come on this is the desperate prayer as
studio executive makes when they ask an
audience to suspend disbelief in 1994
the prayers of the suits at 20th Century
Fox were answered with the 121 million
dollar box-office smash hit speed
instead of calling shenanigans audiences
cheered Keanu and America's future
sweetheart launching a city bus over a
50-foot gap in a highway so today on
artifice eeen we're turning public
Transpo into Superman as we floor it
into the action 90s when men were men
Sandra Bullock was a black man that'll
make sense later and stunts were
performed live instead of CGI assume the
crash position because this week on our
to the scene were ramping into the speed
bus jump
before we go any further we here at
Cinna fix promised to mercifully spare
you a deep dive into this type of
explanation theta equals 0.5 times sine
raised to the inverse gravity times
range divided by launch velocity squared
that is one of myriad physics breakdowns
of the plausibility of jumping a city
bus over the gap for some reason this
stunts more than nearly any other in the
history of cinema since science wonks
across the internet into a tizzy
hundreds of armchair Einsteins of
YouTube blocked message boarding tumblr
dan live journal dare breakdowns of
whether or not a 40-foot bus could cover
the 50-foot leap racing along at 69
miles per hour they delve into the
Newtonian equations rotational velocity
even the tensile strength of the
undercarriage of the bus but here's the
thing
speed is a movie about a bomb being
strapped to the bottom of a bus that
will explode if the speedometer dips
below 50 miles per hour so pop quiz
hotshot do you want to spend the rest of
the week calculator mashing the
permutations of an absurd 90s action
movie scenario like a discount Neil
deGrasse Tyson or do you want to explore
the psychological trickery behind
crafting a cinematic adrenaline search
do not attempt to grow a brain that's a
little harsh Dennis but point taken the
originating creative spark for speed was
1985's runaway train a largely
forgettable movie originally written by
one of the greatest directors of all
time Akira Kurosawa speed screenwriter
Graham Yost was under the mistaken
impression that Kurosawa strain had a
bomb aboard and thus conceptualized his
bust movie as such Yost initially took
speed to Paramount who wanted John
McTiernan of diehard predator and The
Hunt for Red October to direct however
McTiernan declined citing that he felt
it was too much of a die-hard knockoff
stupid McTiernan suggested Yonder bond
take the helm devon stepped on and
paramount stepped off
Devante Yost then took the project of
Fox the suits of 20th century expressed
the same reason for passing his
paramount
they didn't think audiences would buy a
ticket to spend two hours stuck on a bus
de Banton yost quickly schemed up two
additional action sequences an opening
sequence in an elevator inspired by the
time yawn devant got stuck in one during
the filming of die hard and a climactic
runaway train sequence inspired by the
1976 film silver Street with those
additions Fox climbed aboard pop quiz
hotshot who was the first choice for the
lead role of Jack Travon the answer
Stephen Baldwin yes one of the bargain
bin Baldwin brothers he declined the
role as he also filled the script to
closely resembled die hard and he didn't
want to be a poor man's John McClane in
a career chock-a-block with questionable
artistic choices this was likely the
worst even worse than playing Barney
Rubble in The Flintstones in Viva rock
Vegas after watching Point Break yonder
bond cast Keanu Reeves because he felt
the cool breeze was not threatening to
men because he's not that bulky and
looks great to women but Keanu also had
misgivings about the script feeling that
it was coming off as diehard mixed with
some kind of screwball comedy after
training with the LAPD on Point Break
kyon who wanted to portray Jack Traven
as less of a wisecracking maverick in
pour of an earnest detective with an
abiding concern for human life dibond
brought on Joss Whedon a week before
principal photography to rewrite the
character to Kiana's more humanist
liking which kind of worked all right
pop quiz Airport gunman with one hostage
he's using her for cover he's almost to
a plane she'd the hostage okay so maybe
the concern for human life wasn't
totally prioritized in a reshaping of
Reeves his character but Joss Whedon's
signature wit shouldered out nearly all
of Graham Yost's clunky original chatter
last but not least there was the issue
of casting the woman who was actually
going to drive the bus and serve as the
comic relief sidekick to kyon who's Jack
so Devon scoured young Hollywood and
came up with the obvious choice Ellen
DeGeneres no really that's who they
originally had in mind for the part
remember this was 1993
Ellen didn't come out publicly on her
sitcom until 1997 Stephen Baldwin and
Ellen DeGeneres and speed actually could
have happen
it could have happened but of course
they tapped a rising star from
demolition man instead the ever beloved
Sandra Bullock now you may be asking
yourself why we're spending so much time
discussing cast and screenplay
when analyzing how to get an audience to
suspend disbelief enough to buy a bus
jumping across a gap in a highway well
this is why Jay Leno and Pat Morita aka
mr. Miyagi on the back of a motorcycle
rocketing into the middle of an f1 race
in 1989's overturned cinematic outhouse
collision course the chemistry is so
non-existent between the characters the
comedy so forced and the premise so dull
that any and every stunt comes off as a
pitiful attempt to put revlon on a
hideously ugly pig that is to say a
causally necessary component of getting
an audience to suspend disbelief is
having them fully bought in before you
make the ask just think of hundreds of
stormtroopers firing lasers not once
hitting Luke Han Leia or Chewie when
you're rooting for likable characters
you're mentally primed to overlook that
it's patently absurd to dodge thousands
of laser beams there's even a name for
this psychological phenomenon the halo
effect the halo effect is a cognitive
bias in which a positive or negative
impression of something influences the
observers thoughts and feelings about
the intrinsic properties of the object
of observation in layman's terms if you
think someone's a babe you're more
likely to think they're smart and nice
to some people out there in our nation
don't have maps and I believe that our
education like such as in South Africa
and the Iraq everywhere like such as
alright not always
still this means that every time you've
suspended disbelief in a movie it's not
because the filmmakers have presented a
plausible scenario it's because you're
having so much fun with your new
on-screen but owes that your brain
tricks itself congratulations you place
yourself so now that we've established
why it's imperative to get your cast and
script right to create a halo effect to
suspend disbelief let's suspend a bus to
review the premise of speed is a lunatic
former bomb squad officer played by
Dennis Hopper rigs a bomb on a bus that
will go off if the bus dips below fifty
miles an hour
la SWAT officer Jack Travon boards the
bus and must outwit the bomber while
simultaneously getting the bus to
perform automotive gym
Plastics in order to save the lives of
the passengers aboard including Sandra
Bullock and evidently Madea for the
shoot a fleet of a dozen buses were put
to work different buses were modified
for different shots most of the stunt
driver riding atop the bus working a
special steering wheel while Sandra spun
her fake one on the inside additionally
the inside was cut out of one for
shooting interiors another had the
windshield removed and a platform built
in front of the bus another reduce just
for the underneath photography one was
strictly for high-speed scenes tour
blown up and of course there was one
completely stripped down lightweight bus
designated for the jump scene which had
to be done over after the stunt driver
missed the ramp and totaled it effect
upon him crew hid from the studio shows
over nothing to see here shows oh my god
a horrible bus crash most of the freeway
scenes in the film were shot at the
stack interchange between the 105 and
110 in Los Angeles close to the
University of Southern California
according to legend during scouting
DuPont noticed missing sections of road
and told Yost to add the bus jump to the
script however there was no missing road
whatsoever during the actual shooting of
the scene because that would have been
insane even by Hollywood stuntman
standards in fact during the
establishing shot of the missing bridge
section you can see the shadow from the
piece they digitally painted out stunt
coordinator Gary Hines was coming off
the immense undertaking of Jurassic Park
when he signed on to do speed it was a
fitting choice as he raced cars in his
spare time additionally he was possibly
the one coordinator who could pull off
the bus stunt for a disturbingly violent
reason without the use of his recently
developed proprietary safety harness the
stunt driver subbing in for Sandra
Bullock as the driver Joffrey Brown
would likely compress his spine upon
landing the jump and snap his back in
half by the way this is what we meant
earlier about that time Sundra Bullock
was a black man so totally normal stuff
here surprisingly Joffrey's number one
concern wasn't injuring his vertebrae it
was having any of the cameras rigging or
pieces of metal framework come detached
and impaling him so next time you're
complaining about your job or how hot it
is in the vo booth just think of Joffrey
after two weeks of rehearsal it was time
to jump a bus the ramp was built which
is why you can actually see the wood in
the final cut and the passengers were
evacuated which is why you can't
actually see them in the final cut
paramedics and firefighters were on
and there were five cameras form and
yonder bond instructed his crew that if
he saw a single element of the stunt
that seemed to miss he would yell leave
leave leave and everyone was to evacuate
and with that Jeffrey put the pedal to
the metal from a mile away the buses
intended speed was 69 miles an hour but
they only reached 61 still when it hit
the ramp the buses nose skied higher and
flew farther than expected a full 109
feet this was problematic as it landed
directly atop one of the cameras
crushing it crushed it on the plus side
at least it was the unmanned camera the
bus was absolutely destroyed upon
landing blowing out wheels and shredding
the undercarriage but it didn't matter
the second time was the charm dibond had
gotten the coverage that he needed to
toss it to his visual effects supervisor
Ron Brinkman Brinkman's team's task was
to digitally paint out the highway with
matte layers and create the gap in the
movie Keanu says the jump is 50 feet
long but the Banton company soon
realized that on screen it scanned is
teeny-tiny so they increased the visual
perception of the gap to 177 feet still
if the stunt were merely portrayed on
screen for the actual time the bus was
in the air
it would have been laughably dull in
order to augment the psychological
impact and expand the duration of the
stunt
des Banton is editor John Wright used
two tricks the first of course is slo-mo
the second was a trick first
mainstreamed by the Chinese action
cinema of Jackie Chan Jackie famously
did all of his own stunts often breaking
body parts in the process as such he
maximized the value of him risking life
and limb by having multiple cameras
shoot each stunt from different angles
and then replaying the stunt from set
angles John Wright didn't go full police
story and replayed a stunt in four
multiple times but he did elongate the
perceived duration of the stunt by
piecing together footage from the fort
not destroyed cameras in overlapping
sections the final result creates the
psychological illusion of the bus being
aloft for 11 seconds instead of the
real-life 0.49 yeah that's definitely
not nearly as cool for this and his
other kinetic editing on speed Wright
received an Academy Award nomination so
to make a long bus jump short the trick
of suspending an audience's disbelief
isn't to have your stunt team
Zuma busts off a ramp on a highway at 61
miles per hour and not have all your
cameras get smashed its to
psychologically warp the audience's
perceived space-time with a halo effect
and sly editing you don't have to
construct an impossible reality you need
to construct an audience mind state
where they'll construct an impossible
reality unfortunately today's many
special-effects movies rely on
constructing the impossible reality via
computers instead of psychological
trickery leading to a lack of audience
by into the stunts this isn't a poopoo
CGI but rather to call out directors who
think that because you've shown it to
the audience the audience is felted it's
what separates the inceptions from the
Percy Jackson's today and what separated
the speeds from the whatever god-awful
monstrosity this is now that you know
more about the bus jump in speed than
you really ever needed to let us know in
the comments who you think are the best
working directors at using CGI to build
a believable world for characters to
halo impact instead of just having their
computers hurl bombastic VFX at your
eyeballs and we'll see you next time an
art of deceit