Frankensteins With A Camera: The Strangest Cars For Filming Car Chases

2023 Author: Natalie MacDonald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-26 13:59

Enjoying the scene of a car chase in some "Fast and the Furious" or "Ford vs. Ferrari", we rarely ask ourselves the question, "how do we get such juicy shots with spectacular detours and catch-ups." Not everything is probably created on a computer.

Not all. Sometimes, to shoot a realistic scene, you need to assemble a creepy car that can drive fast and shoot cool at the same time. We recall the most unusual camera cars in the world (and even in the USSR).

APCC C-2 Chasecar

When you need to shoot a fence chase scene, you can't find anything better than this monster. According to Allan Padleford, founder of APCC and creator of the C-2 Chasecar above, this is one of the best camcorders in the industry. For example, with his help, Nascar's "The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" was filmed, the cutest "Crazy Races" with the baby Beetle, as well as many scenes of the fourth and fifth "Fast and the Furious" were filmed. Technically, Chasecar is akin to a designer: depending on the task, one or another equipment is mounted on the machine frame, and if necessary, shooting can be carried out even remotely, working through several channels. At the disposal of those who are "in the cockpit" - almost racing devices: sports seats and multi-point seat belts. This is serious.

APCC Insert Car Bisquit Jr

And here is APCC's Biscuit Jr: a machine that speaks for itself. Despite the eerie look, this is an almost perfect tandem for taking close-ups while driving and chasing. A disassembled car skeleton with an actor inside rises on a moving Junior platform trailer with a powerful V8 Northstar, and all control of the "sandwich" is carried out from above or from the side - from the cab, braided with a safety cage. Thus, the conditional Captain America or a couple from "La La Landa" look like regular "carriers" in the frame. Why did we remember these particular pictures? Because Biscuit Jr did both.

Herbie camercar

Speaking of Crazy Races and baby Herbie performed by the VW Beetle. For dynamic filming, the creators of the 2005 picture brought in such a hybrid of a "Beetle" and a camera crane on gyroscopes. Usually these cameras, nicknamed "Russian Hand" or Russian Arm, are used to shoot the second car (see how they do it), but in this case, the "rugged" Beetle could shoot itself!

Half Ford

And this "something" just recently worked on the set of "Ford vs. Ferrari". Visually, this camera car seems to be the twin brother of the Bisquit Jr project, where a lightweight car body with actors inside is mounted on a finished platform. However, if you look closely, there are major differences. In this case, the engineers went further: they cut the body of the “classic” Ford GT40, lengthened the structure using a tubular skeleton frame and placed the power unit and the “cage” of the stunt driver with controls in the rear part. There is no need to doubt: such a rear engine rode cheerfully. Just watch the racing scenes in Ford v Ferrari filmed.

Chateau cinema machines

It may seem that Frankenstein cars stuffed with expensive cameras are a notion of recent decades. But no: back in the sixties, Loca-Films specialist Bernard Chateau, known as a camera-car specialist, worked with might and main with strange hybrids of cars and camera equipment. Check out the hydropneumatically suspended multi-wheeled Citroen DS, the 1953 Cadillac limousine, the Mercury six-wheel tadpole crane or the metal-sheathed mobile filming platform of the legendary Fantomas.

And what about the USSR?

Let it not be surprising that the very “Russian hand” is called Russian: they learned how to mount an operator's crane on a car back in Soviet Tula. And in the matter of effective stabilization, the creators of the "hands" were helped by the experience of Baumanka graduates, who adapted military gyroscopes for cinema. At the exit, it turned out something like a tank: a car from below, from above - a long barrel on gyroscopes, which compensated for the buildup. Except that instead of shells, a "birdie" flew out of a movie camera fixed on the nose of the crane.

The beauty of Soviet camera cars did not shine, therefore history has not preserved enough images of such machines. But something on the vastness of the network can be obtained to this day. How do you, for example, a rig-crane on the chassis "Chaika" GAZ-13 or "Moskvich-412" or a mobile platform Insert Car from - it's scary to say! - government limousine ZIL-4104. Scroll through!