I know this sounds crazy, but maybe some of you have already attempted to shoot a car accident without damaging any vehicles.

I'm talking about placing the cameras mainly inside the cars during the sequence, and using sound to create intensity. (I'm thinking more or less of the shots taken in Punch-Drunk Love when the four brothers smash into Barry's car. We see the truck hit the car, but then, there are two shots of Barry and Lena in the car, as it spins out of control.)

This probably is crazy, but I was wondering if you guys had any tips on achieving this. I could probably use a small smoke machine after the accident to create the effect that the front end of the car got smashed in. The shot would dolly in from the rear end, and make its' way to the driver's window and focus on the character. That way, we would see some smoke coming out of the front, but never really see the damage.

I'd really appreaciate if you guys posted for this. The main thing is to keep that 'intensity' going.

I've been trying to think of the same thing and any suggestion following is untested yet:

-Animate the bit where the cars collide in photoshop then quickly switch to another shot. The longer they look at it, the worse off you'll be.

-go to the dump and buy some beat up cars, tow 'em into place, and viola.

-Do it fo real.

-Never show the front of the crash, just reactions and stuff. (basically what you said).

Well the shot in PDL was accomplished by putting the car on a sort of "lazy susan" rig that enabled the car to spin freely for that affect.

You could accomplish something similar by possibly shooting your actors in a car with a green screen outside the car window (You could create the wind possibly smoke and debry inside the car to help sell it) then shoot the spinning (Simply spin the camera on a tripod) and replace the greenscreen with the footage.

Smoke for the aftermath can be accomplished by placing say hot charcoal in an aluminum pan and pouring small amounts of mineral oil (which creates white smoke) on the coals and placing it under the hood. Be creative, shoot alot of footage (Car POV's, people inside, ect) then play with speeds in post to help sell it. Hope this helps.
R. Michael

I would probably just hit the break on the car going at like 30 mph, have the actors hop around like something's happening and let the camera go crazy. At that point bring in something to distract the audience from the car. They have to forget about it so maybe you could go into some "artsy" moment where you travel inside the characters thoughts or something along those lines.

Here's an idea.
First get some pretty good drivers

Have the cars come at eachother in whatever manner you want them to and have your cam. in a position where you cant see what the driver is doing clearly.

Have your drivers turn the car in the way it would in the crash.

Show character reactions.

Then get some junk metal, bang it up a bit and fix it onto the car somehow.

I did this for a movie I made last summer. My two main actors are driving. One is passed out in passanger from fight. The other is driving with a bullet wound. The passanger wakes up and says "Your hurt?" and he replies "I'll live." Now I shot this part from the back seat. I had a freind grab his vehicle and turn on his light. It was pitch black and you couldn't see outside the window, so we we're in park and my actor was pretending he was driving. I edited in sounds of the car quickly coming at the vehicle and hitting it. I then did two quick shots of each actor faking the impact and I quickly titled the camera over with them like the camera was part of the impact. I cut to black. There is a pause and then you hear the passanger voice calling for his friend. Music starts playing and it fades into a t-bone accident. I didn't damage the vehicles just parked them as humanly possible to each other to hide the impact places. I added blood for the driver that died all of the windsheld and he was hanging outside the side door, blood all over the street with his head cracked open. I was suprised how good this worked and how dramitic it came off.

For another scene I had someone go through a windsheld. Although cheep I film the vehilce going up to the impact place. Then cut into the interior of the person heading into the windsheld, put in sound effects, and too a shot of him flying out the car. I just placed the camera outside of the view of the windsheld, told the actor to superman dive off the top of my car, and threw some glass at him well he jumped. Cheep, but it worked.

Everyone's suggestions work but I can not emphasize how important the camera work is for this type of shot.

If you are shooting the interior of the car the camera HAS to jerk with the shot to accent the impact, you are looking for disorientation at the moment of impact to avoid any give aways that it is staged as well as a montage edit of several pov's would really help as well.

For the exterior shot you have to really choose what you want the audience to see, sound is really going to tell the type of impact as well as how traumatic it will be. Don't shoot the moment of impact, the sound will be enough, shoot the aftermath with busted radiators leaking and steam rising. The classic head holding the horn down will work though it has a bit of a cheese factor.

A little obscurity will go a long way

Jerk the camera appropriately from an interior shot as the cars "hit" each other. Sound is easily 85% of how successful that kind of thing can be.

Or copy 21 Grams and cut to the kid blowing leaves off the lawn as the car drives by and crashes to one side.