How'd Bugatti film the Chiron's famed 0-249-0 MPH dash? The answer is obvious
Sometimes, we forget to think about the most obvious solutions to a problem.
Bugatti put the world on notice a few years ago when it retired the Veyron and made room for the Chiron. Today, the Chiron remains the only car to reach a top speed over 300 mph, but in 2017, Bugatti stunned the world with a different record.
Recall, the French supercar firm filmed a viral video that showed the Bugatti Chiron go from 0-249 mph and back to 0 mph in just 42 seconds. The film quickly became an internet sensation, though Koenigsegg outdid the Chiron's record in 2019. Nevertheless, there's a single shot that so many fell in love with: A basic shot that followed the supercar from a launch all the way to 249 mph.
Thanks to a new behind-the-scenes video blog from Al Clark, an automotive film director who helped put the Chiron shoot together, we have an answer. The video, published Monday, has Clark revisit the entire process to provide some informative commentary on the record-breaking shoot.
In it, he dispels all rumors about how the team captured a supercar with 1,500 horsepower sprint to 249 mph so easily. It wasn't a tuned Toyota Supra , or a GT-R. Neither was it a drone or a helicopter.
It was another Bugatti Chiron. Sometimes, the most obvious answer is just out of reach.
The team strapped the necessary camera gear to the rear of another Chiron and made sure to launch the cars at almost the same time. So, while the hero Chiron sped along, the camera Chiron captured all the action. This was important to Clark because he's no fan of altering video to show a sense of speed. Instead, this film captures the organic speed as it unfolded. How organic? The team didn't even realize the exhaust fumes were creating a blurry image until after the shoot wrapped up. It's not noticeable until you really look for it, but for a professional like Clark, he knows it could have been improved if he'd noticed in time.
The video is basically a behind-the-scenes look of a never released behind-the-scenes video of the entire film project, and who better than Clark to narrate it? Aside from the spilling the beans on the processes, it's really incredible to take the entire project in outside of the cinematic lense.
