Best car chase scene never filmed
- Thread starter M79
- Start date
The one in Edinburgh in Fast & Furious 9.
As it is, it is a geographical mess. From memory it starts in the east of the city centre heading east before instantaneously transporting itself to the south west of the city centre heading west before magically returning to the north east of the city centre heading west again with a parallel road in going in the opposite direction...
As it is, it is a geographical mess. From memory it starts in the east of the city centre heading east before instantaneously transporting itself to the south west of the city centre heading west before magically returning to the north east of the city centre heading west again with a parallel road in going in the opposite direction...
IMO, the key to a great chase scene is eliminating the bullshit: no ridiculous jumps, no pointless intercutting ("Fast & Furious"), no driving into traffic (Christ, am I sick of that), no convenient holes in traffic (or ones conveniently closing; I'm looking at "The Bourne Identity"), no needless SFX ("F&F" again), no pointless gags (seriously {"F&F" again}, a blown Charger, smoking tires & wheelstanding, then flipping in front of an oncoming train? 
Or {name the film or TV show }, a car rolling over for no apparent reason?). Just drive, & make it count.
"Bullitt" made it work on the street, by picking the right streets and making them drive it. (Yeah, okay, you can't actually get there, the one drawback.)
"Blues Brothers" drove it. (Yes, for laughs--but that's not a mall set: it's a real mall.)
There's one film (name I can't recall) that predates "Bullitt" that actually did the chase on the streets, as depicted. That's a pretty good model to follow.
So: pick your route, plan it carefully, pick your setups wisely, and get good stunt drivers.
You might want to not use stunt drivers; a big problem with chases is, they're so clearly staged: the traffic doesn't behave like actual traffic {for safety; I know}.) It might need a rethinking: have all the cars in the shots be fitted with NASCAR-spec roll cages, and don't put them on a radio command frequency. (It might need putting them on stopwatches, so the stunt cars and traffic get to their "spots" on time, not early or late, so as to avoid wrecking, without it being visibly staged--& I'm honestly not sure even that works.) If they're on a "command freq", it might be possible for the stunt gaffer to call for traffic to "give way" on demand, yet drive more/less normally otherwise, without being too obvious about it. (Some of this is also governed by the director's setup{s}; with a bit of judicious intercutting, it might be possible to bury that. {Rather than set up a shot of Chuck Norris sidekicking a guy from a camera position that clearly shows Chuck never touches him...which is just bad directing.})
Selecting the "traffic" isn't trivial, either: "Bullitt" visibly reuses some of the same cars. (Or that green Typ 1 is faster than hell. )
Shooting the sequence isn't trivial: you'll need to erase the skid marks before you roll cameras... (I've seen a couple of films where they didn't; clearly, they'd tested the gags there, and were hoping nobody would notice...)
It's gotten harder, as audiences demand more spectacular gags and are more aware of how the gags are done: flashy has dominated realistic to the point nobody would pay any attention to the "Bullitt" chase any more.
I keep hoping for a chase that doesn't involve a jump over an exploding tanker truck.
I'm afraid it's a vain hope.
Or {name the film or TV show }, a car rolling over for no apparent reason?). Just drive, & make it count."Bullitt" made it work on the street, by picking the right streets and making them drive it. (Yeah, okay, you can't actually get there, the one drawback.)
"Blues Brothers" drove it. (Yes, for laughs--but that's not a mall set: it's a real mall.)
There's one film (name I can't recall) that predates "Bullitt" that actually did the chase on the streets, as depicted. That's a pretty good model to follow.
So: pick your route, plan it carefully, pick your setups wisely, and get good stunt drivers.
You might want to not use stunt drivers; a big problem with chases is, they're so clearly staged: the traffic doesn't behave like actual traffic {for safety; I know}.) It might need a rethinking: have all the cars in the shots be fitted with NASCAR-spec roll cages, and don't put them on a radio command frequency. (It might need putting them on stopwatches, so the stunt cars and traffic get to their "spots" on time, not early or late, so as to avoid wrecking, without it being visibly staged--& I'm honestly not sure even that works.) If they're on a "command freq", it might be possible for the stunt gaffer to call for traffic to "give way" on demand, yet drive more/less normally otherwise, without being too obvious about it. (Some of this is also governed by the director's setup{s}; with a bit of judicious intercutting, it might be possible to bury that. {Rather than set up a shot of Chuck Norris sidekicking a guy from a camera position that clearly shows Chuck never touches him...which is just bad directing.})
Selecting the "traffic" isn't trivial, either: "Bullitt" visibly reuses some of the same cars. (Or that green Typ 1 is faster than hell.
)Shooting the sequence isn't trivial: you'll need to erase the skid marks before you roll cameras... (I've seen a couple of films where they didn't; clearly, they'd tested the gags there, and were hoping nobody would notice...)
It's gotten harder, as audiences demand more spectacular gags and are more aware of how the gags are done: flashy has dominated realistic to the point nobody would pay any attention to the "Bullitt" chase any more.
I keep hoping for a chase that doesn't involve a jump over an exploding tanker truck.
I'm afraid it's a vain hope.
A realistic car chase.
Speeds off, loses control, hits a lamp post; hijacks a car which runs out of petrol; is manual but they only know how to drive an automatic; gets stuck in traffic; aggressive bad driver hits them and gets into angry exchange; gets lost; get stuck in roadworks; the police helicopter shadows them and they get shepherded into a dead end or road spikes trap; not followed, but tracked down in real time using CCTV and the in-car GPS.
I enjoyed the Blues Brothers car chase, but far too many are so vacuously formulaic, grossly improbable, or just pointless that they bore me.
But despite my reservations I would be interested by a well done take that actually adds to the story.
Speeds off, loses control, hits a lamp post; hijacks a car which runs out of petrol; is manual but they only know how to drive an automatic; gets stuck in traffic; aggressive bad driver hits them and gets into angry exchange; gets lost; get stuck in roadworks; the police helicopter shadows them and they get shepherded into a dead end or road spikes trap; not followed, but tracked down in real time using CCTV and the in-car GPS.
I enjoyed the Blues Brothers car chase, but far too many are so vacuously formulaic, grossly improbable, or just pointless that they bore me.
But despite my reservations I would be interested by a well done take that actually adds to the story.