Our favorite movies all have awesome car chases; The French Connection, Bullitt, The Italian Job (the old one, not the remake), Gone in 60 Seconds (ditto), Vanishing Point, Ronin – these are the movies we can watch again and again just for their action sequences. But shooting those scenes, with near-misses, tumbling cars, and harrowing crashes, is a lot like cliff diving. How do you know you’re any good at it until you try?
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The truth is that the stunt professionals who choreograph and perform these movie chases all have decades of experience under their belts, having apprenticed under those who went before them. But let’s say you wanted to learn some of the craft, without having to devote your entire working life to it? Why not make a chase scene using R/C cars?
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In the words of one of the filmmakers behind this amazing video, “It’s just like a real car chase, except there are no safety considerations, and resets are way faster…” The plot is simple – a street race between a Mustang, Nissan GT-R, Porsche, and stadium truck gets interrupted by a squad of C6 Corvette police cars, and mayhem ensues. The end result is a short film that pays tribute to every beloved action movie car chase cliche, with the cars smashing through cardboard boxes, piles of crates, and a fruit stand, all at 1/10 scale. There’s even a jump over a helicopter at the end.
As a bonus, we also have the “behind the scenes” video below. The filmmakers explain how, with a little help from Pacific Coast Hobbies [6] and HPI Racing [7], they made this miniature masterpiece: