Cinematography : Car rig question, Los Angeles folks by Chip Brookes

Green screen. Do it in a garage so that you have full control of the lighting on your subject. Then go out and record your backdrop footage.

either what Julian said or get a go pro camera or if neither are available options decide if the scene has to be at night in a car while driving or could you do it with the car parked up or could you shoot the scene in a different location i.e. not a car and of course the main thing that pops to my mind when scenes like this come up is... is the scene necessary for the story to make sense i.e. if the film still makes sense. with out the scene drop the scene entirely and move on

Thanks for your thoughts, guys. I think I'd still be interested in hearing if people have a suggestion about a specific location in the LA area we could do this in, before we start coming up with contingency plans.

wish I knew I'm from Ireland you see and I have never been to the U.S.

I think that shooting an actual driving scene from the hood would be impractical and expensive. If you want to give the impression of actually driving on the freeway, then the magic happens in post. It would totally depend on the cuts you juxtapose with the scenes that will give the illusion of actual motion, as well as passing lights on the windshield. Practical effects would always be the way to go with an effect like this.

Side mount.

This is where the DSLR er's go crazy. Grab some 1080's and some suction cup mounts for the easy way. Or pick it up in Post as Julian suggested. IF your actor does not move about so drastically your Editor can roto brush and mask your footage in your windows. This way you can shoot and cut and shoot and cut, Especially with sound. Having your actors lit will, etc. Looking big budget. Use some lens flare in editing and roto mask and shoot some footage going down the frwy to the left, right, and windshield. Use the Mask to place in the windows... Go all Oliver Stone Natural Born Killers on it!

Thank you for realizing that trying to steal the shot on a real freeway at night has potential problems, not just from law enforcement but because of why they would be interested. You would be a danger to yourself and those around you. Permits exist for a reason. It’s just a picture, not something to die for. I’ve done these scenes with a lot of gear and support vehicles to make them believable on screen. We had permits, because we had a group of vehicles taking up 3 lanes moving down the freeway mostly towing the hero car so that the height relative to other cars looked right. Plus extras cars, and camera trucks, and lighting trucks with generators. It took a lot of work to make it look good and believable. Think about your shots on the screen, what they will look like, and what will be seen. If you wish the scene to look real, the biggest issue is where light is coming from and how much light that will be. At night, there are no streetlights on freeways in LA. There is little light coming into the interior of the car because the source is only headlights and taillights. Not flattering light for actors. What you will see outside of the car is the headlights and taillights, reflections from headlights and taillights and reflections of other cars in shiny bits on and in the hero car and other cars. And there are other cars, always other cars. Shooting at lower speeds on a quiet road in the desert will do nothing to making it look like a freeway in Los Angeles. There are quiet desert roads relatively near most areas of Los Angeles, relatively being within a couple of hours drive if that is what you wish. but none of these roads look like an LA freeway. Your description of an MOS montage is a good thing in this case. It makes the scene doable. It means you only need a few shots from outside of the car before you move inside for tighter more controllable shots. Maybe just a freeway establishing shot from an overpass. Storyboard the montage and plan the order you will shoot in to maximize efficiency while telling your story. This scene may take a few shooting days since you need to shoot at twilight. Shooting twilight, with enough ambient light to give you exterior detail while being dark enough for the headlights to appear realistically brighter than the ambiance is critical to the believability of the sequence. This twilight time is about as long as it gets in winter, but you still don’t have a lot of shooting time at LA’s latitude. Once you know how much ambient light there will be, you can light the interior to a level that gives you just enough detail, over-lighting is a disaster. Pre-install the lighting and check the camera angles before you get on the road. Think about the visual impact. There are many approaches that work, but which choices fit the visual language of your picture? Perhaps, in this case, it would be better to rewrite the scene to happen on a city or suburban street. With streetlights and storefronts you have sources for light and reflections that can look great and will move relative to your subject so you know you are in a moving vehicle. Light moving across faces and objects in the vehicle illustrating movement is much more interesting than what you will see on a freeway.

Have you looked at using GoPro? They can take a beating (if dropped), are small/lightweight and the quality of them has greatly improved. Although not to a standard of any proper film camera. But it typically gets the job done. There are car mounts out there for DSLRs that are not big at all and therefore doesn't impede the vision of the driver.

ah, didn't see the additional comments (sean mentioned GoPro). With night I assume you are going to want proper lighting? With the amount of time and effort to properly get a shot, I tend to lean towards Julian's idea of just green-screening and letting post-production tweak it.

Just curious about the path you decide to take on this. Would you please keep us posted?

sorry guys, meant to give you the update! First off thanks everyone for your input. We settled on a combination of a few things. As far as location, we ended up finding a rather deserted area of the Warehouse District near DTLA that was isolated enough to shoot in without any problems. We discovered rather quickly that slow speeds worked better for both inside the car shots and car rig shots from the outside (less camera jiggling), so using quiet industrial roads after hours was a perfect solution. For lights, we decided not to use a polarizer to pick up as much street light reflection as possible, as well as bouncing a 1x1 LED panel off a bounceboard hidden on the ceiling of the vehicle to create a fake streetlight type source. We were able to find a couple areas also with nice ambient lighting (one was a bus barn with multiple sodium vapor lights over the parking lot) in the background. Car rig shots were stolen quickly and quietly along 1st St in Boyle Heights where the Gold Line runs at street level, east of the LA River. Lots of nice sodium vapor lamps along that street as well. We also realized while shooting that even though we were using footage that was clearly shot on city streets, it wouldn't affect the story negatively, as we also picked up plenty of freeway footage from inside the car later that night, giving us a variety of stuff to play around with and allowing us to suggest the possibility of a longer journey, one that includes both street and highway driving.

Looking forward to seeing how it came out on the ultra budget. maybe you can get that part edited and post it to check it out?

Down south, we'd get on the back of a pick-up truck and shoot it over the top. Or an old Jeep and put the windshield down. Would a motorcycle with a side car work?

What size camera are you using? If you work with a DSLR or something like a FS100 without a box (use standard lens shade), you should get a package around 5-6 pounds. This should easily fit on a suction rig to which you can add a safety arm made from pipe and grip clamps. Talk to your DP; s/he should know how to solve this.

Have 27 shot scripts. Do you wish to read outlines ? Thanks Yair

Use two cars! (1)... Your camera car will have a driver who must keep their eyes on the road at all times for safety's sake, and the DP/camera operator, and possibly your focus puller, if need be. (2)... Use wireless mics on your actors inside the action/ on camera car. Preferably your camera car is an SUV with a rear window that rolls down or lifts up for shots directly through the windshields of the action/on camera car. (3)... The rear side windows of your camera car should also roll down for shots through the driver's and passenger's side windows of the action going on, inside your action/on camera car, carrying your actors. There is a long stretch of road behind LAX, I believe in Playa del Rey, CA, that's fairly empty at night, near Pacific Coast Highway. Check it out on google maps. I've shot there before, great location!

Put the hero car on a trailer and tow it with a trayback suv....?! Camera is on suv...

I vote for Tony's idea. It's by far the safest, and will result in the best shots.

You may need to let tyres down on hero car...possibly use a small jib on suv

I was going to suggest the local drag strip. :^)

You can always go green screen as well.

didnt want anyone to think I was ignoring them but - check about 10 comments up, this footage is in the can!

I don't know LA, but what I did was shoot on a dead end road and used a very fast lens inside car to keep light low in car so actor could drive safely. You could also shoot a plate of freeway and project that. I hate the look of green screen no matter how advanced it looks fake. I think projection holds up better. Just remember always be safe, don't take risks!

Car shots are always a challenge; glad to see you got it done. Thanks for the location info.