This video from the Insuurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) takes us behind the scenes to see their camera rigs for shooting video and stills of car crashes. The footage and photos they produce are used to help make vehicles safer in the event of a crash, but it’s also used a lot for other research and it’s even appeared in movies.
It takes a whole lot of rather technical planning and preparation to get each shot and to be able to repeat it with multiple vehicles over a period of time. Every camera is calibrated, measured and positioned very exactly to be able to reproduce the same shot days or even months apart.