Whoa-ho-ho-ho!
My hands are on the steering wheel, but, no,
I'm not driving this car.
The climbing and spinning are actually the result
of this motion base, or what's known in Hollywood
as a gimbal, and it's controlled with this:
the Waldo, a mini replica of the larger gimbal base.
A skilled operator can make it look
like a car is spinning out of control,
a motorcycle is bumping along a road,
or a luxury yacht is sinking.
Now, a lot of these types of sets could move on their own,
but letting the special effects team
at NAC Effects fake the movements
can actually lead to more realistic results on-screen.
Like in "Hubie Halloween."
The bike you see is actually on top of a cart.
Well, it made more sense to be able to put it in a safe,
confined environment to where he was sitting on the bike
and he could do all of his kind of funny gags
while still be moving through the neighborhood.
Narrator: But you have to balance safety
and freedom of movement.
The bicycle was on the center of it,
and we made it on gas shocks, so he could lean side to side.
He could free-pedal, and we also made it
so the wheels would spin on it.
Narrator: But moving a set is not a
one-size-fits-all solution,
which is why NAC switches between different motion bases,
like one of the most rudimentary, the airbag.
The setup consists of four bags filled with air
to lift the vehicle.
The crew will simultaneously move these metal pipes
to create basic shaking motions.
Jesse: This is a very old process.
They've been doing this for years and years.
I mean, this is probably how they did
the car-driving scenes in "I Love Lucy."
Probably should put my seat belt on.
All right, I'm driving through the jungle terrain, let's go!
Narrator: Nowadays, the airbag is best
if you need a few bumps on the road.
But when it came to "Day Shift," NAC had to safely film
insert shots of the movie's young actress while matching
all of the twists and turns of this car chase.
Director: And you see them crash, boom!
Narrator: Their NACMO bases come in handy
for these situations.
These come in four different sizes.
The Mini-Mo,
the NACMO,
the Mighty-Mo,
and the Mo.
The vehicle is first raised up onto the base by a forklift.
The team will strap it down by its wheels
so the suspension can still function.
Jesse: The steering works freely,
so to make it sort of realistic,
you're going to want to steer as it's leaning.
Operator: OK, so we're going to go into that.
Joe: Oh, yeah.
Oh, s---! [Jesse laughs]
I'm hanging on for dear life.
Jesse: You're doing a great job.
Narrator: It takes some getting used to.
There are six axes of motion to each base.
Jesse: Each of them has 27 degrees of pitch,
27 degrees of roll,
and it has plus/minus 20 degrees of yaw,
which is this twist here.
They could also heave,
which is this straight up and down,
and they can surge,
which is this here. This is surge.
Trust that I'm in good hands.
Jesse: Gimbal's moving, Joe! Here we go!
Let's go!
It's like a rollercoaster.
Oh, s---!
This is really awesome.
Narrator: These bases are capable of small, minute movements
that can replicate any surface.
How you program the gimbal will change
based on the type of vehicle you're programming it for.
Take the yacht from "The Wolf of Wall Street."
A boat doesn't move the same way as a car or motorcycle.
I love you, baby. Just hold on tight!
Narrator: So Jesse used this gimbal to create
grand and sweeping movements to match what the motion
of the open ocean would realistically look like.
Jesse: So if we had a boat on here, it'd be kind of
interacting with the waves.
The boat is always going to want to kind of
go back to level for buoyancy.
Narrator: And those six degrees of motion elevated
the movements as the yacht goes through the storm.
Jesse: We could be rolling it side to side,
putting a little bit of pitch and some heave in there.
Narrator: Jesse can also control
how smooth the movements are.
You don't always want every move to be fluid.
When it comes to helicopter scenes, like in "Iron Man 3"
and "Jumanji," Jesse might lower the smoothness
from a three, which he uses for a calm ocean,
down to a level two.
Jesse: You always want to make sure that you've got
some vibration happening.
Without that, it doesn't really work.
It's really what sells the helicopter,
is that constant turbulence.
Narrator: But making movements read well on camera
is just as much about the operator's technique.
Like when it comes to plane turbulence.
And this man, NAC founder Mark Noel, would know,
having worked on "True Lies," "Sully," and "Almost Famous."
He also worked on "Titanic,"
which featured its fair share of turbulence.
For "Almost Famous," director Cameron Crowe
needed to get the most genuine reactions from the cast
for this scene.
So Mark started the actors with small movements
and saved the big ones for last.
Keeps watching the performance, and then he kind of
would catch them when they're not really aware
and then, just, we'd slam it.
You want to keep the movements minimal in the beginning
to really be able to sell the broader moves
when you're getting into your crash situation.
Narrator: Sometimes one set requires multiple bases.
In "Flight," the crew put the plane set on an airbag
for smaller bumps.
Then, for even rougher turbulence, they used the NACMO base.
Once the plane fully goes upside down,
the crew moved to a rig
capable of spinning the actors 360 degrees.
However, you don't always have to switch bases
to get the right movements.
That "Day Shift" truck had to move
in all different directions.
So the crew modified the base by adding a turntable,
which could spin the car around 360 degrees.
And you can see by the look on Joe's face
it's spinning pretty good up there.
Narrator: The more exaggerated the moves get,
the more add-ons are needed.
In "Oz the Great and Powerful," Mark mounted this
hot-air-balloon-basket set
to a turntable placed on top of the base,
but he then had to send the balloon into a tornado.
They just wanted it to gyrate all around
and then come back the other way.
All the lines went to an armature,
which supports all the rigging,
and then we had shock cord to keep it kind of taut,
and then that went to the ceiling to keep it so that
when the motion base went up and down and spun,
it had a swivel on it,
all the rigging would go with it.
Narrator: Mark estimates this action took 10 tries
to get right.
But whether it's a hot-air balloon or a car,
Jesse and Mark don't have to memorize every single move.
That's because the Waldo-controlled moves
are all fed through this computer.
With that, they can record each move
and play it back for multiple takes.
They took this precision a step further
when working on these creatures for "The Mandalorian"
by 3D-scanning the rigs, creating the moves in advance,
and then importing those into the base.
And outside factors can really sell the movements,
like a wind machine accompanying a motorcycle
or water splashing in the exact right direction
with a boat's moves.
No bit of a detail in a moving set can be just for show.
Jesse: What reads really well with aircrafts
and helicopters is the set dressing in the actual aircraft.
So if you had, like, cargo netting, wires,
or anything hanging or dangling, that reads really well.
Joe: The going up and going down, it was authentic to
what it'd be like going up and down really bumpy terrain.
Jesse: It's a very unique sensation.
Joe: Yeah.