Jay Leno’s Garage

Jay Leno gets involved in a high-speed car chase… sorta

Go behind-the-scenes of a car chase with Jay Leno
VIDEO3:4803:48
Go behind-the-scenes of a car chase with Jay Leno

Let me set the scene for you. It's a beautiful sunny day at Willow Springs in Rosamond, CA and we've got two Porsche experts ready to duke it out on the raceway. Meanwhile Jay and a crew of experts get too fast and too furious to reveal the tricks of the trade used to film a high speed car chase.

Playing our hero is Rod Emory of Emory Motorsports, and he brought along one of his custom vehicles a 1955 Porsche Outlaw 365, which has triple the original horsepower. Our villain is 3-time American Le Mans Series Champion Patrick long, who has been a member or the Porsche factory test team since 2003. He's driving the highly-sought after 2016 Porsche 911R which has 500 horsepower, and can go from 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds.

So how do you keep up with two Porsches on a racetrack? With a first class director driving another Porsche. Jeff Zwart is following all the action in a 2010 Porsche Panamera, the king of the high-speed camera cars, and the only one of its kind. Back in the old days a camera guy would have to hang out of the window to get these shots, but the Panamera and its Gemini crane help Zwart manage three drivers, in three different cars, and the crane operator all at the same time.

It's hard to catch speed on film convincingly, and Zwart reveals the "high-speed" aspect of chases are all an illusion. The trick is to get the camera low to give the impression of speed. Emory and Long were only driving 50 or 60 mph, but thanks to Zwart's magic, it looked like they were going 120 mph. That's just the miracle of television.

Jay explains how the low angle works, comparing it to the overhead shots you normally see in big races. "You watch the Indianapolis 500 and they don't look like they're going 200 mph, they look like they're going 35 mph."

Normally a scene like this would take weeks or months to coordinate, plan and shoot, however Jay and his team only had half a day to squeeze it all in. Luckily, since he was rolling with the best of the best, in top of the line vehicles, they were able to get the job done and then some.

Learn how a car chase scene gets filmed on an all-new "Jay Leno's Garage," Thursday at 10 p.m. ET/PT.