Top Gear & Forza 5 Join Forces To Create A Real Life Flick Book

Forza 5 will be hitting the Xbox One upon launch in just a few more weeks, so what better way to build up hype than to take their real world driving counterparts out to the track to create something unique and wonderful. Tanner Foust from Top Gear USA took to the wheel of a modified McLaren MP4-12C with a camera mounted on it, to race around a track that had 680 images laid around it.

The car is already incredibly expensive, but Top Gear and Forza 5 added an also incredibly expensive £93,330 camera on the back of it that was capable of filming their ambitious project. They chose the car due to its stability and break neck speeds, but it also helps that it’s one of the poster cars for Forza 5.

“If we’d used a Porsche, the visibility would have been too bad for me to see what was going on with the boards, if we’d used a Lambo the brutal shifting would have snapped the camera off. This is a scientific car, and I needed to apply a lot of difficult science to make the film, so it was perfect.” Said Tanner when speaking on topgear.com

680 aluminium boards were printed with gorgeous images taken from real Forza 5 gameplay, spaced six inches apart around the edge of Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama, then Tanner was told to drive past them as precise speeds (and high speeds) to allow the camera to capture the picture boards in the style of a flicker book, to then play them back as video. Sound confusing? Just watch the video and you’ll see what we mean.

“All the science behind it was very exact. Exact frame rate, measuring the exact distance between the boards, and hitting exact speeds. The McLaren was ideal. It’s classy in the way it makes ridiculous speed, and the suspension’s really smooth.” added Tanner.

Forza & Top Gear could have made this promo using CGI and a cut of green cloth, but they chose to do it the hard was and the end result does look fantastic. If they were trying to get people talking about Forza 5, it worked.

Thank you TopGear for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of TopGear.