KB: Yeah, definitely. It's one thing to look at a photo and look at a map, but it's another thing to actually take a car and drive through some of the stuff, so every time we'd get started on one of the stunts I wanted to do, we'd have to adjust some of the spots I wanted to hit. I'd physically drive the car through the location and we'd say, "Well, that was an interesting idea, but it physically won't even work." In the new video, that slide where I come out of the building and I'm really close to the water [up against the edge of the pier], I had actually envisioned that shot at the opposite end of that building, but when I tried the shot in that direction I didn't like the arc of the slide because just where I was coming out there was a giant piece of metal that could destroy a rim, so the risk was just too high. So that's why I switched it to the opposite end of the building, which ended up working out really well. It's actually my favorite shot in the video.
Q: It actually looks like your wheel is starting to touch the wood along the edge of the pier in that shot. Did you actually do any damage to the car in that shot or any other stunts in the video?
KB: No, not in that shot. The one in the video was the closest one I got and it was 2 to 3 inches away from the wood. My goal was actually to touch the wood, but once we got that close after only five or six tries, we just said, "OK, that's a beautiful shot." So to answer your question, I only had one major incident throughout the whole shoot and it did very little damage-and that involved the crash test dummy. The first time I did the dummy stunt [knocking the paint balloon out of its hand], it only took a few tries and I hit the balloon twice, but it was starting to get dark so the footage didn't match the rest of the video. So we went back the next day to get the shot during the day and I was having trouble with it for whatever reason. I threw it in there a little too hard one time and smacked Timmy [the dummy] on the back with the wheel, and so it dented up the car pretty bad on the rear quarter panel, but not bad enough that you'd even notice it in the rest of the video.
Q: With the dummy shot, you mentioned you had to do quite a few takes to get it right. Was that typical of most of the stunts in the video?
KB: It all depends on the stunt and the kind of shot we were trying to get. The one with Timmy for some reason took me 30 tries. I don't know why, but it was really hard. But some of the other stunts only needed four or five tries and some others took 10 to 15. My goal was to get the best-looking shots possible, not just do it in one or two shots.
Q: And in the exploding trailer scene, it looks like the car was seriously engulfed in flames for a few seconds. Did you actually feel a shock wave from the explosion or the intensity of the heat in the car?
KB: I didn't really feel the heat, but I definitely felt a shock wave every time I did that stunt. We actually ended up having to do it eight times because the special-effects crew we were using couldn't get the timing down. So I had to keep doing it over and over again until they finally got it right, and they still never really got it 100 percent. Those shots at the end of the video are actually a compilation of three or four different takes, but really I only wanted to do that in one take [laughs]. That was a pretty sketchy thing to be doing. The gap in the video doesn't actually look that small, but in reality the gap was really tight and there was a piece of metal near the rear of the gap under the rig that would've ripped off the Prodrive WRC rear wing really easily, and that wing is one of only a couple in the country.
Q: I see on YouTube that the second video already has 2.3 million views. I've also seen links to it popping up repeatedly on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Has the strong response to this video surprised you?
By David Pratte
Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!