Is there a plugin to simulate a car crash?

In my final scene of the movie, the antagonist drives off and kills himself or ... dies.

He drives faster and faster, and then all you hear is the sound of the wind and the frame goes white.

This is how it is now. But I wonder if you could be generous and suggest some fabulous idea of how to simulate a car crash or how to give the impression that he dies ... that he drives to oblivion.

Car crash sounds, have the screen go red.

<<<Car crash sounds, have the screen go red.>>>

Closeup of suddenly panicky driver's face, squeeling brakes, cut to wildly unstable camera zooming into tree. Red screen or black.

Variations thereon.

Isn't this chapter one: "juxtaposition of shots?"

Koz

No, no, gentlemen, this is big time filmmaking. This is a 35mm feature film!

Think big. Think Spiderman, think ILM, think ...

:-)

I don't want some artsy-fartsy, student film effect ... and there's nothing wrong with student film efx. It's just that ...

I was hoping for a plugin that would take the car my actor is driving and flip it in the air, spin it a few times and drop it on a highway with a lot of sparks, smoke and car parts disintegrating in slo-mo.

You know, kinda like sorta BIG. LOL

Sure - there is a plug-in called Maya =)

Seriously, you will need a CD type app to pull this off.

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I was hoping for a plugin that would take the car my actor is driving and flip it in the air, spin it a few times and drop it on a highway with a lot of sparks, smoke and car parts disintegrating in slo-mo.

LOL...my side hurts...now I have the hiccups...LOL

You forgot to add the "...and I want it for FREE" part.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

h ttp://www.ShootMyHitMovieForMe.com/

It's a Linux plugin, free under the GNU and YAK Licenses.

You scan the actors and principal properties in all dimentions, OCR scan the script (if it's not already in PDF format), input the background plates, press go and your finished movie is constructed automatically on your media hard drive. Versions past 0.9.92 will produce the movie in HiDef as a command line variable (if you have time to wait).

Version 0.8.84 stuck as very popular because if the slight tendency to scramble the ending. This, it turned out, rescued more scripts than it killed. The only real downside came if your movie was accepted for presentation in a serous venue. Then you had to go back and rewrite the paper script to match what the program did.

This version only runs in Standard Def and black and white and is most widely available.

As usual, the odd versions of the program are developement-only and tend to be unstable. On Macs, the last stable release will run under the "X" environment.

Versions higher than 0.9.00 look ahead to make sure there's room on the media drive for the finished movie. No more trashing the System Drive when the media drive filled up.

Always a good thing I think.

Koz

One possible technique:


Here!

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

No, no, Koz, I don't need it in HD. Although it would be nice if it were in HDV, because that's more modern ...

But anyway, I don't have the GNU and YAK Licenses, but I'm willing to pay a reasonable fee for the plugin, say $20, if ...

there's a guarantee that the movie will be accepted in at least one major festival.

In which case you go and crash a friggin' car.

I don't know why you waste the typing time, guys. He's obviously a troll.

<<<He's obviously a troll.>>>

Yeah. We know. But he's a fun sort of troll. Plus we sorta like his off-green fleshtones. Try color correcting that!

Koz

While we're on the subject, I too am working on a Big Time film. Does anyone have a free plug-in that creates realistic humans with full physical & emotional controls? The acting $uck$ in my newest Big Time 35mm film "Whirled Peas" and I want to replace all the actors ASAP. I would be willing to pay up to $5.00 for such a plug-in if there's a guarantee that I'll win an Oscar. Please...no small time suggestions. Think "Lord Of The Rings" / "Waterworld" / "Ben-Hur" / "When Harry Met Sally".

...awwww heck - I'll buy you a coffee if you'll make my film for free

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Okay, so there is no plugin for a car crash.

But green flesh tones? What? When? I don't have green flesh tones in my movie.

I was hoping for some alternate suggestions. Maybe Motion? Is there no way to create the effect?

I know about the Sergei Eisenstein technique of cutting a scene like Battleship Potemkin and all that, and I'm glad it was suggested as a preliminary, but, come on, there must be some other way that could be tried. I mean this is Final Cut Pro Era, right? The sky's the limit...

Thanks for humoring me though. I needed that...

And, Joey, sorry about the hiccups, man. Laugh but no hiccups. That's painful...

And, yeah, Tom, maybe I should've done it the old fashioned way and crashed a car, but that would've cost more than a plugin :-)

You might be wondering how my 4th edit of the movie turned out? I'm very pleased. Everything is synch now. It took me three months of splicing words but it paid off.

The color correction went very well. I might have to tweak it a bit more after I make the first trial DVD. I may have to pull some of the color correction back. I don't have a TV set hooked up to my computer and no broadcast quality monitor. Still it looks pretty good though.

What really made the difference is the music. Finally I got some great music, and there are still some song writers and composers sending me songs from all over. I'm very lucky.

Thanks for everyone who helped me along the way in LAFCPUG. Too many to mention. I'll have to go back and read all the posts relating to this movie before I can find out how many made the contribution to my project. I feel after about a year with LAFCPUG, I've learned a lot.

Thanks everybody!

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You might be wondering how my 4th edit of the movie turned out?

Holy cow...lights are on but nobody's home. Here's a solid suggestion: check out Adobe Premiere when you get the chance:

[www.adobeforums.com]

...please

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Thanks for your help, Joey, I will look into Adobe Premiere when I have a $1000 to sink into another program and the time to learn it.

By the way, I clicked on the link you gave me. It's the Adobe user group. Are you by any chance trying to get rid of me? LOL

So you're saying Adobe Premiere has the tools to create the elements of a car crash from shots of a car and driver simulating going out of control, skidding, flipping, catching fire, burning, etc ?

There are no such tools in Motion or other FCP plugins that can be used in combination to create the effect?

As a graphic artist, which tools would you use to create this effect if it were assigned to you? And if you were given the following shots, what would you do with them and in what program you'd manipulate them?

And if you care to mention, what would you charge to create the sequence of the car crashing and burning?

1. A shot of a car driving fast toward camera.
2. The same car in various views, starting off, coming in for a stop.
3. Interior of the car with a driver going faster and faster.
4. Shaking the camera in the front seat with the driver in shot and through the windshield.

Just for your information, I can get a stuntman to do this scene for me for a $1,000. Not counting the car. I would have to buy the car in the junkyard, which would cost in the neighborhood of $1,000.

vic, are you on crack or something? there is no plug-ins to create ANY of what youve talked about! sure there are various particle emitters to create sparks, smoke, flashes etc... but ANY plugin effect isnt going to look real - if you want it to look real, we're talking serious maya/studiomax effort.

Hi Vic.

The reality:

(1) You have an extremely limited budget.

(2) Most of the time, violent scenes of this sort don't do anything advance the story - they're simply spectacle - and if they're not done well, they simply remind us that we're watching a movie, pulling us out of the story and back into our theater seats.

(3) You enjoy learning and experimenting with new techniques - you're willing to try anything, even risk seeming foolish in your search - this is an extremely positive characteristic for a filmmaker - many of those we today consider to be "great filmmakers" shared this characteristic.

(4) The "great" filmmakers relied on principles of Montage more than anything else for their "special effects". If you get the audience to join you in your story (the "willing suspension of disbelief" and if you suck them into your story, they'll be happily to go along with you if you need to distract their attention from the primary action.

(5) A "reaction shot" done well can oftentimes be much more effective than a shot of blood and carnage - If we can empathise with someone who is experiencing a horrible incident, we will know instinctivley that something terrible happened.

(6) Do it with sound!
OK, I'm an audio guy, but this is something that is so often overlooked in low budget productions, it drives me crazy. The saying "Sound is 80 percent of the picture, and gets 5 percent of the budget and 3 percent of the effort" is pretty accurate. Sound done well can get the viewer's imagination involved in ways that no picture can.

So, if you get the audience to willingly suspend disbelief, then get the actor into the car with us knowing he has motivation to be reckless, show some careless action leading up to the accident, then show someone we emphasize with experiencing the horribleness of the the crash, along with an effective sound track, then cut to a shot of the aftermath, and use care not to lose the audience in the process, we will have something which will be much more effective than something staged with an impossible budget.

Or you can set up a camera at Sunset and Laurel Canyon and let it roll for 6 hours, until you get the accident you need.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Thank you for the wake up call, Wayne :-)

Travis, that was awful nice of you to say all that.

And thanks for the refresher course; I needed that :-)

Yes, well, maybe it's time to get realistic...

A couple of days ago Shane pointed me to a site selling a gun nozzle flash plugin. I was blown away (pun intended) ... You're right about everything, but there are sometimes unexpected solutions to old problems we used to spend thousands of dollars on 5 to 10 years ago, and so I didn't want to overlook something that was already invented.

And if I don't dramatize my request, all I'll get is, "Google it."

So I think I'll go back to what Tom and Koz suggested in the first two posts, and throw in some of the ideas you reminded me of. Yes, it's back to square one. But it was fun too ;-)

Yes, an Inexpensive car crash plugin:
Scroll down to 5 min QT movie link to see dynamic results.
[atoa.ws]

Bill Rabinovitch

Hey, Bill, I liked Pollock Squared.

And your paintings are terrific. I like the use of color and the characters are extremely interesting.

Love the website ... and there it was: the car crash!

Thanks ... truly.

Vic

The YouTube people would be "borrowing" somebody else's car crash and use digital manipulation to make it look like theirs.

Koz

Maybe I should booby-trap a miniature car...

Drive it over a cliff or something :-)

yeah, like toonces the driving cat did!

This is public domain: http://ia340913.us.archive.org/3/items/CEP185/CEP185.mpg

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Thanks for the help, Travis. But I can't see this file.

Hi again Vic.

It's a rather large (6meg, I think, mpeg2 file) of a 1930s era car going over a clif. You may need to wait for a while if you have a slow internet connection, perhaps download it first.

Notes on the clip: http://www.archive.org/details/CEP185

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Filman.

In the new version of iMovie there is a "Blockbuster Hollywood Plugin"
Simply drag the effect onto the car footage and FCP can simulate what the car would look
like from different angles and you can choose the preset "Blowup over cliff" and then 35mm.
It has a built in Google map so you can pin-point the location of the car anywhere in the world and it will render in realtime from any angle.

If this does not work I know this guy who can animate Car crashes in Excell but it looks more like HD than 35 mm though...

Good luck.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

I think i've just broken a few ribs from laughing to hard. Can we put health and safety warnings on these topics in future!!