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The Secret Life of Toys Setup


Image by nickwheeleroz
Strobist Information:

While reading a car magazine the other day, I came across an interview with Quentin Tarantino where he was talking about his latest film, “Death Proof”. In the article he was saying how modern digital effects had basically ruined the car chase movie. Because nothing is impossible in the computer, film makers had gone crazy and pretty much ignored simple little things like the laws of gravity. In Death Proof he had wanted to go “old school” and do all the stunts for real without any digital enhancements. Along with the article there were some great stills from the film, including a fantastic shot of two cars making a huge jump just feet apart. That got me thinking about ways to recreate the shot with toy cars.

I was still thinking about ways to do this shot when I came across this amazing picture of two matchbox cars by 10:10 Photography (aka Coroner) which totally blew me away!

One quick trip to the local supermarket later, and I was the proud owner of three die cast Hot Wheels toy cars, total cost .94. Result!

In my mind, I had envisaged a spectacular car chase with huge fiery explosions, dirt being thrown all over the place and cars leaping through the air. As soon as I got the table set up in the studio (or my partner’s office as she likes to call it), I realized my ambitions were set a touch high. One quick rethink later and a more ‘Toy Story’ like scenario popped into my head. Why not show the secret life of toys.

With that idea in my mind, I started to prepare for the shot. The first thing I realized I was going to need was a remote shutter release for the camera. I had not given up entirely on the fire part of the picture, but to pull it off, I was going to need to be able to fire the camera remotely from the other side of the room. I do have a home made wired shutter release, but that only has a couple of meters of cable, no where near enough for what I wanted. This seemed like a good time to try out a project I’ve had in my head for a while. I have an old set of e-bay triggers sitting in a draw, never used since I upgraded to PW’s. They would make an ideal wireless remote shutter release (or so I thought).

I popped the lid off my wired shutter release and soldered a new cable across the shutter switch. I attached this to a female jack socket and fastened it into the switch box. I then plugged in the e-bay receiver, connected the camera and pressed the test button on the transmitter. Nothing. There was definitely a signal going to the camera, but it was too short for the auto focus to work before the shutter released. I unplugged the e-bay trigger and tried with a Pocket Wizard. It worked perfectly. The PW holds the switch shut for as long as you hold down the test button, the e-bay trigger only sends a momentary pulse which is not long enough. While I would have liked to use the PW’s, they are in rather short supply in my kit bag. I plugged the e-bay trigger back in and tried again, this time with the auto focus switched off. This did work and for the purposes of this picture I knew it would suffice.

The next problem was how to suspend the cars without them twisting and swaying about. I decided that they would need four threads for each of the two ‘flying’ cars. To fasten these to my reflector arm, I made some wire squares with a couple of loops which could be held with a clamp. I wrapped blu-tac around each corner and then ran a thread from the blu-tac looped it round the bottom of the car and then back up to the other corner on the wire frame. I did this for the Ferrari and the Mustang. With the suspended cars in place, I put a sheet of black card on the table and put the GT40 on this with some blu-tac under it to make it look like it had just hit the ground. To finish the scene off, I propped a small mirror onto some post-it notes to make a ramp and then put a tape dispenser, pens, pencils and more post-it notes into the scene.

For the lights, I used my new home made light strip softboxes on either side of the setup. The left one was fired on full power and the right one was fired on half power. I also added a rim light back left to highlight the cars.

With everything set up, I was ready to take the picture. The background fire was provided by a can of hairspray and a blow torch. I would definitely not recommend doing this in a confined space (or at all to be honest, it is a pretty stupid thing to do) and make sure you have a fire extinguisher on hand if you are going to play with fire. I placed the camera on a tripod and pre-focused it on the scene. I held the blow torch and remote shutter release in one hand and the hairspray in the other. I gave it a quick squirt, got a nice flame and pressed the shutter release. The burst of flame lasted only a second or two.

Although Quentin pooh-poohed the use of digital enhancement, I did make a few additions in Paint Shop Pro. I added a radial blur to all the visible wheels, and added a headlight beam to the GT40 and the Mustang. I also took out the strings and added some tyre smoke to the GT40 (thanks to eleven011 for the suggestion).

Looking at the final shot, if I could go back and adjust a few things, I would definitely change the placement of the Ferrari, it is too far to the left and pointing in the wrong direction. I would also try adding an orange filter to the rim light to make the cars look like they are reflecting more of the fire.

Picture here: The Secret Life of Toys

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