There’s an inspiring behind-the-scenes photo from John Frankenheimer’s 1963 film GRAND PRIX that contains an important lesson in innovation.
It shows actor James Garner, his face covered in exhaust fumes and burnt makeup, sitting in his race car. In front of him is a heavy 16mm Panavision camera. This is not a camera. It is controlled remotely using a military-grade missile system.
And here’s the trick: the entire device is held together by an elastic band.
The film had an impressive star-studded roster; alongside Garner, Yves Montand starred. Posters and marketing promised “All the glamor and grandeur of the world’s most exciting speed drama and spectacle!” If you had the patience to stay in your cinema seat for 3 hours, of course. Of course, this was the time before YouTube and TikTok shorts. Three-hour movies were typical, smoking was allowed in movie theaters and an empty Coca-Cola bottle was allowed to be thrown on the floor. hallways a normal gag.
If you can find a copy (usually the full edition appears on YouTube), you will be able to enjoy the movie that defines what action movies are like today. The shots look like a low PoV view of a car driving through the narrow streets of Monaco. The dramatic shot of a driver is as if the camera is hooked to the rearview mirror, looking at the car, the driver and the road, filmed while the vehicle is in motion: all this is not unusual nowadays, but it is an innovation in the early 60s.
To capture the action of a car movie, pre-“Grand Prix” films filmed cars from a distance, from the viewer’s point of view. Filming was moved to the studio if the script called for a headshot of the driver or an action scene in the car. So how did the director create the immediate movement of a car in a studio setting? It looked like this: some muscular, well-placed guys, hidden from the camera, were shaking the car back and forth, while on a screen the car was visible, a separate film projected the scene in the background to create the impression that the car was moving.
In film terminology, this is called “rear projection. ” The result gives the impression that the car is driving at full speed, but those shots don’t age well. If you watch an old James Bond (or Elvis Presley, for that matter) movie, you can identify those shots, and they don’t look convincing, ultimately, in the overall visual effects.
Remote film cameras fixed on a car, and it’s the mid-60s
What Frankenheimer did in the “Grand Prix” was innovative and still seems exciting today, since he shot all the action scenes on the track. To do this, he and his team had to come up with a series of revolutionary inventions to create real PoV shots of the race and place the spectator, not in the spectator’s seat, but in the driver’s seat. Here is a partial list of the inventions needed to create the action shots that redefined action movies in cinema:
This is just a short list of the many inventions needed to create this new flavor of action movie. Everything is done on site; The viewer is inside and there are none of the outdated studio rear projection scenes.
And yet, after all the planning and engineering, we still have this behind-the-scenes photo. James Garner in the driver’s seat, his face covered in exhaust fumes and burnt gas makeup. In front of it is a heavy 16mm Panavision camera installed on the remote control platforms described above. And everything is fastened in combination with an elastic band.
Somehow, of course, all the designs, mockups, engineering and meticulous workmanship ensured that the cars remained balanced at speeds of over 150 miles per hour with a 150-pound platform hanging over the side of the car when the tires hit the road (literally), it was a $3 rubber band that held everything in place.
We confuse innovation with the initial procedure of generating a vital idea. But that’s not true. Innovation also occurs when the product is found in nature, performing well and creating measurable human, social or business impact, meaning the innovation process never stops. Even once the product leaves the labs, there is room for innovation and improvement: a quick hack, a clever tweak, a fix in the pricing model.
An elastic band to keep everything in place. A small push that makes the product roll.
If you’re an innovator, you’ll want to preserve your innovation well beyond the day it’s launched. There is the opportunity to improve, optimize, personalize and modify the user experience, yes, even when the cameras are recording and the car is going 240 kilometers per hour with James Garner and Yves Montand through the winding streets of Monaco.
Grand Prix, poster, heads on the left: Toshiro Mifune, Jessica Walter, James Garner (helmet), Array. . [ ] Antonio Sabato, Françoise Hardy, bottom left: Eva Marie Saint, Brian Bedford, Yves Montand, Geneviève Page, James Garner (jn race car), 1966. (Photo by LMPC Getty Images)
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