405 is the name of a 3-minute film released in May 2000 and produced by Bruce Branit and Jeremy Hunt. It was the first short film to become widely distributed on the Internet and became a media sensation for a short time. Image File history File links 405moviePoster. ... 2000 (MM) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Plot summary

The film shows a DC-10 jet making an emergency landing onto the 405 freeway in California, with the front part of the plane pinning a man's car to the road, forcing him to be pushed along by it until it comes to a stop. In the process of slowing down, the plane and the man's car almost hit an elderly woman driving slowly in her car, though she is oblivious to this fact. The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 is a three-engined medium to long-range widebody airliner, with two engines mounted on underwing pylons and a third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer. ... This California State Highway article needs to be cleaned up to conform to both a higher standard of article quality and accepted design standards outlined in the WikiProject California State Highways. ...

Production

The film took three and a half months to make. The real footage, consisting of the actors in still vehicles, was shot in one weekend with an hour of pick-ups later. The post production and visual effects were completed later on by the two filmmakers in their spare time. All of the shots outside of the Jeep are entirely computer generated three dimensional models. The actors were shot in vehicles similar to the ones in the film but the exterior shots of the vehicles, the jet, the highway and background scenery in the film are composed of composited images from still photographs and video applied to three dimensional models created in computer modeling software. About 50% of the shots in the interior of the Jeep are digital effects. Post-production occurs in the making of audio recordings, films/movies, videos and television programmes. ... Visual effects (vfx) is the term given to a sub-category of special effects in which images or film frames are created or manipulated for film and video. ...

The filmmakers

Branit and Hunt taught themselves the use of visual effects software before working as professionals. Both had been working as visual effects artists for a few years before making 405. While Hunt had a degree in filmmaking the use of digital effects software was not commonly taught in school at that time.

Technical specs

The camera used to make the film was a Canon Optura, a type of digital video camera. The effects were done on a Pentium II and Pentium III computer. Digital video is a type of video recording system that works by using a digital, rather than analog, representation of the video signal. ... Pentium II – front view The Pentium II is an x86 architecture microprocessor by Intel, introduced on May 7, 1997. ... Pentium III logo The Pentium III is an x86 (more precisely, an i686) architecture microprocessor by Intel, introduced on February 26, 1999. ...

Significance

405 is significant as an early example of the revolution in digital filmmaking and the use of broadband internet as a channel to distribute media. While the producers shot the film using a digital camcorder and created the special effects using personal computers, all on a budget of $300, the results rivalled that of many major film and television production studios at the time. At the same time, with little promotional effort the film soon reached millions of online viewers through widespread internet access. By October it was featured on the site iFilm where it had received two million viewers.[1] iFilm is an online archive of short films, movie trailers, and other video clips of interest. ...

Trivia

$140 of the budget was to pay two tickets for walking on the highway shoulder. It was issued to them by California Highway Patrol Officer Dana Anderson who is listed in the "Special Thanks" section of the credits. (CHP) is a state agency that acts as the state police force of California. ...

External links

• 405 Official Site
• 405 at the Internet Movie Database