Good movie driving shots for chroma keying?

September 19, 2009 8:30 AM

Here's a fun one: can you think of any films that have good, usable -moving background- shots / tracking shots, that I could use as a fake "driving" backdrop for a movie I'm making?

I filmed a green-screen shot of my friends driving and dancing along in a convertible (which wasn't actually moving) for their music video...and now I'm chroma-keying in various exotic and ridiculous moving backgrounds. I'm looking for things like: driving along a beach highway, driving along a beach itself, driving through a nightclub district or New York / Las Vegas downtown at night, driving through a jungle, anything crazy even (like boating shots over water, etc.), anything that looks cool, i't supposed to be ridiculous and fake and fun, that's fine, but we're also trying to make it look -awesome- :-). So recent or high-res, non-jumpy clips would be best. One shot I have so far is them driving through outer space, which is pretty cool looking.

Can you think of any films (or other sources) that have tracking shots like what I'm thinking of? I need two angles: one looking directly backwards out the rear of a moving vehicle, and one looking sideways off the side of the road as things go by. "Empty," purely background-only shots would be best of course, though with a certain amount of finess, I could remove another car in the shot and replace it with the one we filmed. I can also reverse shots that show forward-motion, so those are possibly usable as well. Thanks a lot!

posted by wavejumper to media & arts (13 comments total)

Oh yeah, can you think of any underwater shots too? :-)
posted by wavejumper at 8:31 AM on September 19

Oh man, definitely use one of those shots from The Flintstones cartoon where the background keeps repeating itself. Bonus if Fred Flintstone passes your stars in the background.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 8:37 AM on September 19

There's a great scene in Airplane! where the driving background shifts from something normal, to an implausibly fast set of high-speed turns, to a cyclist getting run over and yelling "ASSHOLE!" to a bunch of Indians on horseback.

Aren't long vehicle tracking shots a Michael Mann signature? You might check Heat, Collateral or Miami Vice. John Frankenheimer did some great vehicle stuff in Ronin and mentions similar stuff in Grand Prix during the directory commentary.
posted by jquinby at 8:44 AM on September 19

C'etait un Rendezvous was made for this ;-) (some background info) It's forward motion but as you say, you can reverse it. Could also flip it horizontally to keep the right side of the road effect, I don't think there's anything readable in it.
posted by wackybrit at 8:54 AM on September 19 [1 favorite]

BTW, there are better quality versions of C'etait than that if you dig around - it's a pretty well adored bit of film in certain circles.
posted by wackybrit at 8:56 AM on September 19

Before you appropriate clips from a copyright protected movie, I highly recommend checking out the extensive Moving Images archives at The Internet Archive. Not only will you find thousands of cool (campy, fun, wild, vintage, crazy, etc.) film clips spanning several continents and many decades, but these materials are available free with almost no legal restriction on your right to download them and use them in your creative projects however you desire. Good luck!
posted by applemeat at 9:09 AM on September 19 [2 favorites]

Touch of Evil
posted by KokuRyu at 9:47 AM on September 19

Seconding applemeat's suggestion about copyright. It would be a shame to put in all that time and work and then get slapped with a C&D letter later.
posted by Flipping_Hades_Terwilliger at 10:31 AM on September 19

-The opening titles of any Naked Gun movie, run backwards.
-The scene in Airplane where what's-her-face is running alongside the plane.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:23 AM on September 19 [1 favorite]

I'll assume you're just having a laugh with your friends and doing this for personal use only.

Here's a cool time-lapse video on YouTube that I found while looking for a music video that I think would fit your project well..

aah, here it is. Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar video.
posted by pkphy39 at 12:40 PM on September 19

wackybrit: "C'etait un Rendezvous was made for this ;-)"

That. Is. Incredible.
posted by pkphy39 at 12:53 PM on September 19

Well, there is the driving scene in Manos, the Hands of Fate. As a bonus, the scene goes on forever.
posted by Ghidorah at 1:07 PM on September 19

Daft Punk's Electroma is full of driving
posted by Sys Rq at 3:36 PM on September 19