Cars On The Set

[Fcjchiu@domain.elided]

About a year or so ago, I loaned (not rent) my 69 Spider to a production for 
making a movie.  The show was called Nerds 2.0 and it was a chronicle of the 
Internet in the Silicon Valley produced for PBS.  The car was seen in a 
number of scenes with the 'star' or host of the show driving it.  There was a 
scene where he drove on a bridge with the top down singing Scarboro Fair ala 
Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate" and shots of him driving along Hwys 101, 280 
and around Silicon Valley telling the story.  The whole thing took only a day 
and they even hired a helicopter and an aerial camera man to shoot the 
overhead scenes.  I was there during the shoot and found the whole thing 
quite fun.  Originally I was to go on the helicopter and follow the car for 
some of the shoot but because of the size of the camera with all the 
stablization equipment occupying the extra seat, I was not able to go.  I did 
go in the van that shot the scenes of the car driving around.  Most of the 
time the camera man was hanging outside of the van with another guy holding 
on to his belt.  A lot of this was during rush hour on the highway in the 
Silicon Valley.

The guy driving the car was very careful with the car and asked alot of 
questions before getting in the car and went for a drive with me in the 
passenger seat before the actual shoot.  He even filled the car up for me.  
The whole thing came about when the production company's props department 
called me out of the blue one day and  proposed the project.  At the time the 
idea of asking for compensation never even crossed my mind.  All I wanted was 
to be named as additional insured by their insurance company.  ( This is a 
good idea if any of you ever want to loan/rent your car for a similiar 
project.)  They had no problem with this and within hours their insurance 
company faxed me the paper work naming me and the car as insured on the 
production for $1 million.  I later found out they got my name through Dan 
Przybylski who was, I believe the Vice President of ARA at the time as well 
as the Editor of the Overheard Cams.

I have had my cars appeared in a number of ads, programs, brochures etc. and 
found that the experiences are usually like the above,  nice and interesting.

Felix Chiu

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