What Kind Of Cameras Were Used In The Dukes Of Hazzard
Web-exclusive article
Next to the Batmobile, the most famous TV vehicle is arguably the fiery orange 1969 Dodge Charger from the The Dukes of Hazzard. With the Confederate flag emblazoned on its roof, the indestructible muscle motorcar was affectionately dubbed "General Lee" by good ol' boys Bo and Luke Duke.
For the new feature-movie accommodation of the series, director Jay Chandrasekhar understood that General Lee'south escapades would be the heart and soul of his take on that 1980s ode to speed, sex and Southern rebellion, and he knew what he needed to put his project over the top. "I wanted it to feel like when you got in the car with the Dukes, you were getting in the machine with that guy in loftier school who floored it and was but out of control," he remarks. "Yous got in that car one time and never got in it again." But fifty-fifty in this age of high-tech wizardry, many car chases fall flat, which is why Chandrasekhar was keen to rent the best auto-stunt mavens in the business to create the Dukes' maniacal driving style.
Enter 2nd-unit of measurement director Dan Bradley and stunt coordinator Darrin Prescott, who, along with second-unit cinematographer Mitchell Admundsen, formed the squad behind the high-octane motorcar chases of The Bourne Supremacy. Information technology was on Bourne that they starting time engineered new solutions for capturing speed on the route in existent time, utilizing external drivers for motion-picture show vehicles and a picture-vehicle shooting rig chosen the GO Mobile. "Bourne was our breakout car prove," Prescott says. "We knew [that film] needed a new approach, a new manner to look at things, and it needed people who were willing to get a unlike style with it. That translated to Dukes of Hazzard too."
For Bradley, Prescott and Admundsen, the challenges on Dukes were slightly unlike, however. "In Bourne's car chases, the main character is in extreme peril, running for his life, whereas everybody knows Bo and Luke Duke aren't going die," says Prescott. "To bring a sense of high energy to a comedy was a new challenge."
Taking a folio from the playbook of John Frankenheimer (Thou Prix, Ronin), Bradley and Prescott tried to keep the actors prominent in the stunt sequences and avoid "doing stunts for stunts' sake," says Prescott. "When you come off the role player and see the car practice this ridiculous flipover 25 times, [the sequence] loses a lot of energy. That'southward why nosotros try to put our actors in the spots as much as is safely possible. We sent Matt Damon to driving school on Bourne, and Seann William Scott went to extensive commuter training for Dukes. Both guys did a lot of their own driving."
When the going got too rough for the actors, Bradley and Prescott employed a pair of rigs that have revolutionized motorcar stunts, wresting them from the old-baby-sit stuntmen and transporting them to the 21st century. "Nosotros have something chosen an RDV, a remote drive vehicle," explains Prescott. "It's a picture vehicle with a dragster pod on the roof. The stuntman drives it from a pod, a dragster-way metal cockpit, while the actors sitting in the automobile announced to exist driving. The stunt driver in the pod has complete control of the vehicle; he can do 180s or reverse 180s with the actors and the cameraman within, and it works smashing. The absurd affair is [that when we mount it on the Get Mobile] we can motility the pod and the stuntman anywhere on the vehicle. He can drive it from the front, from behind, or from either side, so we tin shoot from the inside looking out or from the exterior looking in, and the pod won't obstruct the camera. "
Then there are those extraordinary stunts, similar when the Dukes are being chased past a posse of cop cars toward the wide side of a barn. "They accept to fit through a really small hole in the barn wall," says Prescott, "so they ski the Full general upwardly on 2 wheels." A typical approach to this stunt would be to have a stuntman drive the motorcar, hitting a ramp and ski the motorcar upwardly on two wheels; Bradley and Prescott did that, but they wanted more. "Nosotros wanted to [shoot] the actors actually skiing the car and going through the barn, rather than make it a greenscreen sequence — you know how that looks!" says Prescott.
And so they put the General on a pneumatic ramp and mounted it on the GO Mobile, a 28'-long, 500-horsepower, forepart-bicycle-drive platform that employed an external driver in an RDV pod to command the Charger while the Dukes appeared to be driving it. The Full general was cut at the firewall, its hood yet covering the empty space where its engine one time roared. Though the Full general's front wheels were removed, its rear wheels were the Get Mobile's rear wheels. "When the General drives along with Johnny Knoxville and Seann inside, we have a full camera crew onboard and a 15-pes Technocrane, and nosotros got shots that have never been done before. Then, on '3-ii-1-go!' we hitting a push button that pushed the rig almost vertical. We had cameras on the hood looking at the two actors doing their dialogue, the automobile's tilted sideways on two wheels, and you tin can see that the barn doors backside are also narrow to have driven through normally. They're skiing the machine."
Because the Go Mobile'due south vii 1/two'-wide chassis remained firmly planted on terra firma every bit its ram lifted the Full general onto its side, part of the befouled doors were removed and digitally added dorsum in, simply in time to forbid the cops from entering. So what stops the cops from driving around the barn and chasing the Full general when it comes out the other side? "Poetic license!" says Prescott.
The GO Mobile besides enabled Bradley and Prescott to design some amazing shots with a Technocrane swinging around the General as it'due south driving down dirt roads at 60 mph with the actors inside. "Whenever Dan's shooting, he likes the camera to move a lot, and a footling scrap of bounciness adds energy, simply we put a Libra head on the Technocrane to smooth that out a fleck, because otherwise it would exist just radical," says Prescott.
In fact, thanks to the GO Mobile and other stunt innovations, audiences might get whiplash from watching The Dukes of Hazzard, which is just what manager Chandrasekhar ordered. "Dan and Darrin," he says, "are making me look very good."
Source: https://theasc.com/magazine/oct05/dukes/page1.html
Posted by: christensenplousee.blogspot.com
0 Response to "What Kind Of Cameras Were Used In The Dukes Of Hazzard"
Post a Comment