Movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Fun Fact: To make the sound of the boulder descending toward Indiana, the sound engineers recorded a car rolling with the engine off. Bonus Fact: To make the trucks' motors sound extra fierce for the chase scenes, tracks of genuine tiger growls were blended in.1
Movie: Back to the Future
Fun Fact: Since the DeLorean was virtually a central character, the filmmakers wanted to get the audio just right for the motion of the gull-wing doors. Oddly, the audio techs didn't like the noise of the actual doors opening and closing. They chose to use the humming sound of electric car windows. Bonus Fact: This effect was also used as the sound of Doc's automatic dog feeding contraption.1
Movie: Transformers 3
Fun Fact: 532 cars were obliterated while shooting. Bonus Fact: The character Bumblebee was initially a yellow VW bug.2
Movie: Mad Max
Not So Fun Fact: A serious motorcycle collision was captured while filming and worked into the storyline. In one of the memorable scenes, a motorcycle rider was supposed to sail over a car. During filming, the stunt rider accidentally hit the the auto and was almost killed. No wonder the scene looked so authentic!
"According to trivia book Movie Mavericks by Jon Sandys, one of the more spectacular stunts in the second movie was actually a serious accident. One of the motorcycle-riding raiders hits a car, flies off the bike, smashes his legs against the car, and cartwheels through the air towards the camera."3
Movie: Cars
Fun Fact: Many of the car-embodied characters were inspired by actual cars such as Ramone (1959 Chevy Impala), Fillmore (1960 Volkswagen Microbus), and Sally (2002 Porsche 911). Bonus Fact: This motion picture was Oscar winner and race car driver Paul Newman's last and highest earning movie. Newman died in 2008, two years after voicing Doc Hudson in the Pixar classic.4
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1Owen Williams, "The Secrets Behind 44 Classic Cinema Sound Effects, Empire, March 11, 2015, http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/cinema-sound-secrets-foley-artist/, access March 10, 2017
2Tom Harrison, "Top 11 Movies That Killed The Most Cars," CarThrottle, https://www.carthrottle.com/post/top-9-movies-that-killed-the-most-cars/, accessed Mar 10, 2017
2"Transformers Random Facts," Visually, http://visual.ly/transformers-random-facts, accessed March 11, 2017
3Coy Jandreau, "44 Things You Didn't Know About the Mad Max Movies," Ranker, http://www.ranker.com/list/mad-max-trivia-facts/coy-jandreau, accessed March 10, 2013
4Rebecca Pahle, "10 Fast Facts About Cars," Mental Floss, February 17, 2016, http://mentalfloss.com/article/75597/10-fast-facts-about-cars, accessed March 11, 2017