they do so that didn't happen in the end though the hero s2000 survived the filming thanks to his stunt cars and standings and now lives in the basement to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles California [Music]

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 199,458

Rating: 4.9390621 out of 5

Keywords: the fast and the furious, craig lieberman

Id: 2ihJG1TMqcA

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Malapple]

Maybe this is old, just saw it for the first time.

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Lots of detail about creating the scene/car for the jump.