It's from the movie "Sherlock Jr.,"

and in it, Buster Keaton seems to almost get hit by a train.

With extremely limited special effects,

the filmmakers had to come up with an innovative way

to create the illusion.

So they shot the sequence backwards,

then reversed the film.

Since then, Hollywood has developed

countless ways to make car chases

feel more real and visceral to audiences,

from modifying cars to placing cameras

right in the seat of the action.

And without each of these innovations,

we wouldn't have gotten to the ultimate spectacle

that is the "Fast & Furious" franchise.

Let's take a look at how the car chase has evolved

over 100 years in Hollywood.

This is the scene that set the standard

for all modern car chases.

It's from the 1968 Steve McQueen movie "Bullitt,"

and it's iconic partly because of the characters --

Bullitt: Look, Chalmers, let's understand each other.

I don't like you.

Narrator: But also because of their cars.

This mean-looking Dodge Charger is a muscle car,

a type of car that exploded in popularity

during the late '60s in the US.

This new, sleeker generation was basically built

for informal drag racing,

with big V-8 engines and rear-wheel drive.

The hero car in "Bullitt" was a Ford Mustang,

the first major pony car --

a more compact, sporty take on the muscle car.

And it's this combination

of streamlined design and V-8 engines

that made these cars powerful and maneuverable enough

to pull off daring stunts,

like racing through the hills of San Francisco

at 110 miles per hour.

"Bullitt" also had another advantage,

smaller and more rugged cameras,

which allowed shooting to happen in actual streets.

Before this movie,

most directors shot chase scenes on studio sets,

since they were dealing with cameras that looked like this.

To fill in the backdrop,

filmmakers would use rear projection,

where you project a moving image

onto a screen behind the actor.

Like in this chase scene

from the first Bond movie, "Dr. No,"

where Sean Connery's steering

doesn't seem to match the movement of his convertible.

"Bullitt" was one of the first big Hollywood movies

to rely on the lighter Arriflex 35 II camera,

so the crew could shoot entirely on location

and also take audiences inside the cars.

They mounted cameras on the hood,

sides, and interiors of each vehicle,

so viewers could feel every bump and lurch.

This dynamic camera style was most famously used

in the chase from the movie "The French Connection."

The filmmakers mounted cameras

on the hood, front bumper, and dashboard

of Gene Hackman's Pontiac.

These multiple angles,

along with handheld-camera work

from the backseat of the car,

showed all the action from the driver's perspective.

The result makes that Bond chase look like a casual spin.

[Bond theme plays]

But higher-stakes car cases can also be more dangerous.

"The French Connection" chase was filmed

on uncleared streets in New York,

without permits, among other drivers and passersby.

These barely avoided collisions?

They happened for real.

And this crash was entirely unplanned.

At the wheel of the white Ford was a civilian driver

who was uninvolved in the shoot.

All this happened even with actors sometimes driving slower

than what you see on film,

a standard trick used to reduce risk.

See how some cars' exhaust pipes

are blowing smoke faster than normal?

That's because filmmakers on "French Connection"

used a technique known as undercranking,

where they film some of the scene at a lowered frame rate.

Capturing fewer frames makes movement look faster --

basically the opposite of slow motion.

You can also see this in "Vanishing Point,"

released the same year.

Barry Newman's character

bets he can drive his Dodge Challenger

from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours.

That'd require a constant pace of some 80 miles an hour.

But in many sequences, like this hot race with a Jaguar,

the actors were only driving at 50.

So the filmmakers created the illusion of speed

by undercranking the camera to half its normal frame rate,

making the cars look like they're flying.

[engines roar]

Undercranking is still used today,

most notably in the 2015 movie "Mad Max: Fury Road."

But heavy undercranking works best for settings

that don't have a lot of people moving around.

"Mad Max" and "Vanishing Point" were perfect fits,

with scenes that take place in the desert.

In scenes that have lots of pedestrians,

the effect can make human movement look jerky and fake,

like what you see in old silent comedies.

So city chase scenes

can only use the technique sparingly.

The Paris chase in the 1998 thriller "Ronin,"

where Robert De Niro's Peugeot pursues a BMW,

didn't use undercranking at all.

To actually drive at these daredevil speeds,

you pretty much always need a stunt driver.

So the filmmakers have to find ways

to make it look like the actor,

not the stunt driver,

is controlling the car.

In "Ronin," they had right-hand-drive cars

fitted with fake left-side steering wheels.

The actor, in this case Robert De Niro,

would pretend to drive for the close-ups,

while the stunt driver to their right

did all the actual maneuvering

on a steering wheel positioned out of shot.

But having the stunt performer in the other seat

limits the angles you can shoot.

And what if the stunt driver can't be in the vehicle at all?

The solution came from a movie

with exactly zero car chases:

"Seabiscuit."

The stunt team on that movie built a special rig

for filming horse-race scenes.

Eventually, that rig evolved into a smaller,

more versatile version designed specifically

for filming car chases.

Known as the Biscuit,

it's basically a vehicle

that you can put other vehicles on,

one that can be reassembled into different configurations,

like a giant Lego truck.

The rig makes it look like an actor is doing the driving,

while a stunt person actually steers from the driver's pod.

This pod can be mounted anywhere on the platform,

so filmmakers can basically get any angle they want.

The Biscuit rig made it possible

to film some of Hollywood's most famous car scenes

over the past two decades,

from this scene in "The Hangover"

to the many chases in "Baby Driver."

Take this scene in the movie "Drive,"

where a guy chasing Ryan Gosling's character

hits the back of his Mustang to make it spin out.

After shooting the whole thing with two stunt drivers

to get all the exterior shots,

they filmed it again with Ryan in the car

and the car on the Biscuit rig

to get the close-up and interior angles.

A stunt driver drove the Biscuit

while talking to Ryan through a radio

to help him mimic all the movements

on his steering wheel.

In the resulting scene,

it looks like Ryan is in control of the vehicle.

And because he is immersed in the action,

we as the audience are too.

Finding ways to make chase scenes

feel more and more immersive

calls for increasingly creative rig systems.