MAKE BELIEVE.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20510, 1 April 1932, Page 6

MAKE BELIEVE.

FAKING ACCIDENTS. THRILLS FOR THE FILMS. There are more ways of killing a cat. than choking it with cream, and every director does not consider it necessary to smash tip a perfectly good and useful car in order to thrill his audience, writes E. G. Cousins in "The Autocar," in the course of an article which shows how some motor accidents on the films are faked and some are not. Giving examples of the former, he says: One of the most convincing smashes I ever saw in a British film was the one in "Moulin Rouge," in which, the hero had prepared to commit suicide by fraying the brake cables of his own fast sports* car, and the heroine, unaware of this, had taken the car in order to perform an urgent errand. An unconvincing story it may be; but that motor smash thrilled everyone who saw it—oven those of us who watched the film in course of production. Staged in a Studio. Yet it was staged entirely in a corner of the Elstree studios. The cars wheels were jacked a few inches off the floor, a swiftly moving panorama sped by, an aeroplane engine supplied the wind, while u stage hand sat close by, languidly splashing handfuls ot mud from a bucket into the driver s face! When the car ran off the road it ran very gentlv into a most, realistic wood composed of a couple of dozen young trees brought from a copse near tho studio. As the vehicle ploughed into them they obligingly fell over, and hardly one of the many thousands who saw'that film can have guessed that the greatest danger to which the driver was ever subjected was getting a speck of mud in the eye. Occasionally, also, the trick is done with models/ A full-sized car is used for the close-ups and general views, and for tho actual accident a miniature reproduction of the original is constructed to scale. This is sent hurtling to its destruction into a tiny ditch or over some Lilliputian precipice. Whether or not this device is a success depends to a vcrv large extent on the art-dircc-tor's skill in "matching-up" the scenery. It is gradually dropping out of use, because fbo deception is fairly easy to detect, and cinema audiences are growing yearly more difficult to bamboozle. A Simple Expedient. 1 know one producer, head of a small and impecunious company, who resorted to the simple expedient of buying for a song a car which had been totally wrecked in a real accident, hiring an undamaged car of a similar model for the pro-smash scenes, and leaving tho actual smash to the imagination. This is not the ideal method, but with ingenious earner -work it was strikingly effective. Camera-speed enters very largely into the photographing of smashes. This element makes yet another device possible, tho lowering of a car slowly down a bank with concealed wire hawsers, while the cameras are turned correspondingly slowly, to speed up the accident when it appears on tho screen. —: i THE "SHAKE TEST." ROUGH TREATMENT FOR BODIES Few motorists realise to what an extent automobile manufacturers carry out tests and research work, so that their products will stand up to the stresses incidental to present-day motoring. For instance, the largest motorcar manufacturer in England submits the various types of bodies made to what is known as a "shako test." Periodically, one of the pressed steel bodies is taken at random from the production line, and in its finished state, upholstered, and fitted with safety glass windows. It is mounted on a chassis frame and conveyed to tho "shaker," an instrument capable of imparting 100 earthquake shocks per minute. Diagonal corners of the body are fixed solid, and the other diagonals arc twisted different amounts at varying speeds. Thus one corner will bo lifted three inches very quickly, and the other four inches more slowly. Bodies are so tortured for J2 houivs or more before they arc released. One body was submitted to a million shakes and then fitted to a work's chassis. Since then it has covered 30,000 miles without a semblance of a body squeak. Thus is ensured the silence that is a feature of the modern motor-car. LAND SPEED RECORD. AMERICAN MYSTERY CAR. According to an English authority an 1800 horse-power ear is being built in America in deep secrecy to make an attempt on the land speed record. The American designer hopes for a speed of 300 m.p.h. The car is super-stream-lined, and' fitted with a supercharged Miller engine of tho same type that was built for Gar Wood's speed boat. If the h.p. rating is correct, this is the highest powered engine that has ever been put into a car. The Napier I engine fitted to the Blue Bird develops 1 1400 h.p. Although the design of the American challenger -was prepared nearly two years ago, very littlo has been said about the car, and the matter is still shrouded in mystery. The Americans are.very anxious to win. back the land speed record: for they realise its tremendous publicity value, and Miller, tho American manufacturer of racing cars, has been working on his design for some time. CAR SHORTAGE. A SYDNEY ESTIMATE. A prominent car distributor in Sydney has suggested that the following estimate of the prospective demand for new automobiles in Australia is conservative. There are, lie points out, approximately 500,000 motor vehicles in use in the -Commonwealth to-day (excluding motor-cycles)-Bat, he continues, if it is assumed that under revised economic conditions that total is more than Australia can employ ; to nrrive at a sound estimate of the number of new vehicles which the country can absorb annually to make good natural wastage some deduction must be made from the figures quoted. for instance, that the present total were written down by 200.000, there would still he 300,000 vehicles requiring periodical replacement alter the surplus transportation represented by the 200,000 superfluous units had been used up. Calculating on that extremely conservative basis, the fact then emerges that, if seven years is tflken as the normal of oar life, Australia will in ordinary times require more than 40,000 new units yearly, which, he observes, will mean "a healthy ;trade in duo course."