one little question

[Skav]

remember in the pilot as kitt starts up to break michael out of the jail...how did they make the gearstick move on its own?

i could never figure out this one, ive got the pedal down but this is bugging me.

silly, i know. but just wondered.

Skav

[K.I.T.T]

im sure it would be a mock set up of the dash in a studio, to which there was a hand under the set up moving the stick.

K.I.T.T

[Rockatteer]

Yeah I always thought it would have been a mock setup...

but I guess they could just have easily have used a piece of "invisable string" connected to the gear stick and just pulled it.

[mallardo]

It seemed like stop-motion to me...But I think I'm mistaking...

[Knight2000]

'Invisible string'? That's terrible. A much better theory would have been that since it was a mock-up set, somebody 'underneath' the set could have moved the gear stick from below.

Stop-motion seems less likely because you can actually see the gear knob (no sniggering back there!) raise and lower itself.

[Newcastle knight]

you can actually move the gear stick from underneath the car.

me and my grandad were fixing my reverse selector and he was moving the gear selector thats under the car around and the gear stick inside the car was moving in and out of gear ! looked really cool actually.

but like Nick said, they had a whole mock up of KITT's interior for those sort of shots.

Scott

[Rockatteer]

'Invisible string'? That's terrible.

Hey. If it can make David Copperfield fly around on stage...why can't it make Kitts gear stick move?

[Knight2000]

'Invisible string'? That's terrible.

Hey. If it can make David Copperfield fly around on stage...why can't it make Kitts gear stick move?

:lol Coz it'd be a bit hard. You'd need some string to pull the gear knob up, and some string to pull it in the required direction. Too much effort! :lol Take the easy route and just do it from underneath.

As an added note, when I was younger our car (Vauxhall Cavalier SRi) buggered up on the motorway. We had just had one of the front tyres fitted and balanced the day before. Anyhoo, it buggered up and we called the RAC. They lifted our car on a jack (while I was still in it), and moved the wheels left-to-right and back. The steering wheel moved by itself. It was SO cool to see that and instantaneously reminded me of KITT. Only prob was that our car then had to be towed.

[nivek]

I would say it was computer done but i don't think that they could do that yet. of corse there is the possibility of the have some one shift it and then just edit out the hand

[neps]

But think about this nivek. If they don't have the computer ability to animate the moving, how would they have the computer ability to remove the hand? I don't think CGI erasing existed back then, could be wrong.

I think the answer has been solved on this one, probably moved from below.

[Rockatteer]

Your right Neps....the kind of technology Nivek is talking about definitely didn't exist back in the 80s.....

Remember KR was made in the days when Tron was a cutting edge movie.

Its an interesting comment from Nivek though…. It got me thinking… He’s grown up in a world where technology almost outdates itself every day. Must be very difficult to image a world where computers are huge slow mainframes and half the stuff we take for granted today didn’t even exist.

I guess its much the same as me trying to imagine a world without running water or electricity on demand, or even freedom of speech….. you just kinda assume that those things have always been the way they are now.

[nivek]

your right it was made in the 80's, but there was something else that was a little harder to do made in the same time. it was star wars yes I am a star wars fan. I am a bigger star wars fan then I am knight rider but i like the both.Any how what I was saying they had a lot of thing that they had to do in star wars not in star wars and you could use what they did in star wars for knight rider are would it not work.


p.s. yes i know that they are two different things

[Rockatteer]

No it wouldn't!!

In your previous post you where talking about using computers to remove the hand moving the gear stick.

That technology did not exist in the 80s

Star Wars was released in 1977. Its special FX consisted mostly of pyrotechnics (explosions) , make up and masks, Blue screen (chroma-key) and model work…….

Back in the 80s computers where really only used as number crunches.

Hell it was considered hi-tech to have a computer, which would sit on your desk top!

If they where sophisticated enough to be able to edit out a hand moving the gearstick…don’t you think they would have done a better job with the auto-cruise shots so we couldn’t see the guy sitting in the fake seat??