Total Recall has a low-flying new featurette that deconstructs how director Len Wiseman and his teamed filmed the big action set-piece featuring Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel.
Wiseman, along with producers Toby Jaffe and Neil Moritz, reveal that the hover cars were not created entirely in computers to complete the sequence. Wiseman was dead set on using practical cars wherever possible, which as it turns out was during the entire sequence.
Numerous tricks were used to achieve the illusion of flight while Biel and Farrell were in the hover car. One involved building hover cars on top of four-wheeled rigs that could drive on their own. This elevated the hover cars about three times as high as if they were simply being driven on the ground.
The coolest shot involves the police chasing Farrell and Biel down a tunnel. All the cars in this shot, at least four, are on the elevated rig driving down a regular road. When you add the CGI background, it looks like the cars are hovering off the futuristic landscape.
Of course, neither Farrell or Biel are driving the hover cars when they’re moving around on-screen. Professional drivers are handling the cars from inside the rig so all Biel and Farrell have to do is act out their part.
Total Recall hovers into theaters this Friday, August 3.
