During the recording of the dramatic execution scene in Mary, Queen of Scots, the British-American cameraman Alfred Clark instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary’s costume.
As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all of the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor’s place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing the dummy’s head.
FAST CARS AND DAREDEVIL DRIVERS
The year was 1895, and in the following 100+ years, the Hollywood Magic has come a long way to attract and engage the audience. Every other Hollywood director seems to be particularly fond of tricks involving fast cars and daredevil drivers.
To visualize increasingly spectacular car crashes, cars were often equipped with a specially developed “cannon.” After setting off a controlled explosive charge, a pole mounted in the car shot against the ground, effectively flipping the car in front of the cameras.
Adding some artfully applied sound, light and smoke effects, the audience only saw the hero, or the villains surviving (or not) a violent incident.
THE CAR FLIPPING MACHINE
It may have looked fast and easy on the screen, but on the scene the staging of every single car was a rather time-consuming and sometimes messy affair.
In conjunction with the recording of Michael Bay’s Armageddon, the special effects or “SFX” crew was required to stage a number of car flips within a tight budget and strict time schedule.
So, headed by John Frazier, the team designed, built, and applied the world’s first pneumatic car flipper. A strong steel plate was attached to a steel lever, and bottled nitrogen gas was used to power specially adapted hydraulic to flip cars up to 20 feet up into the air. It can also be used to spin the vehicle in the air, any which way you want.
In a Car and Driver interview, Frazier said:
“We sometimes have to weld in a 1/8th-inch steel plate under the unibody cars. We don’t always have heavy, full-frame cars to flip anymore. But the plate is usually enough to keep the flipper from going through the floorboard.”
In normal = non-Hollywood applications hydraulics is designed for the smooth transmission of power. Here the power is concentrated for instant, explosive release. The contraption is then reclaimed, reloaded, and brought to the next crash scene. Today, John Frazier’s SFX shop has two-dozen machines available for Hollywood studios to rent.
11-TIME OSCAR NOMINEE, ONE-TIME WINNER
With more than 100 movies under his belt, John Frazier has been in the business for half a century. He was awarded the prestigious Oscar for special effects in 2004, for Spider-Man 2.
He and his colleagues Clay Pinney and Chuck Gaspar have also won a Scientific and Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their device in 2014.