Gary Powell

Let's go.

No, they'd be actors playing those parts.

Miles is like, good to know.

Yes, there is. There'll be stunt people in those cars. They'll all be strapped in. They'll have roll cages inside the cars, probably wearing crash helmets, some of them. So yeah, they'd be safe.

They're all stunt people that have been trained and they all move on a cue. They're really good because you can see they leave it right to the last second before they move. But that was lots of stunt people, lots of rehearsals.

Gary explains that they actually dropped the Ford Pinto from a helicopter. And then they're just dropping it. And then obviously when the wide shot where you see the car dropping, again, that could be filmed from a helicopter or a building and you're just seeing it dropping all the way down.

My name's Gary Powell. I'm a stunt coordinator, second unit director in motion films. Name a couple movies. Ooh, Titanic, James Bond, Mission Impossible. Okay, Miles, your turn.

So in the car when it's dropping, when the physical car is dropping, they've probably got two dummies sitting in there, no real people.

Oh dear.

Oh, was they okay?

That's why you have to wear your seatbelts and all that, so that was lucky.

It's rare. I've unfortunately been involved in one car chase where someone got seriously hurt because the special effects rig fouled. And that is obviously not a nice experience. But I think it's, you know, out of the 35 years that I've done it, I've only had one serious accident in a car chase. Other than that, you might get a bit of whiplash or something like that, but for us, that's nothing.

And Gary, that's his particular set of skills. I drove the crane in Terminator, the bus in Harry Potter.

Right. So do you choreograph little car chases for yourself? Yeah.