![]() The myriad car stunts required meticulous planning. He raced stock cars north of Valencia when he was in college. Waugh, eager not to be pigeonholed as a military movie director, was drawn to the script for “Need for Speed,” which reflected his own lifelong passion for cars. “Scott will put himself in the middle of the action like nobody else with the camera,” McCoy said. The men joined a platoon and participated in full-training sessions with live ammunition to get close-up action shots. “Act of Valor,” which grew out of a commercial they did for the Navy, was their first feature film. “I wanted to create a place where we could work from start to finish on a movie and never leave the property,” Waugh said. He then partnered with his childhood friend McCoy, a former motocross champion and stuntman, to produce “Dust to Glory,” a documentary on the Baja 1000, an annual off-road race in Baja, Mexico.Īfter directing a string of action-oriented car commercials, Waugh and McCoy in 2006 launched their own company, Bandito Bros., a full-service Los Angeles studio that provides production as well as editing and visual effects services. When a college friend asked him to help make a surfing documentary, “Step Into Liquid,” he jumped at the chance, spending four years on the project following surfers around the world as a second-unit director and editor. “It was my form of waiting tables,” he said. He briefly pursued a career in acting before returning to stunts to pay his bills as he waited an opportunity to become a filmmaker. Waugh continued doing stunt jobs during summers until he enrolled in the film program at UC Santa Barbara, where got a degree in fine arts. ![]() He was 12 when a friend of his dad’s offered him his first high-profile stunt job: riding a bicycle off a garage for a TV pilot directed by a first-time director named Ron Howard. “I grew up in the ultimate playground,” he said. When his family moved to Agua Dulce, Waugh learned to ride horses and dirt bikes, hanging out with the sons of other stunt performers. Waugh’s childhood home in Sylmar included a trapeze and high-fall pads where he watched his dad practice stunts. His father’s best friend was celebrated stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham (“Smokey and the Bandit”). Scott Waugh grew up around stunts, watching his dad, a former circus performer, double for the original “Spider Man” in the 1970s TV series. He dedicated the movie to his father, who died last year. The elder Waugh also invented the 35-mm helmet camera and an innovative hand-held camera called the Pogo Cam, paving the way for lightweight cameras used today, Waugh said. It’s an approach he learned from his father, Fred Waugh, a renowned stuntman who favored putting the audience in the boots of those doing the stunts. On the set, crew members called it the Steve McQueen style of filmmaking, a reference to the close-up camera shots in his movies that made viewers feel like they are along for the ride. “I wanted the audiences to really feel what it’s like to drive 230 miles per hour.” “We went back out on the road, traveling at high speeds and hanging out the side of the car to film this,” Waugh said. (CGI was used only to remove crew members and wires from shots.) He also used as many as 40 cameras at a time to capture a single scene from all angles, relying on his own 25 years jumping, crashing and racing cars in movies and TV shows. In “Need for Speed,” all the stunts were done by precision drivers and stunt performers on location rather than on a sound stage, Waugh said. Unlike most current action directors who rely heavily on computer generated images, Waugh eschews digital effects. ![]() For European supercars, the production hired Reel Industries of Los Angeles to create 15 chassis and fiberglass shells for each model to avoid damage to vehicles that cost more than $1 million each. Those included a variety of classic muscle cars, including a Mustang especially designed by Ford topping out at 190 mph, as well as the 1969 Ford Gran Torino and 1968 Chevy Camaro. ![]() More than 100 cars were used on the $66-million film. Because it was based on a video game, we had to come as close as possible in approximating what you feel when you’re playing a video game and that’s what Scott promised - an immersive experience.” “The fact that you could personally feel the energy of the characters made me feel that Scott would be great choice ‘Need for Speed.’. “It was so visceral I couldn’t help but get caught up in the thrill of it,” Snider said. PHOTOS: Box office top 10 of 2013 | Biggest flops of 2013 The $9-million film released by Relativity Media grossed more than $70 million at the box office and put Waugh on the radar of DreamWorks Chief Executive Stacey Snider.
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