Faking A Car Crash

Last year, I made a video called "Last Dance" with a few of my friends. A key event in the video was a car crash. Obviously, we didn't have any spare cars that we could crash for a video, so we had to put our skills together to simulate an accident.I did lots of research to prepare for filming, an we eventually perfected the process.

We eventually learned that faking the crash wouldn't be too difficult. We set two cars up next to each other, so that the front parts of the cars were nearly touching.

Once the cameras were rolling, put each car in reverse and drive backwards. When you are editing, take the clip and retime it to go backwards, so the cars look like they are driving towards each other, and cut the clip right before the impact. You might need to speed the clip up as well. The key to making the scene look more dramatic and realistic is to include very quick cuts with tight shots. As you can see in our video below, we filmed the accidents scene from muliple angles so that we could change from shot to shot rapidly. You'll also notice that most shots are close ups. Since the scene is quite fake, the close ups let the viewer see less of what is happening, and thus keeping the illusion.