Day 18: Van Door Flying Down the Road

Funding is going very well. Thanks to everyone who has supported the film so far. Please share on social media if you are able to. We need to spread the word around. Today's film story is about the car chase scene from my 2nd feature film, Mousetrap 2. This was probably the most dangerous chase scene we have ever filmed. It involved a van and a four wheeler.

Kyle and Colin see the Mouse fleeing the school on a four wheeler with Ryley on the back so they hop in an old mini van parked at the school and chase him down. The chase scene goes onto gravel and some dangerous stuff starts to happen. We were young and very crazy at the time and we thought it would be a good idea to do as much damage to the van as we could while it was moving. We start by drifting a ton with it and going high speeds.

This is a van with over 300,000 miles on it. Not the kind of vehicle you do a high speed pursuit in, but we push this van as hard as it will go. It smoked often while we filmed from overheating and needed to be jump started more times than not.

This is an interesting chase in that it involves an ATV and a van unlike most chases which are usually 2 cars or 2 similar vehicles. Each of these vehicles has its benefits and we tried to include that in the film as much as possible.

We got up to some extremely high speeds with the van and four wheeler. Getting up to speeds of over 80 MPH in the van at times. This was extremely illegal and we actually got pulled over at one time during the filming of the chase scene. This chase scene took 6 days to film. 6 full days of crazy drifting action.

We were able to pull of these shots by having the camera in my trunk duct taped to a briefcase and tied down with clothesline. Not the safest way to hold down a $6000 camera. Got some amazing shots with it though.

On the 2nd to last day of the chase scene filming we decided to go full destruction mode on the van. We busted windows while flying down the road. Matt who was driving a different vehicle now during the chase was able to bust out the windows while driving. During the middle of the chase the Mouse disappears and ditches Ryley's body. While doing so he comes across a man on a UTV. He kills the man and takes the UTV. That is why there are 2 different vehicles the Mouse uses during the chase. Watch the film and you will see.

We got to a point where we wanted something to block the Mouse from the van so we came up with the idea to unlatch the back seats of the van and push them out onto the road while driving and the Mouse would have to dodge them. This sounded awesome and so we went with it. I called action and we headed off down the road. When it came time Colin opened the van door and pushed the seat out. The seat ended up catching the edge of the van door and popping it off the track causing the van to bounce up and shattering a back window. The door now off the track collided with the ground and headed straight at Matt driving the UTV like a missile. The door rolled a couple of times and Matt steered right out of the way just barely avoiding the door and seat.

This scene is one of my favorites, specifically this shot where the door goes flying at the Mouse. What a great shot we never even planned. Car chases are extremely dangerous and someone could have been seriously injured during the filming of this scene. With our careful planning and precise driving skills of our stunt drivers we were able to pull off a pretty awesome scene!

What I learned: Careful planning and precise execution don't matter when you are going 80 MPH..