THE DIRECTOR: CINEMATIC CAMERAS
Your drive, filmed like an action movie.
For BeamNG.drive 0.40

You drive. Somebody else films it.

The Director is a set of new cameras that shoot your car by themselves and cut between shots, like the film crew of a car chase. There are no keys to learn and nothing to set up: pick the view, drive, and watch your commute turn into the opening of a Seventies thriller.

It was made with Ronin (1998) in mind: the car chases that are still the benchmark. I went through one of them shot by shot, then shaped the Director around what it does: long lenses, low street-level pans, no glued-on magic cameras, and cuts that go from the cars to the people inside them.


WHAT'S NEW IN 1.1

- Tunnels, bridges and car parks: the camera car no longer climbs onto the tunnel's roof
  or the hill above it. It stays under the ceiling, and finds the ground under it.
- Cameras bolted on the car: a shot is dropped when your own bodywork would fill the lens
  (a wing or a panel across the picture, or a big car's flank right in front of it).
- Long lenses at high speed: however late the operator pans, your car never leaves the
  picture any more.
- With the Driver & Passengers mod: the passenger dashboard shot is skipped when a dog sits
  there.


GETTING STARTED

1. Drop "The Director 1.1.zip" into your BeamNG mods folder, without unzipping it.
2. Press C to cycle through your cameras until you reach one of the five new views.
3. Drive.


FIVE VIEWS

Director            The whole crew, cutting between more than 40 shots.
Street Director     Only standing cameras and shots from passing traffic.
Camera Car          A car follows you from behind, with no cuts. Raise or lower it
                    with your camera look controls and change its lens with
                    camera zoom. Your setting is kept.
Helicopter          The helicopter follows you from above, with no cuts. Same
                    height and zoom controls as the Camera Car.
Rendez-vous         One low, wide bumper shot, in the spirit of the 1976 short
                    film C'était un rendez-vous.


HOW IT WORKS

Every camera could exist on a real shoot. None is invisibly glued to the car unless it really would be bolted on. There are four kinds of crew:

On a tripod. An operator stands by the road and pans and zooms after you, always a little late, as a person would.

In a vehicle. Camera cars, a motorbike, a drone and a helicopter chase you with their own inertia and their own bumps. They follow your path, not your car's shakes, and they fall behind when you leap away. The camera car swings wide in bends so it can see where the road goes, and it brakes hard enough to stay behind you. The helicopter climbs over whatever is in its way.

Bolted on. Suction-mounted cameras on the roof, the door, the bumper or the exhaust move rigidly with the bodywork, and every bump you hit shakes the picture.

On foot. When you stop, the crew gets out. An operator with a steadicam walks around the car at a walking pace, and the moment you pull away, the shot ends.


THE EDIT

Nothing runs on a fixed loop. The Director edits as you drive:

- It reads your speed. Below 40 km/h shots are long and calm, up to 120 km/h they tighten, and above that the cuts come quickly and the cameras get low and close.
- It follows the grammar of film. A wide shot calls for a close one, and a close one for a way out of it. It rarely stays at the same scale twice, and it avoids repeating recent shots.
- It reacts. After a slide or a close call, the next cut goes to the cabin, soon. After a big crash, it cuts straight to a wide view of the wreck and stays there.
- It looks before it shoots. A camera blocked by terrain, a building, a tree or a bush gets replaced.


GOOD TO KNOW

- The mod adds cameras only. It does not change your car, physics or settings, and it adds no models.
- The cabin shots film what is in the car. Without a driver or passenger mod, those seats are empty.
- Street Director needs roads to stand beside. On maps with few places to stand, it follows with the camera car for a few seconds.
- Trees are checked approximately, so a branch can still cross the picture now and then.
- Developed and played on Linux. Windows has not been tested yet, so reports are welcome.

To uninstall, delete the zip from your mods folder.