[CRASHING]
[SCREAMS]
[CRASHING]
That, right there, was the exact moment
that jump started the Fast and Furious
franchise, after it was thought to have stalled out completely.
A moment so ridiculous, so unbelievably silly,
but executed just right, that it took this outrageous scenario
and rewired what the eventual new era, of this now 20 year
long franchise, would become.
Say what you will about fast films after 5,
but there is a reason that Fast 5 is regarded as a fan
favorite, out of all of them.
You see that vault scene, we just
looked at a few seconds ago, that was real.
That actually happened, two cars dragging a 9,000 pound vault,
through the streets of Rio de Janeiro,
smashing into real constructed buildings,
ramming it into real police cars, all initially
done practically, giving audiences
the perfect blend of suspending their disbelief,
while simultaneously providing enough visual evidence
that this was happening.
It raised the tensions and the stakes,
in that moment of the film, by showing you
something like this is--
that it's somehow possible.
It ups that attachment that you, the audience,
have in investing in these characters,
by putting them in seemingly real danger,
or as Jack Gill, one of Fast 5's stunt coordinators,
perfectly summed up.
"If we keep it real, it makes them feel like something
that they can be involved in.
And I think that's what really makes
the difference, with any kind of action series,
is to put the audience in the seat with you.
And then they feel like they're a part of it.
And that's what makes it exciting and entertaining."
The film still having a connection with reality
at that perfect line, this is a jump the building moment.
Yes, I meant to say building not shark.
Compare that scene in the fifth film and then
this scene in the seventh film, where in a car
is jumped between two of the most famous towers in Abu
Dhabi, a feat that inherently is impossible to do.
And you get a different emotion.
There was a lot of fantastic stunt work putting that scene
together, to make it look like it happened.
The only difference is that the full sequence,
when edited together, didn't actually
happen as shown in the film.
So how did Fast 5 construct a heist scenario so ludicrous
that on paper sounds impossible but was
pulled off, not just for effectiveness in the film,
but in reaction as well, without making it mostly CGI,
like future Fast and Furious films would?
Let's break it down.
Fast 5 spends its run time building up
a rather perfect flow of momentum and high octane
action, culminating in a bank vault heist that
would require some of the most exact timing for a stunt crew
ever.
The roughly 10 minute long sequence
starts with Dom and Brian ripping a whole 9,000 pound
bank vault out of a police station,
with two twin Chargers.
Once free and outside of the police garage
the brakes aren't pumped on the planned action,
as the first turn of the garage tosses the momentum of, again,
a real 9,000 pound vault, flying past cars behind them,
rolling over several concrete barriers,
while a camera moves along a dolly, low to the ground,
almost being destroyed by the vault rolling around
on top of it.
The fact that this was the only time they
took a guess as to where the camera may not get hit,
since they would have no clue where
the force of the Rolling vault would crush it,
is pretty remarkable.
But I digress.
The main intermediary chunk of the sequence
follows as the cars drag the vault the streets, right
through bus stops, cars buildings, you name it,
things that in real life would affect the movement of a vault
or these vehicles.
For each of these UPS along the way,
they went and built a real structures,
with the intent of having them destroyed.
That means that one little mess up the cost of production
thousands, if not millions to set it all up
and rebuild it again.
There was very little margin for error.
Luckily, before the film even start shooting,
the stunt coordinators like Jack Gill, from earlier,
began planning and practicing the exact dimensions of where
everything needs to be, upwards of three to four months
before filming.
So when it comes time to turn on the camera
and perform these stunts, on the actual set,
they to an incredible degree exactly what
their margin of error is.
Now unforseen mess-ups do happen, from time to time.
For example here's this motorcycle stunt, where
the rider had special back tires to launch off of,
when the car he is supposed to crash into
hit them, as to make sure he doesn't land incorrectly
and get injured by the crash.
But he misses the timing with his footing,
which resulted in them hitting their knees in the bike's
handlebars, throwing them headfirst onto one car,
and flipping shoulder first into the windshield of another,
thus breaking the stunt actor's shoulders.
He was only off from his planned jump by 1 millisecond.
That's how precise and how down to the wire these stunts come,
in order for them to be performed proper.
The car choreography alone, for this Fast 5 scene
was planned with maneuvers hard enough
for a regular car and an experienced driver to pull off,
but now, additionally, adding the 4 and 1/2 ton vault to it.
Well you can see where that might create problems,
like right here, with the reverse 180 move, where Brian
is behind the vault, driving in reverse, pushing the vault,
after escaping the cops on one street,
with Dom still towing the vault in the front.
After turning a corner and keeping the line,
having to now, along the side of the vault,
speed past and it in reverse, followed by quickly turning
the steering wheel to propel the car face forward, and shift
back into drive, and keep pace with Dom
once again, isn't just dangerous.
It seems and looks, on the surface, impossible.
And that's what comes across on screen.
And when in an earlier part of the chase,
cop cars are moving in a way that
appears that they're coming right at the pair,
so they each pull off and drive to the side,
allowing the vault's momentum to fly right past them,
smashing into all the cars like a battering ram.
That previous example, that margin of error being small,
this is another example of something
that could have easily gone wrong,
if off by just the smallest of variables.
Well, let's look at it more closely.
To create diversions for the cops
and to properly look as though they were swinging
the vault into a bunch of parked cars,
they didn't just need an actual vault,
they needed a specially designed three in particular.
Of course, we have the real one, shown in almost every scene,
but a specially fitted semi truck
would follow Dom and Brian and careen
into all the cars at the right time,
again, down to the milliseconds, for maximum effect on screen,
all assisted by, again, the vault.
Or take the scenes where the vault
is shown going past a bus full of pedestrians,
which would be extremely dangerous in real life,
obviously.
Or another where the vault was wrapped around a cut up
and modified truck, a serious control factor comes into play.
So that no one can actually be crushed by this thing.
There's even a moment when the vault
is thrown through a building and has to tumble and crash
in and out of that building.
Now here, this isn't a vault being
controlled by a semi truck, like in the example before.
That's done by constructing a real building with people
inside, and a ram that would push the vault on a track,
to propel it across the entire inside of the building,
while the people inside know their mark so they aren't
crushed to death.
But again, not everything goes as planned.
Another example of this are the oversights that
happen all the time on set.
You get there, and you don't realize
that you didn't think of certain things,
because in rehearsals or in planning
they weren't practical enough for you to notice, until it was
right in front of you, like the fact that the stunt
driver, in that truck we you're talking about,
was dealing with temperatures around 190 degrees.
This is causing the driver to pass out
in the car, as the heat was unbearable.
The first solution was to fill it with dry ice
to cool off the interior, but that brought a new problem.
The dry ice sucked up all the oxygen meaning now the driver
wasn't just cold, he couldn't breathe.
So on top of all that, they had to add a special tubing system
leading the fresh air outside into the vault,
so the driver could breathe while driving.
Not the first thing that comes to mind.
Big finale of the heist ends with the final face
off on the bridge, where now it's
just Dom dragging the safe, and an attempt
to spin the car around and drive head into his pursuers.
This 180 move here was planned the exact measurements,
but with such a small window that there
was literally no room for error at all, according to the stunt
coordinator, not even a inch.
After that, as Dom is taking out the cop cars,
one car gets completely cut in half by the tethering cable.
That car had a real person in it,
who had to make sure they ducked at the exact right
second or else he would turn out just like the car did.
And in the end, when the vault's momentum rips the charger
into the air, they use cranes to pull the car,
as the driver jumps out with milliseconds to spare.
All of this is insane, thoroughly planned
technical and practical work, for a scene that lasts
just shy of only 10 minutes.
Imagine the work that goes into the entire movie's runtime.
Film stunt coordinators were told
this wouldn't be possible to pull off, this bank heist
scene, here.
But they did it.
This was real, with real stakes.
If anything went wrong, well those stakes
would come to fruition.
Aside from a few injuries and some last minute
fixes to unforeseen problems, the crew of Fast 5
was able to immerse the audience,
by not telling you this can be done but by showing you
it can be done, before you even imagined
that something like this is or is not possible.
So whether you enjoy the Fast franchise or not,
you have to respect the hard work that
was put into creating the realness you
see on screen, the authenticity as much as you
can call it that.
Obviously, these are sort of stunts.
And while these films may not always
be my particular cup of tea, as someone
who respects the process of truly making something
so powerful, that not only do you
believe in the once thought unbelievable but also enough
to create true immersion.
It's hard not to respect that.
And it's also hard not to respect
the work put into something like this,
to push a franchise forward in meaningful ways.
This franchise that was once dying
is now over a billion dollar franchise,
and that might be the most impressive thing of all.
I guess the point, here, is that almost in every movie,
reality is only what you make it, right?
You, the viewer.
If you don't accept the film or show's offer of immersion,
if you don't sign that contract, metaphorically,
if you don't actively engage.
It's easy to poke fun at something
like Fast and Furious.
But if you give in, if you let yourself feel this moment,
then the film does its job of not giving you an opportunity
to come out of it.
Well then it's moments like these
that become the truly magical experiences that every film
buff and film fan convinces you exist.
No, you don't need to watch every Academy Award
nominee to understand the power of film.
Sometimes it isn't the writers, it's
these guys, the stunt coordinators,
that give you those moments that you will never forget.
OK that's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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