mim’s blog

This weekend they were shooting some car chase scenes for the Bourne Ultimatum outside my apartment. Check out the pictures I took. Last Saturday they closed off 26th street from 8th ave to Broadway to film some cars driving down the street, this weekend they closed off 7th ave as well to film some crashes at 26th and 7th. I awoke at 7am on Saturday to lots of clomping around overhead, a camera crew was setting up on the roof.

Throughout the morning we peeked out the windows to see what was going on. Three cars were involved in the scene, a police car, a Ford Taurus, and a Volkswagen SUV. The Volkswagen rear-ended the Taurus, pushing it into the police car. I’m not sure if the police car was supposed to get hit or not, because on one take it didn’t and on the next one it did.

They started the scene by lining the accident up like a pool shot. The police car was pulled along by a wire, while the SUV pulled a wire behind it. Perhaps they were the same wire. The lining up of the shot involved setting the proper length of the wire(s) to make sure the cars would hit each other. I missed the first take of the scene, but successive takes used different cameras and angles and things. The second one appeared to use two high-speed cameras, one of which got hit (slowly) by one of the cars.

On the last take, they brought in a pickup truck without the bed, just the frame, to which they attached a trailer which was likewise stripped down to the frame with two cameras mounted on top. This they set up right in front of the Taurus, which slammed into it in the course of the accident. For this take, the police car wasn’t around, the SUV didn’t have the wire attached to it, and it went slamming into the Taurus more quickly.

One interesting thing to mention is that they seemed to use the same cars for all of the takes. The Taurus’ trunk got progressively smashed in, but the SUV was surprisingly undamaged. Perhaps they weakened the Taurus’ frame to make it crumple better. I guess they’ll edit it in such a way that you won’t notice the progressive damage. Another interesting part was the dummy that they had sitting in the driver’s seat of the police car. I wouldn’t confuse him with a real person on the street, but maybe he would be more convincing if I saw him driving a car out of the corner of my eye.

I guess this means I’ll have to check out the movie to see how they put all of this together.

When I was in California I saw “Good Night, and Good Luck”. I liked it a lot at the time, but on further reflection I’m not as sure. The technical aspects were great: the acting, the cinematography, the period atmosphere complete with smoke wafting in every direction. I also couldn’t help but be excited by the parallels drawn between McCarthy’s red witch hunt and the current administration’s war on terror. My problem with the movie is that it was too black and white (har har). It was pretty clear who the good guys were and who the bad guys were, even if McCarthy played himself. Perhaps it was that clear in real life, but I somehow doubt that. That’s not to say that I didn’t cheer Edward Murrow’s journalistic integrity and wish it upon our current media, but Clooney might have dressed it up a little. The character Murrow epitomized the ideal of doing the right thing and taking the attendant blows in stride.

I saw Syriana this weekend and really liked it. Perhaps it is a weakness of mine that when the plot of a book or movie seems to show me the way the world “really” works, I can overlook certain artistic flaws. The plot was right up my alley, political intrigue, interlocking story lines, the US government as the ultimate bad guy, etc. There was much art to it as well. While there were too many characters to get a particularly in depth look at any one, the views we had of each of them sketched out interesting and believable characters. Parts of it did drag a bit, and few of the characters seemed a bit extraneous, but on the whole I enjoyed the unfurling story.

It also got me thinking about the way the world works, one question in particular: what is the goal of all of the power struggles? Say that finally someone from generic country X gets control of all of the oil in the world, gets the biggest economy in the world, is able to do whatever they want. Then what? What’s the point? The movie was full of posturing, manipulation, strategy and counter-strategy, people in power using the world to their own ends, but what are those ends? More power? The ability to do anything they want any time they want? Say your economy is expanding quickly with no limitations or end in sight, what would the politicians do then? Is it just the thrill of the chase they’re after?