as the title suggests, how would you go about crashing a car into a tree and making it look convincing? I'm working on a project in which the main character crashes his car into a tree. He is hurt pretty bad, but he walks out of it so it's not a really hard hit.

Find a junker with airbags and an actor with insurance...

already have the vehicle, '88 Mercury Grand marquis

the plan I had was to replace the seat with a racing bucket with a 5 point harness. I have a racing helmet with a visor and a neck brace. and I would run it into the tree at 20MPH.

any other suggestions?

Alec,

Couple of suggestions. 1. Change script to have actor hit by car, easy to do in After Effects without any chance of anyone getting hurt. 2. Sell car, neck brace, helmet with visor, 5 point harness and buy more gear or After Effects if you need that to accomplish step one above. 3. Save a tree and any chance of getting hurt.

If possible I can try and convince my ex to do this but generally she rides a broom.

Overall I would classify this under "bad idea."

Dave

Why not just make the crash happen offscreen? After the implied collision you can cut to a CU of the actor w/some fake blood on his face (or whatever) and a little smoke or stream to make it look like the radiator busted.


-Andrew

Andrew's idea is a good one also and here is a link to the AE I talked about.

VIDEO COPILOT | After Effects Tutorials & Post Production Tools (http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/advanced_car_hit/)

I don't have After effects, and I don't have $1000 for it.
there has got to be a film trick or something. people were making movies a long time before computers were around

more suggestions?
and I'd like to hear more suggestions, don't just shoot down my only idea

Hey Alec, You are right, crash it. BUT BEFORE YOU DO!!! Consult someone who knows what they are doing. There has to be a professional stunt man around.... Or you could call the stunt man (not sure on the name here) guild down in LA and see if they have a local recommendation for you. AND MAKE SURE you buy insurance for anything that could go wrong, make sure all involved have signed professional prepared waivers to take the liability off of yourself should your driver become disabled because of the stunt and make sure that you have a crew that will get the shot the first time. Also make sure you notify the local police and get permission (crashing a car on purpose or otherwise and not reporting it) is not legal and you could be charged with several things. Is there a place that runs demolition derbies near you? They might be able to help also. I think you might find that after all of this that 1K for After Effects might be a cheaper way to go. Or you could go out and whack the thing into a tree and take your chances...... BTW hitting a stationary object like a tree at 20 mph is like jumping off a two story building....

I'm not sure whether you want the safest way or the cheapest. One way it's typically done is to run a cable to the front underside of the car and pull it into the tree. If the cable is visible you remove it in post. But you need special gear to pull the cable fast enough so it looks convincing. The car is pulled by a cable so you don't run the risk of it missing the tree or bouncing off it or going too fast or slow.

But the gear for this and the personnel to run it properly, convincingly, safely and legally would cost way, way more than AE or any other software.

No one's trying to stomp on your creative vision, and admittedly there's probably nothing that will look as good and realistic as actually doing it. But you must take a hard look at your budget to see if you really can do this. Even if you can get permission from the city or county to do this, are you prepared to hire two off-duty cops to stop traffic in both directions on the street while you rehearse and shoot? And the fire department as well as paramedics to be standing by if something goes wrong, which all real productions do and I imagine is because it's legally required? This isn't run n' gun at the local mall -- you will attract attention and could wind up in jail if you don't dot your i's and cross your t's....

Even if the tree is way out in the country on someone's private properly, I'd really urge to think twice about this.

Jerry's right. Find a local stuntman and find out if it's even possible to do what you want on your budget.

I gotta agree with others and say this sounds like a horrible, horrible idea. Do you actually have someone willing to crash into a tree at 20mph?? I can only hope they are a true professional stuntman with experience. Otherwise you guys are truely flirting with danger and risk serious injury, jailtime and/or lawsuit. Do you know how many of these stunts go wrong?! Yes, people were making movies long before computers were around... but they also had quite large budgets ($1000 was nothing compared to what they spend on an average car crash).


My advice, go with crazy camera angles, fast edits, and if needed fade to black with the sound of a car crash dubbed in. That way viewers get to picture a horrible crash, and envision the worst. The fast editing will help build momentum into thinking something bad is coming then BAM! Then fade up from black showing the drivers bloodied, hunched over or whatever.

If you do not have $1,000 to buy After-effects, to even stage this stunt, you need to examine whether you should even be doing it at all.

I have a sense that despite best entreaties towards caution and prudence, you will go ahead anyway.

The only safe way to do this on the cheap will be to crash the car with a dummy in the driver's seat.

Stunt work and its preparation is a finely honed craft. Any mug can do it - once. Living or dying or permanent disabilty is another matter. It is one thing you should not be thinking of scrimping on.

The five-point harness etc., could be a good move but there needs to be added well designed structure to support it otherwise the harness itself becomes lethal.

You will also need to be sure the airbag circuitry actually works, a potentially dangerous exercise in itself for the home-mechanic. It may or may not be safe for use with a helmetted driver. Stunt people already know the risks and solutions.

You need to ensure the older car remains structurally sound as designed, has not rusted in critical cabin areas, developed cracks or been patched up after a previous crash. Any of these may alter the deformation sequence and crush the driver space instead which would be a very uncomfortable situation.

My inclination would be to not do this in spite of the Police etc., but to engage with them in perhaps doing the stunt as a film stunt but also to have the respective emergency services involved an a "practice" response and rescue.

They do this from time to time and might even have one scheduled which you might be able to tap into with "your" car.

The alternative is to find an already head-onned wreck, place it against the tree with a dummy in the pilot's seat, jack the rear up the rear, get a friendly pyro guy to explode the screen, debris and headlights out forwards and drop the rear of the car to illude the post-impact rebound. A half-second afterwards, drop branches and leaves straight down from the canopy of the tree.

For the prelude to the impact, drive your good car up to the tree, roll camera, call action and reverse the car away from the tree with your real driver in place looking forwards, then reverse and speed up the action in post. Do some other shots in the sequence, say a POV driver, CU on driver at point of impact, thrown forward, airbag goes off, stuff flies forward off the rear parcel shelf.


Just a thought.

If you've got to do it consider:

#1 Show car approaching tree, then separate clip without a driver and closeup on front of car and tree during impact without a driver. Show aftermath of driver in a separate clip. Make sure your camera and crew are not directly under any of the tree in case something breaks loose.

#2 Use a cheap cam and suction mount with view over top of hood looking at tree as driverless car hits tree. You could even pull this off with an older HDV or HV20 cam or even a SureShot in movie mode and bleach it out, distort it, shake it.... so it is abstract and it's not so obvious it's a cheap cam. Show the view from the driver and leave the driver out of the car.

#3 Combine 1 and 2 (cam's gonna come off in #2, could be great or could look terrible)

I really appreciate this guys, this is the information I was looking for. I really am going to take this seriously and take all of the necessary precautions.
Things I overlooked:
1) the police. I should give them a call and see if this is even a legal thing to do. the actual scene would happen just off the side of the road which is private property, but we will be using the public road.
2)having emergency response on the scene. I just assumed this was out of the question, but it wouldn't hurt to ask around and see if it can be done. better safe than dead.

details already in consideration:
1) the five point will not be strapped to the existing drivers seat. the seat will be replaced with a racing seat. (not using the existing seat mount, but bolting it directly to the sturdy frame)
2)the car does not have airbags which would be safer for wearing a helmet. as far as I know, there should NEVER be anything between your face and an airbag.
3)the cameras will be framed so that the driver isn't visible.
4) we have revised the actual gameplan to consist of running the car to the tree, slamming on the brakes (with time to slow down a bit) and aiming to hit it about 5MPH ish. then, take it down to the shop down the street, pull the drivetrain and radiator, weaken the front end considerably, then take it back up to the scene. place it against the tree and shove it into the tree with a tractor with cameras rolling (without anyone in it). that way we get the most EFFECT with minimal IMPACT.
5) I will be sure to check and triple check the structural integrity of the car. I will be driving it, and will be the ultimate deciding factor of whether it happens or not.
6) I'm going to call my insurance agent and see about the possibility of insuring self inflicted injury.

I'm sure I'm leaving some major details out, but there's still a couple weeks before we want to shoot it. please keep the discussion coming guys. I have a few phone calls to make tomorrow.

I was gonna suggest hiring Grant Imahara from MythBusters to create a radio-controlled car! :-)

But the cable-pulled vehicle idea might be best. Get a tow company to help.

I would NOT put a driver into a car to crash. What's worse than killing someone is having them permanently disabled. And that's much more likely than killing them.

Carefully consider the effect, what needs to be done to get the desired look, and then determine what it might cost. But don't let the lack of money let you get short-changed on safety. If you can't afford it, don't do it.

Instead, look at the lack of funding as a challenge to think different.

Most of all, realize that it's just a movie. If you end up paraplegic, will anyone care? Will it matter? Is it worth it? As a news photographer I've covered a lot of accident scenes. Trust me. It's not as trivial as it might look. Doesn't take much to mangle up a human being.

Sorry but you are out of your league here.
Many good comments that you have completely ignored!
Your last post shows that you have no clue.

There are so many ways to pull this off without crashing a car.

Not trying to piss in your pool, but you really need to rethink this.


All the Best!

I'm not a member of this organization yet but if you get a hold of them, they crash cars all the time and you may be able to sweet talk them into letting you film it.

They aren't too far from where you live and they'll make sure everything is done safely.

ACTAR Participating Organzations - FARO (http://www.actar.org/faro.html)

Patrick

Do not use a live, real driver! Even with your 5 point harness, you never considered that the steering column and engine could push through the firewall and crush his ribs. My suggestion would be to back up the car 30 feet from the tree, lock the steering wheel, then use some remote control to floor the accelerator. Have a dummy in the driver's seat.

I was involved in a shoot a number of years ago where they drove a car into a house. this was for a youth drunk driving video but different. the producer ( who also works for the local ambulance service) was able to coordinate the taping into a mock disaster training exercise for the local agencies.

The house was going to be torn down anyway by the owner so he allowed some early demo work.

We had State Highway, county sheriff, Emergency 911 center, local fire/rescue, life flight, tow all on hand and the filming was taped as a 'real time' event with staggered 'arrivals' to simulate actual response times.

We even had two Cleveland TV stations there to cover the event.

The funny thing is I was the 'master' camera and was feeding radio traffic into my camera and as we were seconds away from drive the car into the house, I started hearing call out tones in my ear and noticing the fire rescue guys looking at each other. a real two car head on with 7 injuries had just happen about 5 minutes from our location.

We lost fire/rescue and life flight ( they were the stand-by chopper but got pressed into service). we decided to run the car into the house and picked up the accident response a week later.

I don't remember all the details for the car setup, but from what I remember the driver was in a 5 point harness with helmet and lots and lots of padding/protection around the steering column. also the windshield had been removed and a ignition kill switch added.<edit> also a 'hit point' was created in the house to make the house break away a little easier but safely ( like avoiding anything load bearing)

from what you've posted, the fact you haven't spoken to police/fire/rescue before now is a big error. this isn't one of those 'ask forgiveness after' type of things, even on private property, if they didn't have knowledge about it prior I could see charges being files , especially is they were to get calls from passers by of a car into a tree.

I can tell you from the experience I had, if the producer was to try and pull that off without the cooperation of the different agencies involved, it would not have happened.

this is why I posted the question in the first place. I don't know what I'm doing. I wouldn't be trying to research it if I wasn't concerned with my safety.

what if:
I practice stopping that particular car EXACTLY where I want it, consistently EVERY time. and I rig the car up for safety like previously mentioned. and stop the car JUST short of the tree. take the car back to the shop, remove the drivetrain/weaken and take it back up. then shove the car into the tree from a standstill using a tractor? it'll get the desired effect if we speed up in post. and if the cops are there to survey, and the medics prepared to check me over, could that be doable?

You need to learn how to use different camera angles and learn how to edit.
Shoot the car coming / cut to shot of tree / cut to drivers face / cut to airbag filling screen / cut to shot of car from behind against tree with smoke coming from under hood.
Of course these shots are just suggestions, but at any rate you don't really need to crash a car to pull this off if you know how to shoot and edit.

All the Best!

Ok, after thinking this through, this is how you might be able to do it if you must crash a real car:
1. Position the car against the tree where you want it to hit.
2. Straighten the steering wheel, then bolt or lock the steering wheel so it can't move at all.
3. Reverse the car 50 feet.
4. Attach a 10lb barbell or weight on top of the gas pedal, then tie a rope connecting the gas pedal, looped through the steering wheel, then out the window so it's out of camera view. Hold onto the rope.
5. Put in your crash dummy.
6. Start the car, let go of the rope, which allows the gas pedal to go down and your car should crash on it's mark.
7. After the crash, replace the dummy with your talent and shoot the closeups.


For this shot you'll still need the fire department on hand. The car might catch fire upon impact, or you may start a wildfire. In the worse case situation, the car might just glance the tree, then you'll have a runaway car!

On second thought you'll be better off leaving this to the professionals.

Most likely outcome is that the car will hit the tree and it won't be anywhere near as dramatic as you think it will or something will go wrong with the camera and you'll miss it or ---

I would not assume you'll get it right the first time. I think the studios used to modify the cars so they had breakaway/ hinged panels that would run into the tree at low speed and crumple along the prepared "fault" lines, then the footage would be speeded up to make it look like a high speed crash. And the car could be put back in pre-crash condition and the shot could be done over and over until it looked right.

You might rummage through old issues of American CInematographer to see if you can find something on how the studios used to do this. I know they used models with hinged or breakaway parts for naval battle scenes

Safest way is a CGI car crash. 3D car models are available as are tree models.

Let's see - 3D car model approaches tree, then a huge ball of fire from the front of the car carefully obscures the fact that the car hasn't really hit the tree and crumpled, then a shot of the deformed model sitting wrapped around the tree.

If you use a real car - fake it as people have suggested with several shots so you don't actually see the crash.

Here's a thought:

Pull the car up to the tree slowly. Then, shoot the scene entirely in reverse. Essentially have the driver/actor re-enact being in a crashed/frightened position, put the car in reverse, then step on it, driving back onto the road and straightening out driving backwards 20 feet or so. (Hopefully this is a rarely travelled road you intend to shoot this on or you can have police close it down) Then, after a few takes of this, go home & damage the car, take fenders/bumpers off, sledgehammer the hood etc and pull it back up against the tree. Shoot a post crash scene to be edited together surveying & panning the crash.

Then in editing reverse the footage of the car driving in reverse thus making it appear to be going forwards. Just a thought, someone else might be able to say how it should come out. Or do a few test takes & reverse it in your editing software. See how it looks.


For what it's worth if the tree is on private property you can be sued for punitive damages. Basically just punishment for your thoughtlessness.

Look at the current OnStar commercial from Gm where a deer runs out in the road and the driver hits a tree...but you really don't see the driver hit the tree, you "fill in the blanks" between the swerve, a long shot of taillights and a tree, and a blurry inside shot of a broken windshield and some hands...effective and nobody gets hurt.... / Battle Vaughan

If you don't have $1,000, you can't afford the medics or cops. Doing either will alert everyone you're shooting something, so you'll probably need a shooting permit. As soon as you ask for professional help, you're on the radar and can get fined for not having a shooting permit. You probably won't get a permit if you're doing a stunt and don't have serious production liability insurance (the most expensive part of all!). If something actually goes wrong...dude, you're hosed.

I'd seriously recommend:
1. Finding an artistic, many-cut, even somewhat abstracted way to give the impression of a crash. Think filmic, storytelling wise, not stunt wise. The edits and cuts can be enhanced in post. Don't forget that a blast to a full white screen and great audio effects can be just as effective...then fade back from white or black, showing the wrecked car. Like Battle's post above, I've seen this done in countless commercials and TV shows and even features, and it plays just fine.
2. Damage the front of the car WHILE THE CAR IS STATIONARY, AND NO ONE IS INSIDE. This way you turn what might be a stunt into an art/production design issue instead, and can probably be accomplished at a junkyard with the help of a wrecking ball or crane (lift the car from its rear fender and drop it).
3. Transport the car to the location and have it set gently against what it theoretically hit. You can add smoke or steam in post, or do it practically with a fog machine under the hood.

This all seems sane and quite possibly the cheapest approach, which (if done tastefully) could translate well onscreen.

Alec,

I'd just do as David Jones suggested. You can do a very convincing job without showing the impact.

Unless you have a major budget (which apparently you don't), you will end up either; disappointed (20 mph won't do to much damage to an '88 marquis (or whatever it is)), or someone will get injured or arrested (maybe both).

You may even pull off the hat-trick and be disappointed, injured, and arrested.

Yeah, you need someone on set with real, practical experience?

Wonder what Tiger Woods is doing these days?





Sorry.

I read through this wondering if anyone would suggest shooting it in reverse, I see that David Barnett added this thought this morning. It's a very effective choice, and if it seems "low rent", I will say that I've probably shot this approach on more studio features/TV shows than actual crashes.

The bottom line is that all of us as lifetime consumers of movies and TV have seen cars crash into trees, other cars, sides of buildings etc. often in an increasingly spectacular fashion thanks to CGI. As such, you have to be extra creative when planning a low-budget version of this to keep it from looking cheesy. To invest a lot of time, energy or money into this scenario on a low budget project, one should examine if those resources could do more good elsewhere than in that single 2 seconds of screen time.

What often happens with budding filmmakers is that they can get hung up on what seems like the exciting part of the process but lose sight of the big picture, which is what will the experience be for the viewer. No-one has yet asked Alec questions about the style of the film, what leads up to the crash, why the crash occurred, is this the pivotal moment of the film or just one in a series of events, etc. This scene could be shot any number of ways, but what fits the rhythm of the film best? If the sequence leading up to it is fast paced and fast cut, then a series of quick cuts to suggest the crash will work fine; but if the impact is a last minute surprise to the driver, or is to be comic in tone, there are other approaches that might be better (none of which necessarily have to involve actually hitting the tree with the car to simulate).

A few years ago I was asked to shoot a short film that ended up going to Sundance. It was a quirky black comedy in which halfway through the Rapture occurred (not a religious movie, mind you, quite the opposite) and in the midst of it, a detective walks down the street talking on his cel phone, oblivious to the chaos around him as people are being "taken up". As written, at the end of the shot he walks out and a car with no driver smashes into the side of a building behind him. During pre-production, the director and producer were talking about insurance, stunts, scheduling half a day to shoot the crash etc. I suggested that what might be more in keeping with the comedy would be an anti-climactic crash, i.e. the car simply bouncing up onto the curb and hitting a spindly little street sign that falls over with a tiny thud. Not only was this a much funnier button to the scene, it was much simpler to shoot, although it did still require a stunt driver and some hidden ramp behind the curb.

While that may not be specifically appropriate to this film, the point is that it's most useful to think about how a given sequence serves the rest of the film and then figure out how to shoot it, hopefully coming up with something both simple and effective--but first and foremost, SAFE.

smash up one side of a bit with a sledge hammer.
put the car up against the tree. put it in reverse. floor it.
reverse shot in editing.
get a big sound effect.

the official plan is thus:

shoot the car driving into the tree in reverse. I personally like this idea. It's way safer, and with a little bit of creative editing may actually look better than the actual thing in the normal direction. I'll have to do some practice shots with my handycam and see what works best.
after that shot is perfect, and we have the shots of the car driving around that we need, it'll be "crunch time".
I may have mentioned this part before, but I'm going to take out the engine/tranny, weaken the frontend considerably, and then push it into the tree with our tractor. if we shoot the car crunching and speed it up, that may make a convincing wreck. I may have to cut the front springs a bit to keep consistency with the drivetrain out. but overall, this may be the cheapest and effective solution. no one gets endangered, and we still get to wreck the real car.
we will be shooting with three Canon xh-a1 cameras, and I'll have my little handycam fastened securely to the passenger seat headrest. that one will be given some sort of effect or filter so that it purposely doesn't match the quality of the a1's.

I'd like to thank everyone for helping me think outside the "just crash it and film it" approach. It's all part of the learning process, but I'm glad I got advice before just trying it. I still need to get pics up of the Marquis. It's a neat old ride. too bad it's not worth saving.

I think the fun part for me will be figuring out how to do the crashing sounds in post. I haven't done much Foley work before, so it should be fun to try.

This is what I would try:
take a board and mount it to the dashboard so that it extends to the passenger seat. spread some glass shards on the board and the dashboard. Set an old cheap camcorder on the board but just set it there, unmounted, film the actor hitting something with 2 miles per hour, the camera and the glass shards will bounce around. then cut that footage into the sequence. it will most likely be very short but could give the desired effect of being inside the car.
I don't know if it works - but should be fun to try...

make a false tree (something very light) and just run against it.
then manage to do the cut with another view (bumping a concrete wall and filming from a hole inside the wall)
then manage to get the car against a real tree for the "after" shots.

as the title suggests, how would you go about crashing a car into a tree and making it look convincing?

Parked car + guy in a tree suit. It's all in the perspective.

Overall I would classify this under "bad idea."

No kidding! In the first place, most cities have by-laws that frown upon crashing a car purposedly into a tree (even if it's on your property); secondly the impact could damage the tree and it could fall on a neighbour's house three years later. This has so many liability and lawsuit issues my lawyer wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.

J.

No-one has yet asked Alec questions about the style of the film, what leads up to the crash, why the crash occurred, is this the pivotal moment of the film or just one in a series of events, etc. This scene could be shot any number of ways, but what fits the rhythm of the film best?

I'm guessing that, unless the film is called "The Guy Who Crashed His Car into A Tree", the crash is not remotely essential to the plot - and if it is, there's no real need to show it.

J.

smash up one side of a bit with a sledge hammer.
put the car up against the tree. put it in reverse. floor it.
reverse shot in editing.
get a big sound effect.

An already-wrecked car driving into a tree?

Yep, Jacques points out one of the three problems with doing it backwards (although that's safest [other than not doing it at all or hiring a professional]) -- the car won't "uncrumple" as it backs away from the tree.

Secondly, the car will not instantly be at full speed, so when reversed, it'll look as if it hit the brakes before crashing and slows to a smooth stop. You can ramp the speed in post but it will never look like it's going from 70-0 in an instant.

Finally, if a real car hits a tree the rear end will likely rise -- sort of like a reverse wheelie. You'll not get this effect doing it backwards. Also it'll deflect and bounce a little, which also won't happen in reverse.

All in all, difficult to make look convincing.

Parked car + guy in a tree suit. It's all in the perspective.

Jacques, I like where your head is at...let's make THAT film.

Make the tree hit the car! Brilliant!

anyways, the car doesn't HAVE to crumple in that shot. if the viewer sees the car zooming right up to the tree with a quick cut to the car smashing at a different angle, no one will know the wiser. also, the act of hitting the gas in reverse will raise the backend slightly due to the really soft springs these cars utilize. and the deflection/actual hit can be a separate shot. it doesn't have to be one flawless motion. jagged and abstract, if done right, could have more of an impact. so to speak.

I like the use of glass bits and loose camcorder. what if, for the sake of the camera, it was mounted to something that let it flop around without falling and breaking? just slam on the brakes and let the glass fly around. depending on how the camera falls it could look really cool.

This is still a bad idea unless of course your film is titled, "How I killed a tractor driver with a tree and my Marquis". Yeah, I'd watch that.

How about showing the crash form the tree's perspective? Shot of the car speeding towards the tree, then zoomed-in shot of the car "speeding" (in post) towards you. The zoom (with maybe a 2x adapter) will in fact give you several meters of clearance while the car seems to be right on top of you. When the grill fills the screen (maybe keep it out of focus for effect) you do a quick fade to black as if light was blocked out by the car. Then put in crashing and smashing sounds, or maybe cut to the inside of the car as your crew lets the back drop a foot, glass and debris flying about the inside and your actor flopping in the seat. Then outside shot of the crumpled car.

No tree or actor gets hurt in the making of this film.

This is still a bad idea unless of course your film is titled, "How I killed a tractor driver with a tree and my Marquis". Yeah, I'd watch that.

how am I gonna get hurt pushing it into a tree with a tractor? it's no different than digging into a big pile of rock hard dirt. It wont be fast, that's what post is for. I think this is going to turn out great.

I like the idea of the trees perspective as well. with increased zoom, don't you loose depth perception? I might experiment with shooting head on from a distance, zoomed in to frame it as if I was close, with the tree partway in the shot. the car could stop a considerable distance from the tree and it MIGHT look as if it were much closer

I can think of so many ways of doing this without a real car its not funny.

Heres One:
1. Buy a model of your car (10" or something, not hot wheels at 2")
2. Buy a Ken doll (or similar, whatever fits in the car)
3. Get a small tree branch or small tree (green peace will hate you for it, but less so than your initial full-life concept).
4. Weight the model with lead/brass weights and get a ramp.
5. Fire the car down the ramp into your "tree"
6. No Adobe After effect? Use Perspective Shooting.

You can do some close ups of driving towards the tree in real life, but don't hit a full size car with the tree, that is just about the stupidest thing you could do for ~0.6secs of effects.

Or call someone like "Myth Busters" I'm sure you could make up a silly "Myth" about a car hitting a tree and ask them to prove it out for you (you provide them the car, and on condition you get you use the footage in a non-compete manner). Who knows, maybe they'll go for it?

I can think of so many ways of doing this without a real car its not funny.

Models are a terrible idea. It'll all look fake and amateurish.

Or call someone like "Myth Busters" I'm sure you could make up a silly "Myth" about a car hitting a tree and ask them to prove it out for you (you provide them the car, and on condition you get you use the footage in a non-compete manner). Who knows, maybe they'll go for it?

They won't. For one thing, why should they give away licensing rights? For another, they don't need to "pay" anyone with free footage for ideas, they have staff for that.

I like the idea of the trees perspective as well. with increased zoom, don't you loose depth perception?

Yes, that's precisely why you do it this way. If you shoot the oncoming car from some distance behind the tree and keep the tree in frame, you could cut while the car is still several meters from the tree but it'll look like it's a few inches.

it is like jumping from a plane without a parachute. until you are about one inch from the ground, not much has happened, no damage yet. and how much of a problem can one inch possibly be..
anyway...

I would try to do the whole driving - skidding - swearing - panicking all the way up to the tree, then cut to the "unmounted bouncing camcorder with flying shards of glass" (maybe even some shards thrown from the rear seat) and then cut to the car from the outside, front wrapped around the tree. The back of the car lifted by wire attached to a crane, then the car drops and does the "little post crash bouncy thing" then you rotoscope the wire out. or if you don't want to do that, just frame it to the middle of the rear wheel, not showing the wires.
You don't have to lift the car very high, a foot or so should be enough. you could possibly even lift it using a lever, which you suddenly let go.

how am I gonna get hurt pushing it into a tree with a tractor? it's no different than digging into a big pile of rock hard dirt. It wont be fast, that's what post is for. I think this is going to turn out great.

Physics, that's how. To simulate the same amount of damage to the front of the car by pushing it from the rear will require much MORE energy than crashing the car. You are attempting to transfer energy from the rear the full length of the car to the tree. Thinking that it will be similar to digging in hard dirt is wrong.

Let's see, you would need a very large tractor that could maintain traction that could generate sufficient energy to crush the car against a tree and you can't see how you or worse yet, a bystander be injured?

Models are a terrible idea. It'll all look fake and amateurish.

More or less amateurish then purposely driving a car into a tree?

Honestly I'll agree its not the best idea, After Effects is, but for some reason he can't use it (or get someone else to do it for him).

Physics, that's how. To simulate the same amount of damage to the front of the car by pushing it from the rear will require much MORE energy than crashing the car. You are attempting to transfer energy from the rear the full length of the car to the tree. Thinking that it will be similar to digging in hard dirt is wrong.

Let's see, you would need a very large tractor that could maintain traction that could generate sufficient energy to crush the car against a tree and you can't see how you or worse yet, a bystander be injured?

the front of the car will be SIGNIFICANTLY weakened. It'll have the engine and radiator and stuff out. the innerfenders will be gone, everything making the front clip rigid and strong will be cut or removed. it'll crumple like a tin can up until the K member, and I don't need any more carnage than that. it's not gonna get a moving start. that's more dangerous than crashing the car. just rest up against it and slowly push it till its "crashed".