{"id":1760870,"date":"2026-02-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1760870"},"modified":"2026-02-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:00:00","slug":"mark-higgins-on-spectres-rome-car-chase-we-might-have-ended-up-in-the-tiber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1760870","title":{"rendered":"Mark Higgins on Spectre’s Rome car chase: “we might have ended up in the Tiber”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What\u2019s it like to be a stunt driver? Ex-rally driver Mark Higgins would know – here he shares his tips with TopGear.com…<\/em><\/p>\n

The amount of preparation that goes into any driving stunt is huge. It\u2019s not unusual for us to be preparing six months before going on location. I\u2019ll be brought in by the stunt co-ordinator once we have a script and know roughly what we have to do and what cars we\u2019ll be doing it in. We might use Dunsfold or Longcross, if it\u2019s a UK-based film, for set-up work, modifying and preparing the cars, working out how we\u2019ll do the stunts and rehearsing them so that when we go out on location we know what we\u2019re doing \u2013 it\u2019s just like an actor learning their lines, really.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019ll be more prep once we\u2019re on location, which might be two weeks before shooting begins. We can have a look at exactly what we\u2019ll be doing, tweak and refine our plans. We\u2019ll often push toy cars around a table, before we start doing any driving. If there\u2019s only a couple of cars involved \u2013 like the Rome scenes in Spectre<\/em> \u2013 it\u2019s quite straightforward. But you also have to work with cameras and tracking vehicles. So if you\u2019ve got 40 cars and 40 drivers for a street scene, things get a lot more complicated \u2013 especially if there\u2019s a language barrier.<\/p>\n

Those stunts might not look dangerous, but there\u2019s just so many variables. For Spectre<\/em>, we were in Rome for a month shooting every night. We had a lot of DB10s, but only really used one for most of the scenes. But it\u2019s actually more efficient to have lots of cars. You\u2019d imagine they\u2019d be the big cost, but on a major film it\u2019s actually the shoot time, so if you can have one car driving, another rigged for on-boards and another for special effects, like spurting flames, it\u2019s better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Above all, the shoot needs to be time-efficient. The attention to detail staggered me to start with. Even if my face isn\u2019t going to be seen, it\u2019s always easier to drive in costume, just in case. I try to avoid wearing a mask, as it doesn\u2019t help vision \u2013 that said, if it\u2019s a tricky stunt, my face would be CGI\u2019d\u2026 And then there\u2019s the continuity people. Before you start driving they\u2019ll come round and check the outfit, that the wig\u2019s on straight, even that the watch on my wrist and clock in the car is reset to \u2018film time\u2019 after every take.<\/p>\n

We try to keep things as safe as possible. When we drove down the steps for Spectre<\/em>, there was a chance we might have ended up in the Tiber, so there was an aqualung in the car, and we trained in a dark swimming pool. I was told that if it went wrong, I had enough air for 20 minutes and should just stay in the car and try to relax, and a scuba rescue team would get me out. Not sure how easy that\u2019d be!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We do get to feed back and say what\u2019s possible \u2013 you can\u2019t do a massive drift in a FWD Ford Fiesta \u2013 but sticking to the script can be frustrating from a driver\u2019s point of view, because you\u2019ll do what you know is a great sequence but only a little bit of it is used. We do try and watch the rushes at the end of takes so we know what the cameras are seeing, which can help us to understand what\u2019s required.<\/p>\n

As a driver, I prefer to do real things. My first big film job was on Quantum of Solace<\/em> \u2013 I was driving the Alfa 159 chasing the Aston DBS, and I had the stunt co-ordinator in my ear shouting, \u201chit him harder, hit him harder”, and, well, who doesn\u2019t like the sound of that? While rallying for 20 years, I tried to avoid crashing, so being told to have contact without a serious talking-to is great.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s it like to be a stunt driver? Ex-rally driver Mark Higgins would know – here he shares his tips with TopGear.com… The amount of preparation that goes into any driving stunt is huge. It\u2019s not unusual for us to be preparing six months before going on location. I\u2019ll be brought in by the stunt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-1760870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1760870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1760870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1760870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1760870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}