#UNSTOPPABLE MOVIE FILMING DRIVER#
(The driver had to stay inside the train, though McLeod boasts, “the cage we built around the guy was stronger than anything in NASCAR.”) Finally, the third element of the shot involved exploding the prone engines-the crew hooked them to a pull-line to give some movement and lit the fuse. Next, they mounted the dummy engines on the track, and secured a stuntman/driver inside to drive it as it derailed. First, they shot the runaway train coupled to the two engines pushing it in reverse. Then, to capture the necessary footage for the aforementioned scene, Scott broke the sequence up into three parts, filming each with a barrage of at least twelve cameras, including two from helicopters that hovered above the carnage. Scott had two fake full-sized engines built in Los Angeles, shipped on flatbeds across the country, and assembled in Pennsylvania. Everything you see in that film is shot practically.” For those who don’t speak film-ese, “practically” means that the train wreck isn’t just a bunch of ones and zeroes on a hard drive somewhere. We have one very limited green-screen shot in the film. Smith and Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End, the key to creating a convincing train wreck is to actually wreck a train: “Tony is a guy who wants to do everything practically. After you watch it, read on because we talked to two of Tony’s partners-in-train-wreckage, line producer Eric McLeod and editor Chris Lebenzon, to find out how you construct a pitch-perfect train wreck.According to McLeod, who’s worked on mega-movies such as Mr. Which begs the question, how does he do it? Thankfully, Twentieth Century Fox has given Little Gold Men this exclusive video about the making of the most impressive sequences in the film-where a conductor tries to slow down the runaway freight-train by pushing it in the opposite direction with another engine, only to get derailed and go up in flames. When it comes to old-fashioned CGI-free special effects, no one does it better than Tony Scott. Put more simply, he blows up trains and it’s really cool. Pulling it off with masterful control, Scott’s made a film whose high-wire tension and blue-collar heroics recall Clouzot’s classic The Wages of Fear-except at 70 miles an hour. With Unstoppable, Scott has brought his formidable arsenal of formal wizardry to bear on an elegantly simple conceit: two men, one train, no brakes. But when the master of mayhem gets it right- Top Gun, True Romance, Man on Fire-he creates the kind of thrilling muscle movies that leave you feeling the pleasant burn of a good workout. It’s easy to take Tony Scott for granted-to let his hyperkinetic style flash over your eyes as you tweet about gender issues in The Social Network. Fortunately, this weekend action-auteur Tony Scott slams his runaway-freight-train film Unstoppable into theaters like, well, a runaway freight train.
You can watch only so many prestige pictures during awards season before you find yourself secretly longing for some high-octane explosions.