This is a chase scene from 1924.
It's from the movie "Sherlock Jr.,"
and in it, Buster Keaton seems to almost get hit by a train.
With extremely limited special effects,
the filmmakers had to come up with an innovative way
to create the illusion.
So they shot the sequence backwards,
then reversed the film.
Since then, Hollywood has developed
countless ways to make car chases
feel more real and visceral to audiences,
from modifying cars to placing cameras
right in the seat of the action.
And without each of these innovations,
we wouldn't have gotten to the ultimate spectacle
that is the "Fast & Furious" franchise.
Let's take a look at how the car chase has evolved
over 100 years in Hollywood.
This is the scene that set the standard
for all modern car chases.
It's from the 1968 Steve McQueen movie "Bullitt,"
and it's iconic partly because of the characters --
Bullitt: Look, Chalmers, let's understand each other.
I don't like you.
Narrator: But also because of their cars.
This mean-looking Dodge Charger is a muscle car,
a type of car that exploded in popularity
during the late '60s in the US.
This new, sleeker generation was basically built
for informal drag racing,
with big V-8 engines and rear-wheel drive.
The hero car in "Bullitt" was a Ford Mustang,
the first major pony car --
a more compact, sporty take on the muscle car.
And it's this combination
of streamlined design and V-8 engines
that made these cars powerful and maneuverable enough
to pull off daring stunts,
like racing through the hills of San Francisco
at 110 miles per hour.
"Bullitt" also had another advantage,
smaller and more rugged cameras,
which allowed shooting to happen in actual streets.
Before this movie,
most directors shot chase scenes on studio sets,
since they were dealing with cameras that looked like this.
To fill in the backdrop,
filmmakers would use rear projection,
where you project a moving image
onto a screen behind the actor.
Like in this chase scene
from the first Bond movie, "Dr. No,"
where Sean Connery's steering
doesn't seem to match the movement of his convertible.
"Bullitt" was one of the first big Hollywood movies
to rely on the lighter Arriflex 35 II camera,
so the crew could shoot entirely on location
and also take audiences inside the cars.
They mounted cameras on the hood,
sides, and interiors of each vehicle,
so viewers could feel every bump and lurch.
This dynamic camera style was most famously used
in the chase from the movie "The French Connection."
The filmmakers mounted cameras
on the hood, front bumper, and dashboard
of Gene Hackman's Pontiac.
These multiple angles,
along with handheld-camera work
from the backseat of the car,
showed all the action from the driver's perspective.
The result makes that Bond chase look like a casual spin.
[Bond theme plays]
But higher-stakes car cases can also be more dangerous.
"The French Connection" chase was filmed
on uncleared streets in New York,
without permits, among other drivers and passersby.
These barely avoided collisions?
They happened for real.
And this crash was entirely unplanned.
At the wheel of the white Ford was a civilian driver
who was uninvolved in the shoot.
All this happened even with actors sometimes driving slower
than what you see on film,
a standard trick used to reduce risk.
See how some cars' exhaust pipes
are blowing smoke faster than normal?
That's because filmmakers on "French Connection"
used a technique known as undercranking,
where they film some of the scene at a lowered frame rate.
Capturing fewer frames makes movement look faster --
basically the opposite of slow motion.
You can also see this in "Vanishing Point,"
released the same year.
Barry Newman's character
bets he can drive his Dodge Challenger
from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours.
That'd require a constant pace of some 80 miles an hour.
But in many sequences, like this hot race with a Jaguar,
the actors were only driving at 50.
So the filmmakers created the illusion of speed
by undercranking the camera to half its normal frame rate,
making the cars look like they're flying.
[engines roar]
Undercranking is still used today,
most notably in the 2015 movie "Mad Max: Fury Road."
But heavy undercranking works best for settings
that don't have a lot of people moving around.
"Mad Max" and "Vanishing Point" were perfect fits,
with scenes that take place in the desert.
In scenes that have lots of pedestrians,
the effect can make human movement look jerky and fake,
like what you see in old silent comedies.
So city chase scenes
can only use the technique sparingly.
The Paris chase in the 1998 thriller "Ronin,"
where Robert De Niro's Peugeot pursues a BMW,
didn't use undercranking at all.
To actually drive at these daredevil speeds,
you pretty much always need a stunt driver.
So the filmmakers have to find ways
to make it look like the actor,
not the stunt driver,
is controlling the car.
In "Ronin," they had right-hand-drive cars
fitted with fake left-side steering wheels.
The actor, in this case Robert De Niro,
would pretend to drive for the close-ups,
while the stunt driver to their right
did all the actual maneuvering
on a steering wheel positioned out of shot.
But having the stunt performer in the other seat
limits the angles you can shoot.
And what if the stunt driver can't be in the vehicle at all?
The solution came from a movie
with exactly zero car chases:
"Seabiscuit."
The stunt team on that movie built a special rig
for filming horse-race scenes.
Eventually, that rig evolved into a smaller,
more versatile version designed specifically
for filming car chases.
Known as the Biscuit,
it's basically a vehicle
that you can put other vehicles on,
one that can be reassembled into different configurations,
like a giant Lego truck.
The rig makes it look like an actor is doing the driving,
while a stunt person actually steers from the driver's pod.
This pod can be mounted anywhere on the platform,
so filmmakers can basically get any angle they want.
The Biscuit rig made it possible
to film some of Hollywood's most famous car scenes
over the past two decades,
from this scene in "The Hangover"
to the many chases in "Baby Driver."
Take this scene in the movie "Drive,"
where a guy chasing Ryan Gosling's character
hits the back of his Mustang to make it spin out.
After shooting the whole thing with two stunt drivers
to get all the exterior shots,
they filmed it again with Ryan in the car
and the car on the Biscuit rig
to get the close-up and interior angles.
A stunt driver drove the Biscuit
while talking to Ryan through a radio
to help him mimic all the movements
on his steering wheel.
In the resulting scene,
it looks like Ryan is in control of the vehicle.
And because he is immersed in the action,
we as the audience are too.
Finding ways to make chase scenes
feel more and more immersive
calls for increasingly creative rig systems.
Like in the movie "Extraction,"
with a 12-minute fight and chase sequence
designed to look like one continuous take.
To pull this off,
director Sam Hargrave strapped himself with his camera
to the hood of a chase vehicle.
From there, he could follow the action
from behind, unclip himself,
and then move the action into the car
for a seamless outside-to-inside shot.
This progression of bigger and bigger chase spectacles
has led to the "Fast & Furious" franchise,
where each movie tries to top the car stunts in the last.
[engines roar]
Today's filmmakers build on all the tools
we've previously seen
but have to deal with a whole other set of challenges.
First, cities have become more restrictive
about productions filming risky chase sequences
in their streets,
so it's become commonplace to shoot chases
in an entirely different city than they're set in.
"Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift" was, despite its title,
mostly filmed in LA.
The movie's VFX team created
an entirely CG Shibuya Crossing,
the focal point of a major chase in the movie,
and used computer simulation
to create fake crowds and traffic.
Similarly, the zombie chase in "Fate of the Furious"
was set in New York City
but filmed mostly in Cleveland,
with digital set extensions adding detailed architecture
to disguise the city streets.
The cars themselves are another common hurdle.
Chase cars aren't built the same way today.
Since the decline of the muscle car
beginning in the late '70s,
models have been getting safer and safer.
Today's cars have onboard computers
that make them shut down if they start to drift
or do a power slide or J-turn --
basically, all moves that would be dangerous
for your average driver
but make up the basic ingredients
of a Hollywood chase scene.
"Black Panther"'s filmmakers ran into this problem
when filming the Busan chase scene.
They had to have Lexus send them a computer programmer
to tweak the cars' computer systems on set,
overriding the many safety features.
This happened on "Baby Driver," too.
The team had to fly in a technician from Germany
to make the Mercedes-Benz slide around
and crash through a fence without shutting down.
This customization goes beyond computer programs.
Cars have always been reinforced and modified for stunts,
but recent movies take customization much further.
For cars used in production
for the "Fast & Furious" movies,
the crew removes the airbags from the cars
and disables features like traction control
and the antilock braking system.
They also fortify the frames and bodies of the vehicles
so they can withstand heavy-duty stunt work.
This can also mean building new cars from scratch,
like the flip car that Luke Evans' character uses
as a weapon in the London chase from "Fast 6."
The Formula 1-style car has a special ramp design,
so that when it drives into other cars
it makes them go flying.
They also designed the car
with both front and rear hydraulic steering,
which made it possible
for the car to change direction at high speeds
and look like it's gliding over the road.
But just as it took 100 years to get the tech
to where we are now,
it can still take months to build up an epic car shot,
even a short one.
For the upcoming "F9" movie,
director Justin Lin
said this four-second shot with a Toyota 86
took eight months of prep,
four days of production,
and over 100 crew members.
So even if these cars are going fast,
it's the slow work of production
that's gotten chase scenes to where they are today.
[car engine sputters] [tires squeal]