Simulating A Car Ride

The only way I know of, to get the effect you're talking about is with a chroma-key, and I've done some test shots, while shooting a promo for my vector-keyer. I discovered a few things in testing ...

1) if you have the car outside, in daylight, it's hard to get enough light in the car. You need to have the car in controlled lighting.

2) watch the reflection of the chroma-screen (blue/green background) in the shiny/reflective parts of the car. those things will give you trouble if they take on the color of the background, but it's easier to deal with them if you've given it some thought. I ended up using a static plate as a travel matte to "unkey" to non-moving parts of the car that tended to key out.

3) I found lighting the green screen easiest to do from above the car, with the green screen leaning out enough to catch the light evenly ... I've got some still photos somewhere, if I can hunt them down.

4) to make it seem realistic, you've got to find a way to simulate the car bouncing around a little. I have not done this, but I suppose you could have someone bounce your car a little, and maybe add a little in post. I'd think you'd want to be careful not to overdo the real bouncing, because it might raise hell with any plates you need to pull for matting.

5) you can't stand in the middle of your yard and spin your camera around on a tripod to film the background for compositing in the windows! you get a distinct merry-go-round effect in the background. what can I say? I was time constained, so I didn't have a chance to riding with someone, filming some passing scenery.

I can say, that the in car shots made some of my more challenging chroma-key tests. You will want to make a couple of practice shots to test your lighting setup before you invest a lot of time with actors. That's another reason to shoot with the car in a garage, or at night when you can control the lighting. You won't be able to reproduce a specific lighting configuration, if the sun and cloud cover are changing.

If you fake it it's gonna look fake no matter what you do... with million dollar budgets it still looks fake.

Listening to the commentary on She's the One, Ed Burns gives a few tips to filmmakers trying to make films on low budgets. He says don't do moving car shots - process shots, hostess shots, any way you go about it they are a major pain especially on a low budget. He says if he had to do over again, he would find a way for the car to be parked and shoot it that way.

Similarly listening to the Garden State commentary, Braff obviously hated the few shots he did on the motorcycle, partially because of the reliability of the bike, but also largely due to the fact that he felt the tow shots looked really fake, so for the rest of the movie they shot it out the back of the truck - the problem with that of course is controlling traffic, which presents its own headaches (and IMO in Garden State was totally obvious and very fake).

So I couldn't help you, but I would say if you can find a way to do the shots on roads where there is no traffic and as much of them parked as possible.

You know, I've been toying with that possibility. It's not totally improbable to change the very few scenes that take place in the car moving, to be in the car...not moving. There is only one that gives me pause, but if I sit down and think about it I'm sure I could swing it.

With my extremely limited budget, I've been trying to think of creative ways to film the things related to the car in general. I've had the idea of using tinted windows to obscure who's in the car so I can do wider driving shots, when I can't necessarily have the actors.

Good editing...non moving scenes in the car prior it moving coupled with shots of the car driving without seeing who's in it well enough, and scenes of the actors arriving and exiting in the car could probably give me what I need, no?

Angle your shots so you don't capture the ground/horizon through the windows (parallax cheat). Have a crew member shake the car a bit and have the actors make sure they're "Driving" while you're shooting. I've done this and it works pretty well.

Damned good idea...I should of thought of that whole...just eliminate the need to see outside...thing.

Thanks!

for my own ego...I'll assume you're not being sarcastic...sometimes the simplist solutions get overlooked by creative people. I'm quite guilty of it way too often as well. I like to embellish too much for my own good. I wouldn't have come up with the solution had I not done it before.

I would think the solution would be dependent on the specific scenes and camera angles. If you need to be driving through a city, with city buildings, light posts, etc. going by, then it would be hard to use substitute a pretty, blue sky. I agree that a moving car shot could be difficult to make look perfect using a chroma-key setup. I'm sure, however, that it can be done, and it would enable you to choose/shoot the background shots independently.

Regarding million dollar budgets: In Men in Black II, they deconstructed a blue-screen car shot in the extras. I thought it was pretty amazing, and watching the final shot, I found the composite about as realistic as it gets. This is another one of those things where lighting and color matching will make or break the shot.

"for my own ego...I'll assume you're not being sarcastic...sometimes the simplist solutions get overlooked by creative people. "

No worries! I was not being sarcastic, I'm sorry if I offended ya. No, I honestly had just been thinking about the proper way to do it, and that way just thinking about it opened up a million better possible ways.

So, thanks, honestly.

no offense taken.

You'd have to try harder than that to get to knightly... he's got a fairly thick skin. (Maybe it's all the welts from fencing drunk people all fall.. hmm)

Well ok, then here we go.

*Rears back head to spew out an amazing display of verbal ingenuity, and razor sharp wit that will make Knightly drop to his knees in tears.*

You smell like poop.

...

Damn it, I choked.
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On another note, I'm going to test some shots this weekend with the car probably. Angles and shaking of the car to simulate movement, the blue screen effect, and so forth. Thanks again to many people for some nice ideas that are definetly worth trying.

<sniff, sniff> I don't think that's me...POKE?