I was getting Action Essentials from video co-pilot. I looked on their site, and other sites, and there is a lot of stock footage FX available, but are any DVDs or anything where I can have stock footage of whole cars speeding for a chase, so I won't have to use real ones, or CGI ones, or anything like that?
Any stock footage of car chases you can buy for movie making?
- Thread starter harmonica44
- Start date
I doubt it. But you can search on Pond5.com and GotFootageHD.com
never ran into something specialized as that. only seen nature/city shots for stock footage.
i dont think you ll be able to find it, because
a) it costs lots of money to film a high quality chase scene just to turn it into a stock footage.
b) it would be really really REALLY lame to have a stock footage in a movie.. why do people have chase scene? because its awesome, builds the tension.. what if you ve already seen exactly the same footage somewhere else? it wont be excting at all, and therefore doesnt belong in the movie
i dont think you ll be able to find it, because
a) it costs lots of money to film a high quality chase scene just to turn it into a stock footage.
b) it would be really really REALLY lame to have a stock footage in a movie.. why do people have chase scene? because its awesome, builds the tension.. what if you ve already seen exactly the same footage somewhere else? it wont be excting at all, and therefore doesnt belong in the movie
Even Hollywood uses stock footage. It's all in the application. There are lots of stock footage clips, for instance, in the Wonder Woman TV pilot movie starring Linda Carter. They use it as news reels of WWII.
The Six Million Dollar Man used stock footage of jet fighters and military scenes at times.
It's best to use it briefly.
Stock Footage can be used as backgrounds for greenscreen subjects at times too.
Smallville used it for a madman launching a nuke and greenscreen super Clark chasing after it and leaping into the sky to ride it while he defused the nuke trigger. The missile that was launched was stock footage. They used mock-ups of the missile for the close-ups.
The Six Million Dollar Man used stock footage of jet fighters and military scenes at times.
It's best to use it briefly.
Stock Footage can be used as backgrounds for greenscreen subjects at times too.
Smallville used it for a madman launching a nuke and greenscreen super Clark chasing after it and leaping into the sky to ride it while he defused the nuke trigger. The missile that was launched was stock footage. They used mock-ups of the missile for the close-ups.
The difference being those aren't stock footages. They are clips from another movie, mostly the director's own old films. If not, they probably paid a great deal to who ever owns that clip to get it. And even though re-used, the film clips probably only ever got used 2, or 3 times in history. (not so true for the sounds). Not to mention that all the clips, sounds, are all very short.
therefore i think dlevanchuk's point is still valid. You won't be able to find an entire car chase sequence as stock footage from some random website. If you've enough money, you could probably buy a scene from a past film off a movie studio. But if you've that kind of money, you might as well shoot the scene yourself.
So the short answer is, no, you there probably aren't anything like that out there. Even if there is, it won't look good being randomly stuck into your movie, since it won't be part of your story.
Why don't you just shoot a movie within your ability? It's your first film, car chase? honestly?!
This isn't for my first, I just wanted stock footage to practice and experiment with for now, for a possible future car chase. They use stock footage of explosions and bullets slamming into glass for movies, so I figured if that can look real, why not a car chase?
Explosion and bullet stock footage will be composited over mostly stationary shots. Car chases are anything but stationary. It's a huge world of difference. You NEED to get After Effects or whatever you intend to use and start learning. It takes YEARS of practice to use it well, you're not just going to open the program and have it do things for you.
Stock footage is used all the time in Hollywood, but for super generic stuff. Like a helicopter flyby of NYC as an establishing shot, etc.
Favreau was complaining about the two shots they used in Iron Man 2 because the resolution was lower than the rest of the film. 1080p vs 2k or whatever. It's hard to tell on the BluRay though, if you really really look it's a tad different, nothing to complain about though.
But yeah, stock footage of car chases, probably not. Car crashes and a car speeding by maybe but good luck getting it all to match.
People do outsource some stuff like that (especially crashes) to other countries where it's less expensive.
Favreau was complaining about the two shots they used in Iron Man 2 because the resolution was lower than the rest of the film. 1080p vs 2k or whatever. It's hard to tell on the BluRay though, if you really really look it's a tad different, nothing to complain about though.
But yeah, stock footage of car chases, probably not. Car crashes and a car speeding by maybe but good luck getting it all to match.
People do outsource some stuff like that (especially crashes) to other countries where it's less expensive.
If you just want to practice and experiment with, just take them straight out of another movie. No law says you can't use copy-righted material if you don't show it to anyone.
Or if you don't want to do that, play a game of Need For Speed, record the replay and use that.
making a stop-motion animation with two toy cars could work too. Actually, that's a great idea, why don't you make a stop-motion animation this weekend? See, it help you with your directorial skill, your cinematography skill, your editing skills, your story telling skills, and most important of all, all you need is the most simple of digital cameras, yourself, and windows movie maker. No actors, scripts, or software required
Yeah I see. I was thinking about choosing between After Effects and Motion, but motion is a lot easier it seems. Can motion do all those things I would need to create car chases?
Yeah I will look into outsourcing when the time comes. So it's not possible then to take stock footage of a car speeding, put in a special effects program, then splice the image of the speeding car, into shots of streets, and move it around, with the stock footage of the wheels spinning to make it look like it's moving?
If you just want to practice and experiment with, just take them straight out of another movie. No law says you can't use copy-righted material if you don't show it to anyone.
Or if you don't want to do that, play a game of Need For Speed, record the replay and use that.
making a stop-motion animation with two toy cars could work too. Actually, that's a great idea, why don't you make a stop-motion animation this weekend? See, it help you with your directorial skill, your cinematography skill, your editing skills, your story telling skills, and most important of all, all you need is the most simple of digital cameras, yourself, and windows movie maker. No actors, scripts, or software required
Sure I could do that. If you're serious about stop motion being convincing enough if done well.
You really need to go watch the newest episode of Film Riot if you want to do a car chase. Get yourself a GoPro camera (less than $300) and follow their instructions, and you'll have a usable car chase without breaking any laws. Then, go watch the rest of their episodes (there are over 100) before you ask any more questions here. 
Okay thanks. I watched that film riot episode. Their solution is to shake the camera a lot to hide that the car is going slow. I could do that but for my project I was not planning on it being a shaky cam style. So I would have shaky cam during the car chase only. Does this mean that it will look weird since there is only that style there, and not anywhere else, and therefore too inconsistent?
I also tried taking out frames of cars moving, and adding motion blur but the motion blur is only added half the time. I think After Effects, at times, does not know where the cars are in the shot, and does not know where to put the but therefore. But that's just my guess.
I also tried taking out frames of cars moving, and adding motion blur but the motion blur is only added half the time. I think After Effects, at times, does not know where the cars are in the shot, and does not know where to put the but therefore. But that's just my guess.
I'm boarding a car chase for my project. My solution will be:
1) Trick photography (a-la Film Riot).
2) 2D Composites to split real cars & pedestrians.
3) CG Cars.
4) and one miniature for a specific shot
CG Cars can look good. Typically the effect falls apart when the cars not only break the rules of the road, but the laws of physics as well (or turn into giant robots). Timing is everything with this stuff. A good place to start is by copying the timings of real car stunts frame-by-frame (literally). I've been at this for a long time, and I still study my reference very carefully.
It can be done.
Thomas
1) Trick photography (a-la Film Riot).
2) 2D Composites to split real cars & pedestrians.
3) CG Cars.
4) and one miniature for a specific shot
CG Cars can look good. Typically the effect falls apart when the cars not only break the rules of the road, but the laws of physics as well (or turn into giant robots). Timing is everything with this stuff. A good place to start is by copying the timings of real car stunts frame-by-frame (literally). I've been at this for a long time, and I still study my reference very carefully.
It can be done.
Thomas
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Just for yucks, you could get P.O.V. shots from your Grand Theft Auto videogame and edit in an actor behind the wheel of a real car! Heck, that would be funny to watch. Ha ha!
There are many tricks a filmmaker can employ to create any scene. Sometimes, the bigger the scene, the less you show. Most of my stuff is based on the "make it in editing" approach. Two shots might not mean much by themselves, but edit them together and they suggest an action. You can show a guy behind the wheel, cut to a shot of a back tire peeling out and then cut to a P.O.V. of a fast moving roadway and it all starts to mean something.
The answer to challenging scenes is deciding on...a point of view. If a whole chase is too difficult to shoot, perhaps add another point of view. In this case, you could have the kidnapped character in the trunk or tied down, laying on the back seat. You experience the chase from this person's P.O.V. Very few external shots would be needed. This is what creative filmmaking is all about.
There are other tricks. You can have a shot of two cars whizzing by a house at 100 mph. To do this, you can have the drivers going 25 or 30mph and speed up their part of the footage. But, to make it look real, you can use a Mask and have a couple of actors on the right side of the screen, sitting on their porch, moving in real time. You also mask around the area which the cars are actually visible - for instance, trees blowing in the wind. Only the frame area of the street where the cars appear is sped up. You then add some blur to each car to suggest something going really fast.
A mask is taking 2 or more shots and erasing (masking out) parts of the setup shot that you don't want to see. An example of a mask; I took this shot of me pouring milk on my keyboard.
In actuality, I pour the milk on this glass and then masked it out with the shot of the keyboard.
That is what you do with the cars. All the elements - trees, people on porch, etc. - outside of the car area will be masked in from the overall shot.
You can also add greenscreen, behind, in front, or to the side of the driver, so that the background can be added seperately and sped up, while your actor stays at normal speed. I've used the greenscreen way a number of times:
As Rok mentioned, CG can work. Between having an alternate point of view, a few choice shots and some special techniques, it can be done.
There are many tricks a filmmaker can employ to create any scene. Sometimes, the bigger the scene, the less you show. Most of my stuff is based on the "make it in editing" approach. Two shots might not mean much by themselves, but edit them together and they suggest an action. You can show a guy behind the wheel, cut to a shot of a back tire peeling out and then cut to a P.O.V. of a fast moving roadway and it all starts to mean something.
The answer to challenging scenes is deciding on...a point of view. If a whole chase is too difficult to shoot, perhaps add another point of view. In this case, you could have the kidnapped character in the trunk or tied down, laying on the back seat. You experience the chase from this person's P.O.V. Very few external shots would be needed. This is what creative filmmaking is all about.
There are other tricks. You can have a shot of two cars whizzing by a house at 100 mph. To do this, you can have the drivers going 25 or 30mph and speed up their part of the footage. But, to make it look real, you can use a Mask and have a couple of actors on the right side of the screen, sitting on their porch, moving in real time. You also mask around the area which the cars are actually visible - for instance, trees blowing in the wind. Only the frame area of the street where the cars appear is sped up. You then add some blur to each car to suggest something going really fast.
A mask is taking 2 or more shots and erasing (masking out) parts of the setup shot that you don't want to see. An example of a mask; I took this shot of me pouring milk on my keyboard.
In actuality, I pour the milk on this glass and then masked it out with the shot of the keyboard.
That is what you do with the cars. All the elements - trees, people on porch, etc. - outside of the car area will be masked in from the overall shot.
You can also add greenscreen, behind, in front, or to the side of the driver, so that the background can be added seperately and sped up, while your actor stays at normal speed. I've used the greenscreen way a number of times:
As Rok mentioned, CG can work. Between having an alternate point of view, a few choice shots and some special techniques, it can be done.
I dug out a couple of my old car chase/vehicle mayhem scenes. No digital effects needed!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9qxZmsheYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9qxZmsheYE