cinema demolition

[Pottree@domain.elided]

In a message dated 10/26/2001 1:22:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:


> The Ferrari was indeed a real 250 GT California Spider. Lest you forget, the
> movies are notorious for using "body doubles" so as not to despoil the
> reputation of the star.  The scenes of the car just sitting or driving on
> the street were most likely done with the real car and the crash scene was
> the replica.  I saw the real California Spider at the Santa Barbara 
> Concours
> d'Elegance back in the late '80s.  The owner had the detailed history of 
> the
> car's participation in the movie.  At that time it was owned by someone in
> L.A.
> - -- 

If you need to destroy a valuable car in a picture, here's what is usually 
done:

For some (nondestructive) scenes you probably use the real car you have 
bought or rented for the occasion.

For the demolition/damage or dangerous driving scenes, you have a duplicate 
body fabricated of Fiberglas.  You cover the scene so that you don't dwell on 
the duplicate long or have it somehow camouflaged.  This is also handy for 
scenes where you may have to do reshoots or extra takes after the one where 
the car is destroyed.

The Alfa blown up in Godfather II was done with a Fiberglas double.  Possibly 
the duplicate didn't have mechanicals; it may have been moved by pulleys or 
on a hidden track, or they may have covered the sequence so that the 
explosion occurs right after a cut or a SpFX transition from a shot of the 
McCoy.  There is almost no limit to the kind of tricks tat can be used, but 
the one limiting factor is money: it is ALWAYS done what appears (at least in 
planning) to be the cheapest way, and with as many as 200+ highly paid people 
plus hangers-on on a set, anything on a studio picture can get very expensive 
very fast and time is money!

No matter what you see on the screen, even if it is a heavy safe being 
dropped to crush a very expensive car, it is actually cheap in comparison to 
the hourly overhead of the crew, the rentals, and mostly the insane paychecks 
of the movie stars.

Charlie
LA, CA, USA

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