Where do you buy police car lights for film use?

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi there. . .

I need to create three to four police cars for a crime scene. It is HIGHLY unlikely that the local departments will let me use their actual cars, so I am wondering if we can create our own police cars. If so, where do you get the lights on top of the cars?

Are flashing police lights even usable on a RED due to the slow shutter issue?

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

watch southland.. plenty of police lights.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, I had a lot of rolling shutter problems with the M-X Red and the blue strobes that Chicago police cars use -- the old-fashioned spinning lights are not a problem, so see if you can get those. There are also off-camera rigs that can be built to simulate that effect, gelled PAR's pointed into spinning mirrors, etc. But modern strobes on some police cars that flash very quickly will probably create some rolling shutter artifacts.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Are they synced? We won't have that capability, I'm sure.

Stephen

 

[Joshua Raven]

Hi Stephen,
Most production cities (LA, NY, Vancouver, Toronto) have rental companies that specialize in Emergency Vehicles, usually your armourer will have the number. If you plan on destroying the vehicle and are planning on painting up a car and tricking it out with lights you can check out code 3 for lights:
http://www.code3pse.com/product.jsp?grp=cd3&familyid=1
You'll probably run into some sticker shock over how expensive it is to actually "make" a cop car though.

 

[Matt W.]

You can usually rent police cars (I'm not sure from whom but your producer should likely have plenty of contacts)--but it's expensive: often hundreds of dollars to a thousand per day per car.

If this isn't in the budget, you can buy spinning lights that are powered through the cigarette lighter and mount them on like an SUV or something and write it into the script as an "off duty" police car. I can't tell you how many times we've used this trick; it's almost an in-joke at this point.

 

[Greg M]

We usually hire officers (they always come in a police car), never had an issue. Down here they rent for $25/hr each...ymmv.

Ask for older cars, without strobes.

 

[John Burnley]

Try www.galls.com. They have almost everything. But working with local law enforcement might be more simple yet.

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

For my production last year, we rented traffic control cars. The Denver based company is called Highway Technologies, but all states have them. They're the same people you go to if you want to do a street closure- they bring all the closure signs and detour signs in to your location and set them up. Along with road signs, they also rent traffic control cars, which look exactly like police cars but without decals. If they're just sitting in your shot, they look extremely realistic and they were only $125 a day to rent. They require no police supervision to use either. And (at least our car) had a red and blue light bar, not the blue and orange that most non-emergency vehicles have. See screenshot. (as David mentioned, there are definitely rolling shutter artifacts unfortunately) But for the price, it was worth the compromise for our low budget gig.

 

[Michael Bernstein]

If you're anywhere near New York, check out Creative Film Cars, http://www.creativefilmcars.com/. They may have a police car, or (if I remember correctly) they can put you in touch with folks who actually have the racks as standalone units.

 

[Eren Ozkural]

I've had to fake police lights off a cop car for a feature last year. Rolling shutter issues like you guessed.

 

[Michael N]

I need to create three to four police cars for a crime scene. It is HIGHLY unlikely that the local departments will let me use their actual cars, so I am wondering if we can create our own police cars. If so, where do you get the lights on top of the cars?

Stephen, it seems the account I created under my business name was banned for "signature spamming". Anyway, after our conversation Friday, I have created a new section on our website for police lights rentals. As for a sample video capturing one of our led lightbars with a cannon gl2, I didn't think to direct you to my latest youtube video of our new dual color lightbar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYykjnoG59M. This should hopefully give you an idea of what you can expect. I'll be available tomorrow if you have any questions.

-Michael

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Hi there, Michael. . .

Thanks for your email and post. I'll take a peek right away at those videos.

As I mentioned to you on the phone, but the problem relates to what is known as rolling shutter artifacts.

Thanks!

Stephen

 

[Vance Colvig]

Check out ebay under "rotating beacon". Red, blue, and amber. They are not strobes, so no rolling shutter problem. Dirt cheap too.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Okay. . . those of you who have used real cars and got rolling shutter issues, this is for you: Was the footage usable or not? Or did you have to process it in some way in post to make it usable?

Thanks.

Stephen

 

[Eren Ozkural]

Unusable on my side. Thankfully production shot a clean plate when they spotted the problem and I used the strobing footage as a lighting/timing reference.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Eren. . . so you just did it with the lights off and then added them in post? I didn't consider that possibility.

Thanks.

Stephen