Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
The cars of Baby Driver
What do you get when you put together car chases, an intricate heist, Hollywood’s favourite young actor and an amazing soundtrack featuring music by everyone from Barry White to The Beach Boys? Edgar Wright’s new fast-paced star-studded action musical Bab
Behind the scenes of Edgar Wright’s new hit
MARQUEE PLAYERS such as Ansel Elgort and Jamie Foxx are, it must be said, a huge plus. But it is veteran stunt driver Jeremy Fry who, quite literally, steers Baby Driver in the right direction.
Fry, a 14-year industry veteran with more than 120 notches on his credits belt (including The Dark Knight Rises, Batman v Superman and John Wick) planned and executed the film’s most thrilling sequences. He talked to Popular Mechanics about all the behind-the-scenes action.
What was the main attraction of Baby Driver?
Getting to work with a director like Edgar Wright was an amazing opportunity. And then the details of what he wanted to do started to filter through, the kind of stunts they wanted to do. When I finally saw the script, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. What stunt performer in LA doesn’t want to double the lead actor in a movie where the character is a getaway driver and there’s car stuff the whole way through? It doesn’t get any better than that.
How did your work in Baby Driver compare with previous films?
For starters, I had a lot more say and was more involved with the development of the different sequences. That happens often on smaller-budget films; not big studio movies like this. So for me, one of the things that was different was that I got to flex my creative muscles. We also had a reasonable amount of prep time.
Often times, you’re thrown into a movie and you have hardly any time to prep, either because there’s no time in the schedule or because there’s no money. In short, we were able to put together a wish list and have most of those wishes granted.
The final thing that set this one apart, though, is that the stunts are real and that we got to do them in one take. To a car guy, these shots are really cool. We either haven’t seen them before, or it’s not the kind of thing you see very often.
Edgar Wright was agreeable to that. And I think it paid off in the end. Which cars were used in the film?
We used a whole bunch. But the ones that we used extensively were the 2006 Hawkeye Subaru WRX. We had at least four of those. We used a Chevy Avalanche – two or three of them – and we used a newer Mercedes, 2014 or 2015, S550; we had two of those. We also did some work with the new Dodge Challenger. We had a couple of them. And then one of the characters drives a cop car, so we also had a new Dodge Charger. Those are the ones that we did most of the work with.
What went into the thinking behind those picks?
Well, the idea with the first car, the Subaru, for example, was that we wanted something that would be somewhat innocuous. Nothing that would really stand out; something you’d use in an actual heist. For the sequence where we used the Avalanche, the idea was to go for something bigger and heavier because they know that for that particular heist they might need something with a little more mass than just a sedan.
Did you modify the cars for filming?
All of them had some work done to them, E-brakes, seat belt eyes, that kind of stuff. There was an Avalanche that had a little extra work done to it that makes going up on a wall easier.
And the use of multiple cars?
You have multiples for different reasons: in case you crash one, in case one of them breaks down. Sometimes they’ll want to be mounting lights and cameras on one car, while you’re shooting with the other one. With the Subaru, one of them was actually converted to just rear-wheel drive and was putting out some pretty good horsepower. We had another one that was built with special aftermarket differentials in the front and the rear, and the motor was worked on a bit. That one was over 300 horsepower and we used it for some of the bigger stunts. Edgar Wright has choreographed much of the action within the film to work with a pre-selected 30-song soundtrack.
Did that extend to the car sequences as well?
Yes. Trying to create and then choreograph and execute these sequences that would time out with music was really difficult. We tried to come up with stuff that would allow certain things to happen in the shot to roughly time out with the music. But then the biggest problem was just how much time we would actually have or not have in each song. When you come up with these sequences, it’s very easy to go, “All right, we’ll cover such and such, and from these angles.” We would pre-visualise everything, shoot it on our own cameras, edit it together, time it out and then realise we didn’t have time for all the shots. We would have to distill it down to only the shots that we absolutely needed because of the time limitations. It was a big challenge.
Was that the biggest challenge you faced during production?
Oh man, there’s always challenges. You get through one, and then there’s two more obstacles you’ve got to overcome afterwards. Trying to get certain locations was tough. Trying to come up with new stunts that hadn’t been seen before was tough. Trying to make the stunts work within the music was tough.
And then there’s always the schedule. We had one day in particular with four big set-ups. And as soon as we got one done, it was all hands on deck: everything is getting loaded up, and we’re caravanning over to the next location. No time for high-fives. No time to bask in the glory of having just got a really cool shot, because we’re on to the next one and we’re running out of daylight.
What kind of a road trip are we ultimately in store for?
The best thing about the car stuff that you’re going to see is that it’s all real. I can’t say there isn’t any CG, because they might put a sun-flare in there somewhere to block my face – that kind of thing. But all the gags you see have not been enhanced to make them possible. None of it is shot on green screen and then put into a real environment. The best part about it is everything you see is what we actually did. And the stuff we did was pretty cool. I’ve never been so proud or excited to see something I’ve worked on up on the screen. At the risk of jinxing it, I think this is going to be one of those movies that people will look back on and say, “That was really something else.” Baby Driver comes out nationwide on 4 August.