Shooting a Car with No Car?

M

Madlabent

I'm working on a project where one scene calls for the main character to leave out of the house and notice that his car has been damaged (slashed tires, scratches, whatever). The problem is, however, I don't have access to a damaged tire nor to a junk vehicle that can be damaged for the sake of shooting.

How can I shoot the scene to make it look like he has a problem, without actually showing the damage?

and...

Is it possible to shoot this in a way where I don't need to show a car at all?
 
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can you get an air compressor to re-inflate the tires? If so, just let the air out of the tire and make it flat, this wont damage it so long as you dont drive it.. then when your done shooting the scene, pump the tire back up with the compressor.
 
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I think your best option is to rethink the scene...

A short I saw not that long ago started with a female character looking shocked and screaming 'my car!'

It then followed four or five different people's stories until we got to the last guy who had taken the female character's car, pulled over on the side of the road where he was found by two guys, who bound him, threw him in the trunk and poured gasoline over the car.

You didn't need to see the car explode to put two and two together and realise what had happened.

This is all part of writing within your means - if you can't get a car with slashed tires and scratches, write it in a different way that works just as well. Keeping it and just 'faking it' or 'attempting to make it work' starts your great story and a decline towards mediocrity IMO. If you write something different, then no-one will ever know it was meant to be something else. If you try and fake it, then there are always going to be people who think you obviously didn't have the budget to slash tires..
 
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If you want to fake it, test any faking immediately and before you're filming it for real. Apply them to the car and turn on the camera, then play with lighting and angles and everything you can think of to make it look legitimate, but don't just slap on something quickly and film whatever you get.

If you can't make it look legitimate (as in, if you show it to outside observers they can tell that it was obviously faked), go with what jax said and just keep the car off-screen and use dialogue to tally the damage.
 
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You can Photoshop or After Effects the damage, if you know either program and can apply a Mask.

upsidedowncar.jpg



This cop car gets trashed. I used a foot long model:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t44l7mj2m8M
 
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A combination of grease pencil, plasti-dip, paper mache, and tempra paint would make a good amount of reversable body damage. Break some tempered glass on the ground then dont show the windows. Deflating the tires wihout moving the car wont damage them.
 
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If you need to drive the car on flats, go to a junkyard and get a couple of dead tires from the same type of car. Flat tires on steel wheels are cheap, aluminum rims are a bit more. You can even tell the junk man what you need the wheels for and he might just give them to you for free as long as you bring them back when you're done. How you shoot that is to show the car rolling with the tires not flat, cut to the guy/gal shooting, edit in tire blowout noise,and cut to the car rolling on the flat(s). For continuity purposes, scrub the tires (flat and inflated) with a brush and soapy water then apply tire dressing to all of them to give them an even look. Make sure to have the tires dressed before you begin shooting any of the car scenes.
 
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