Famous and Fearless Promo – How I would have done it

So with a coffee and some chocolate chip cookies I was watching TV, and happened to come across an interesting promo for a new show, Famous and Fearless. In this promo, they show Chris Evans supposedly introducting the show, putting on a helmet, then driving a motocross trials bike over a massive jump, then crashing on the other side. The camera crew run over to the other side of the down-ramp where Chris finishes off the promo. When seeing this, I smelt a clever editing rat.

Here’s the sequence of events of the actual stunt.

• 01:17 – Chris Evans, face only shot promoting the show.
• 01:32 – Chris takes off his glasses, says “thanks Rob”
• 01:36 – Chris puts on the helmet, then his glasses, and then the goggles
• 01:40 – Chris turns to the camera, helmet and goggles on, and says “Who dares, wins”
• 01:41 – Chris ducks out of shot mostly, presumabley to throttle up the bike.
• 01:42 – The shot is a bit blurred. the background moves a bit strangely. We then see the bike driving off, taking a run up to the jump
• 01:50 – Bike is in mid air, doing a stunt (90 degree twist or something)
• 01:51 – Bike lands perfectly on the down ramp, and we hear a crash on the soundtrack. One of the crew says “Oh God…”
• 01:55 – Camera shakes around like crazy, presumably as they run towards the other side of the ramp. One of the crew says “Paramedic, paramedic”
• 01:59 – Crew says “Don’t touch him” as they are still running towards the other side of the ramp.
• 02:00 – The bike, now on its side, comes into shot, with the exhaust spewing everywhere. There is a figure lying on the ground in an awkward position
• 02:10 – Camera comes up to Chris’s face, whereon he takes his helmet off and finishes promoting the show.
• 02:17 – Crew says “Alright Chris? Shall we do another one….?” and we go to some graphics.

Now lets assume that you don’t want to kill Chris Evans (the insurance wouldn’t pay out unfortunately), but you want a dramatic promo.  Here’s how I would have done it, and how I think they probably did it.

First of all, you give the impression that it’s all being done in one shot, by making things a bit longer and more drawn out than you’d normally have if it were edited for TV.  This will make it seem more real for the viewer – why would you shoot nearly 10 seconds of someone putting on a helmet if you weren’t making a point of doing it all in one shot? For good measure, throw in some shots of him practicing and getting psyched up.  If at all possible, get Chris to actually do a jump so he’s genuinely nervous – but maybe not one quite so risky.

Second – you shoot it with cinematic lenses with a fairly tight depth of field, and a small angle.  This gives you an excuse for the odd blur or shake that you might need to introduce later, as well as an excuse for really tight face shots.  Also it throws people off a bit because they’re not used to seeing images like that on TV, so it’s a bit harder to spot tricky editing.

Now, what we need to do is make it so that a professional motocross trials bike rider can do the jump safely, but make it look like it was Chris Evans.

01:41-Where I think the edit point is

When he throttles up the bike and accelerates away  (at about 01:41 or so) the whole image blurs a little bit strangely, and the background moves weirdly (it’s a bit hard to describe, but watch the background between 01:41 and 01:43). His head is for the most part out of shot (you can only see the back of his helmet).  So this would be an ideal place to put an edit point.  If you use fancy morphing transitions, make sure you lock down the camera settings, throw in a bit of camera shake and blur just to cover it up a bit more, rotoscope the transition frames just to tweak any last weirdness and you’ve got an almost seamless edit point where you’ve swapped Chris Evans for a stunt rider.  And nobody is any the wiser.  Heck, you could even put the camera on a robotic head, and record the movements from the first shot and play them back perfectly in the second – but to be honest, most of that sort of thing you can do in post anyway so not much point.

So now we’ve swapped Chris Evans for a stunt driver, he can go off, do the jump nicely (and safely), land perfectly (as he seems to) and ride away out of shot.   We can put some dramatic noises on the soundtrack, record some paniced voices and stuff just to add to the drama.  Without cutting, get the camera man to run towards the ramp – making sure that you don’t reveal what’s behind the ramp until the very last moment.  As long as we start off in a place you can’t see the bottom of the down-ramp this should be OK.

Whilst they’re running, we put Chris down at the bottom of the ramp, get a second bike engine running and spewing exhaust everywhere now that the stunt driver is well out the way. They’ve got plenty of time, a good 10 seconds or so. Also not revealing what’s at the bottom of the ramp builds up a bit of suspense too, so that’s a good excuse too.  Then we run around the ramp, get Chris’s face in shot and finish the promo.

One dramatic but safe promo in the bag.  Sorted!

I can’t find who did the post for this particular promo – but it smells a bit Derren Brown (or rather whoever did post for him).

The actual show it’s promoting promises celebrities doing crazy things, live on TV.  I’m wondering if they’re going to go to the trouble of faking it for the actual contestants, or whether they’ve only got celebrities with really nice insurance … it should be interesting to watch however it’s done behind the scenes.