This is still a bad idea unless of course your film is titled, "How I killed a tractor driver with a tree and my Marquis". Yeah, I'd watch that.

How about showing the crash form the tree's perspective? Shot of the car speeding towards the tree, then zoomed-in shot of the car "speeding" (in post) towards you. The zoom (with maybe a 2x adapter) will in fact give you several meters of clearance while the car seems to be right on top of you. When the grill fills the screen (maybe keep it out of focus for effect) you do a quick fade to black as if light was blocked out by the car. Then put in crashing and smashing sounds, or maybe cut to the inside of the car as your crew lets the back drop a foot, glass and debris flying about the inside and your actor flopping in the seat. Then outside shot of the crumpled car.

No tree or actor gets hurt in the making of this film.

how am I gonna get hurt pushing it into a tree with a tractor? it's no different than digging into a big pile of rock hard dirt. It wont be fast, that's what post is for. I think this is going to turn out great.

I like the idea of the trees perspective as well. with increased zoom, don't you loose depth perception? I might experiment with shooting head on from a distance, zoomed in to frame it as if I was close, with the tree partway in the shot. the car could stop a considerable distance from the tree and it MIGHT look as if it were much closer

I can think of so many ways of doing this without a real car its not funny.

Heres One:
1. Buy a model of your car (10" or something, not hot wheels at 2")
2. Buy a Ken doll (or similar, whatever fits in the car)
3. Get a small tree branch or small tree (green peace will hate you for it, but less so than your initial full-life concept).
4. Weight the model with lead/brass weights and get a ramp.
5. Fire the car down the ramp into your "tree"
6. No Adobe After effect? Use Perspective Shooting.

You can do some close ups of driving towards the tree in real life, but don't hit a full size car with the tree, that is just about the stupidest thing you could do for ~0.6secs of effects.

Or call someone like "Myth Busters" I'm sure you could make up a silly "Myth" about a car hitting a tree and ask them to prove it out for you (you provide them the car, and on condition you get you use the footage in a non-compete manner). Who knows, maybe they'll go for it?

Models are a terrible idea. It'll all look fake and amateurish.

They won't. For one thing, why should they give away licensing rights? For another, they don't need to "pay" anyone with free footage for ideas, they have staff for that.

Yes, that's precisely why you do it this way. If you shoot the oncoming car from some distance behind the tree and keep the tree in frame, you could cut while the car is still several meters from the tree but it'll look like it's a few inches.

it is like jumping from a plane without a parachute. until you are about one inch from the ground, not much has happened, no damage yet. and how much of a problem can one inch possibly be..
anyway...

I would try to do the whole driving - skidding - swearing - panicking all the way up to the tree, then cut to the "unmounted bouncing camcorder with flying shards of glass" (maybe even some shards thrown from the rear seat) and then cut to the car from the outside, front wrapped around the tree. The back of the car lifted by wire attached to a crane, then the car drops and does the "little post crash bouncy thing" then you rotoscope the wire out. or if you don't want to do that, just frame it to the middle of the rear wheel, not showing the wires.
You don't have to lift the car very high, a foot or so should be enough. you could possibly even lift it using a lever, which you suddenly let go.

Physics, that's how. To simulate the same amount of damage to the front of the car by pushing it from the rear will require much MORE energy than crashing the car. You are attempting to transfer energy from the rear the full length of the car to the tree. Thinking that it will be similar to digging in hard dirt is wrong.

Let's see, you would need a very large tractor that could maintain traction that could generate sufficient energy to crush the car against a tree and you can't see how you or worse yet, a bystander be injured?

More or less amateurish then purposely driving a car into a tree?

Honestly I'll agree its not the best idea, After Effects is, but for some reason he can't use it (or get someone else to do it for him).

the front of the car will be SIGNIFICANTLY weakened. It'll have the engine and radiator and stuff out. the innerfenders will be gone, everything making the front clip rigid and strong will be cut or removed. it'll crumple like a tin can up until the K member, and I don't need any more carnage than that. it's not gonna get a moving start. that's more dangerous than crashing the car. just rest up against it and slowly push it till its "crashed".

actually, a regular floor jack would do just fine. raise it up just a bit, let it fall and bounce. especially if it was raised from say a rear corner. just frame it out of the shot.

Much more. There's no way of making a branch and a toy car look like a real car and a tree.

And it's not a case of "either/or". I've offered solutions that don't require smashing a car into anything.

J.

OK, I said this in my first post and people pretty much ignored it, so I'll tell it again: you CANNOT smash anything into a large tree, they are protected by city bylaws - even on private property. You need a special permit to cut a tree in your yard, you sure as hell need permission to smash a car into one - and you won't get it.

Forget smashing anything into a tree. Period. End of discussion. You WILL be fined and may have to go to court.

were not cutting it down. were not moving it. the way were gonna do it, it won't even damage it. maybe some bark will come off. what does the state care if I push something against my own tree?

Tell it to the judge. Trees are protected. Period.

I dunno, Jacques. Oregon's a pretty libertarian place. You can do pretty much anything there, especially if it's on your own property.

Cities require permits to cut down trees, Salem is no different. And that's not just for safety reasons, but to make sure old trees don't get wiped out for no good reason.

A quick Google search turns up a newspaper article about a Salem developer that was fined $10,000 for cutting down trees on his property without a permit.

If the OP runs a car into a tree, I'd wager dollars to donuts that a neighbour'll call the cops. Especially if it's a large, shade tree. And the next-door neighbour who might suffer damage if the tree gets sick from the impact, dies and falls on his property later on will be most vocal about it.

This thread started out fun, it's turned into a freaking advertisement for the Darwin awards...

Oliver - interesting example about the parachute. Particularly because Doug Spotted Eagle who posts here often had exactly this problem when he was skydiving and at the last minute lost control of his parachute and smashed into the ground - he nearly died and was hospitalized for an extended period.

And as you say, he was fine when he was still one inch from the ground.

yeah, I haven't heard of any tree protection programs. I could be wrong, i guess. I know who to ask about it though.
anywho, the car is all fixed up and ready to shoot. gotta clean the interior though.

So let me ask what the end result of this exercise will be.
A video posted to YouTube?

So the best way is to "build" a false tree (use a dead one, the trunk only is ok, 10feet high should be ok).
you can put it in the ground (deep) or glue it in a block of concrete.
first take would be from the tree point of view (dig a hole in the tree to put the camera) and the second from the driver point of view. a third point of view could be at the wheel level or just over the car to show impact (nice slowdown wanted).

Wondering whatever happened to this shoot/scene??

Maybe they were going too fast when they hit the tree???

Just kidding - and I'd like to know as well.

David brings up a scary point. This thread made the newsletter this month so I read it all the way through, and as best as I can tell DVInfo has not heard from Alec since February 13th. Alec, can you give us some follow-up on how this worked out and what method you used and if you are unharmed?

Maybe :-


It all went well, the director got what he wanted, has moved on and we here are of no furthur use.

The director ignored some good advice from we here and did not get what he wanted.

The director abandoned the project and full of chagrine and embarrassment, does not want to fess up to we here. - I for one would not be critical.

It went very badly indeed and the director does not want to fess up to we here. - Very much understood

It went extremely badly and the director is no longer with us.



Whatever, I feel we may hear no more on the matter from source, all of which is rather sad because I would like to have seen the positive outcomes or learned lessons from the negative ones.

I for one would have liked to see the footage of it no matter how it turned out.

I'm still alive.

well, the actual director is being a flake and the short is yet to be filmed. the current "plan" is to shoot it around mid-july, but there is currently no cemented plans.

unfortunately I have too many other hobbies to make this one a priority.



and I really do appreciate all your guys' help :^)