How 'Furious 7' dropped real cars from planes in its most ridiculous stunt yet

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Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

The "Fast and Furious" franchise has evolved from films featuring hot cars and hot babes to having some of the most heart-stopping stunts you'll find at theaters.

One of the men responsible for making those scenes look as realistic as possible is 30-year stunt veteran Spiro Razatos.

"For the fourth film ("Fast & Furious") they kind of relied too much on CGI," Razatos told Business Insider. "So they realized they wanted to do less. That's what I do."

Razatos is responsible for some of the most jaw-dropping sequences from the franchise including when Dom (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker), and the rest of the crew dragged a giant bank vault through the busy streets of Rio de Janeiro in "Fast Five."

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Fast Five"

He also worked on the duel with a tank in "Fast and Furious 6."

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Fast & Furious 6"

In both sequences, very little CGI was included using real vaults and tanks to pull it off.

With fans starving for more, "Furious 7" director James Wan and the producers once again came to Razatos to take on the franchise's most insane sequence yet.

They called it the "air drop."

The idea was to have a sequence in the film with Dom and company in their souped-up cars drop from a plane high above Colorado and parachute into the mountains below.

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

"When I first read [the script] it was, 'cars drop and they kidnap this girl and they get away on the road,' that was it," Razatos recalls.

The producers assumed the sequence would have to rely heavily on special effects, but Razatos had other plans.

"I said let's really go for it and make the effort because I want this whole sequence to feel real, that's what the audience expects," he said.

The stunt took months of prep-solving problems. Cameras needed to be mounted onto cars in a way that they wouldn't be destroyed when the cars landed, and the crew needed a safe way to get the cars out of the plane.

"What if one of them gets stuck coming out of the plane?" said Razatos. "How is the plane going to land when you have a car dangling outside of it?"

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"


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They finally were able to do a "dry run" with a single car falling out of a plane. But some on the film weren't impressed by the raw footage.

"It was 20 minutes and the cameras weren't placed where they should be," Razatos recalls. "I remember telling the guys, 'ignore this, this is just a test.'"

With a green light, shooting took place in Colorado with two airplane runs, flying at 12,000 feet, that would drop two cars apiece.

Over 10 cameras were used for the sequence. In addition to cameras on the ground, there were cameras remotely operated inside the plane and another three mounted outside each car. Additional cameras were on a helicopter where Razatos was stationed watching monitors and listening to the radio chatter. Three skydivers used in the shoot wore helmet cams.

Sky divers would either jump out before cars or after them.

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

"I didn't realize how intense it would be," Razatos admits now.

"Sometimes a piece of debris would come off the car, so skydivers had to watch out for that," he added. "I'm in a helicopter and I want to get in close for the shots but you have to watch out because of the helicopter blades."

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

Regardless of all the safety precautions, accidents can happen. Razatos says in one of the runs a skydiver lost his footing getting out of the plane and bounced off the rear exit hatch on his way out of he plane. Not the most graceful of jumps, but Razatos said he was fine.

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"


When one car landed its parachute caught an air pocket and was carrying the car to the freeway. "I'm hearing on the radio the car is being dragged and it can't stop," said Razatos. "People were on motorcycles to get to the car; jumping on the car with knives to cut the parachute."  

"On the radio you hear people say, 'Skydiver, 200 feet you have a car gaining on your two o'clock,'" he added.

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

And then there's the one car of the four that didn't make it because its parachute didn't deploy. "That car got demolished," said Razatos. "You got to see what would happen if a car really dropped from that height."

Much of what Razatos and his 2nd unit team did on the day made it into the final cut of the movie. Some of it was enhanced to increase the look of the speed at which cars were diving. Shots of the actors in the cars were put in later, but for the most part Razatos' mission to do the scene as realistically as possible was a success.

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

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YouTube/Universal Pictures/"Furious 7"

"I started doing stunts when I was 10 years old making Super 8 movies. This feels like I'm back in those days," Razatos said about working on the "Fast and Furious" films.

Thinking back on the "air drop" sequence he admits, "That's going to be hard to top."

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how the sequence was done:

 And here's how it looks in the film: