Anyone who shoots in moving vehicles, please watch this

CharlesPapert

CharlesPapert

Director of Photography
https://vimeo.com/241251141

This video is partially the result of discussions I've had with various colleagues in the past about the safety concerns of shooting handheld in moving vehicles, especially when an actor is driving (what we refer to as free-driving in the industry, vs being towed or on an insert car). While this video was sponsored by the camera local, I think the issue is especially relevant to indie production where this kind of thing is even more common. An actor focusing on performance and their lines, sometimes with LED's shining in their faces etc. is going to be much more likely to be distracted and thus the possibility of an accident is increased. This video shows what can happen if an airbag is deployed while an operator sits in the passenger seat.

Some vehicles allow you to disable the airbag with a switch (such as when using a child seat). On my shows I make sure to bring up the concerns early on. This year on one of my shows we had a free driving scenario where the transpo dept. couldn't confirm 100% that the airbag was disabled, so we ended up rigging the cameras into position without operators.

In my operating days I once got a mild black eye from a sudden bang on the brakes while operating a handheld camera. I consider myself lucky it was that minor. I'm now very strict about protecting my operators from this scenario and I hope all will consider for their future shoots.
 
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Charles,

Thanks for sharing. A good informative piece for sure. The ultimate question will ever be present though...get the shot/die trying? Or live to see another day and do it safely? I think I'll opt for the latter more often than not.
 
This goes beyond just operators sitting next to the airbag. You also have to consider cameras (any size) that are suction, clamp, otherwise rigged in a position that could cause them to become a forcefully propelled "missile" within the car. Front bags, side curtain bags, windshield pillar bags, knee bags, bags in the sides of the seats... Everytime you turn around we are getting more airbags in more places and all of them need to be considered when using real fully functional cars. And airbags are starting to migrate into the back seats as well, no more safe zone back there.

Also be extremely careful when rigging things inside the cars, drop the wrong thing on an airbag sensor and you'll have a bad day. Sensors are often in the front grills, in the center transmission hump and in the doors or A pillars.

If you have the correct tool (often from the dealer only in the form of a computer) you can disable the entire SRS system (seatbelt tensioners as well as the bags), strong advice would be to put a tech. team on preparing the car.
 
All excellent points Greg, and something I think about even with GoPro's...as small as they are, they would not be fun to have blasted into one's face during a crash. Thanks for the notes.
 
Thanks for the post and warnings.
Yeah these air bags add a new risk factor.
Need to be safe.

That photo above reminds me of....me. I used to hang out of car windows, T-Tops, sunroofs and ride on hoods to get the shot back before we had mounts and wayyyy before GoPro
 
This over-concern about safety is a reflection of our times. Only make sense that as community that's part of the general society - thus is shaped by their skewed concern about some ideas while absolutely disregard others - we too become over concerned about issues that have very little to do with us after all.
As a friend of a DP who had his career ruined due to a deaths on his set, i care a lot about safety on mine, but this specific example goes in a wrong direction. It makes us concerned about pretty-much non issue.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
This over-concern about safety is a reflection of our times. Only make sense that as community that's part of the general society - thus is shaped by their skewed concern about some ideas while absolutely disregard others - we too become over concerned about issues that have very little to do with us after all.
As a friend of a DP who had his career ruined due to a deaths on his set, i care a lot about safety on mine, but this specific example goes in a wrong direction. It makes us concerned about pretty-much non issue.
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Patryk, can you elaborate why you feel this is a non-issue? And other on-set safety measures that you feel we are "over-concerned" with that you disagree with?
 
CharlesPapert said:
Patryk, can you elaborate why you feel this is a non-issue? And other on-set safety measures that you feel we are "over-concerned" with that you disagree with?
Click to expand...

Every cartoon you watch for kids nowdays is over concerned with safety (i have a 2 year old). As experiment i re-watched some of the cartoons of our childhood - you know how many deal with safety? - none. Those cartoons are made by grown-ups like us who for whatever reason feel that over-protection is the main concern (just like the cartoons of our childhood were made by grown-up who didn't feel it to be the case).
And so we are on a quest to overprotect our children and over protect ourselves. We become hysterical about issues that are only issues if you CHOSE them to be so.
It's very scary to see the impact a camera causes on the dummy's head or the driver but what is the likelihood of that actually happening?
It's like that graph that shows main causes of death and contrasts it against our vastly skewed believes what we fear the most to be the cause.
 
Very much noted this video!.


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As for risk taking.. the mission must be to work well within risk. A pro driver really should not crash if working well within margins that they are used to. So you might do something that seems risky to the outsider but actually isn't.

Even a pro cant predict a deer popping out of the woods.

An actor on the open highway with an LED blasting their eyes.. completely different. Steer clear!

Also someone needs to keep a hold on directors.. who naturally want faster, lower, closer, meaner and might even push that pro driver where they should not go.
 
Patryk, I can't speak to how to manage parenting because I don't have a child myself.

There are studies that demonstrate the efficacy of various safety measures in cars, from seat belts to padded dashboards to air bags. The point of this video is to demonstrate that this latter safety feature is actually dangerous in certain circumstances, such as an operator leaned forward holding a camera. You can easily find instances of people who have been gravely injured by having their feet up on the dash when the airbag deployed.

There are two important factors being discussed here. The first is that of actors free driving, which presents a notable risk to themselves and anyone else in the car or immediately adjacent because it is forcing a situation of distracted driving, unless they are simply driving and not delivering lines or performing "business". The second is operators holding cameras in the vicinity of airbags, sitting in positions where seatbelts can't be used etc. If you combine the two, the risk is magnified. As Sam notes, a professional driver can only do so much with an animal running in front of the vehicle--now consider an actor who is directed to deliver a given line into the rearview mirror for the benefit of a camera handheld in the back seat at that same moment.

The point is not that this is the most likely safety issue. We are addressing many others in the industry, notably the length of the work day and how many people drive home sleep-deprived. That last issue has resulted in a documented series of deaths. That is a much more complicated situation to address than this one.
 
Warning: Momentary Thread Hijack

Another safety issue with serious consequences is the safety of portable power (generators or inverters) on set. Death has happened, and one did not too long ago. There has been some threads about that here.

Back to airbags.

Think how often everyday drivers and passengers create the same dangers to themselves. Here in WA state, we have some fairly strict distracted driving laws, but I still see texters and women applying makeup all the time. Have I ever been a passenger and shot some dslr photos? Yes. I think most of us have done something that would be dangerous relative to airbags unless you ride like a wax museum statue. But I hadn't considered the distracted driver element and that seems like a valid consideration under some circumstances.
 
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