This is something that has always befuddled me, every scene featuring people inside a car on tv shows is always fake with the background that doesn't look even remotely real. The ones in Roseanne are a classic example. Anyone know why they never just film the scenes normally like they do in movies?

I really have no explanation to offer, but I have often wondered the same thing myself!

A lot of shows use rear-projection. The car is still and a movie is played behind the car of the outside. They may be using blue/green screen now. Lower cost is the main reason they do it. No need to close down a road, rig up cameras to the car, camera car, paying for a crew to go film. They can film it in the same studio that they film the rest of the show.

You should watch Airplane.

This is another big reason. Sitcoms like Roseanne record in front of a live studio audience, and they want to record as much in front of that audience as possible to get that "live" feel and legitimate laughter. Plus, if it's pretaped and shown to the audience later, the actors can't accurately pause for the laughter.

Yep, as shows have moved further and further away from studio-style shoots, more and more are shot in real cars, whether it be on a camera mounted outside the car window (or where a window should be), or in the case of some shows like The Office, actually inside the car while a cast member is driving, all and all expect to see very few "fake" looking driving scenes.

Depending on the show's tone, it might work in its favor. I embarassingly admit I enjoy Las Vegas which is a cheesy show with eye candy, what's the point of spending extra for on location driving?

a lot of times i catch law and order filming in NYC along with some other shows. you wouldn't believe the amount of work required to film in the street. you need to get permits months in advance, an army of people is deployed to shoot and support the shoot. and it takes 12 hours from start to finish. and probably costs a load of money. and then you have the problem of a car being small and very hard to get a good shot due to all the lighting requirements.

probably a lot easier to do it in the studio

Especially if you consider they decide a scene is wrong somehow, and they then need to reshoot. That just wouldn't happen.

Ironically enough, it was an episode of Las Vegas that inspired me to start this thread, the one from season 2 with George Hamilton.

Hour long tv shows take 6 - 8 days to shoot the entire episode. They don't have the luxury of time.

Isn't that part of why it takes so long, though? Surely they cover just about as many iterations as they can and shoot all sorts of coverage so they can work with a problem scene, right?

With the show Bones, does anyone know if the car driving scene's are done for real or not? it doesn't have a rear screen projection look (at least to my eyes.)

I have to laugh when they don't even try to match up the rear-projection clips, like in Police Squad.

It's a single camera show, so I'd expect the driving scenes to be real in that they're filmed inside an actual moving car.

That's the first thing I thought of...the Naked Gun movies.

33 1/3: Death Star from Star Wars

A bit off topic, but I have to mention the striking rear projection shots at the end of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (the original). The rear projection shots are taken from a very low angle, and the shots of the car are head on -- giving a wonderful surreal effect to the scene because of the mismatch. I don't think I've ever seen this effect used anywhere else.

I can't prove this, but I think that Hitchcock made some of his back projection shots (not for cars) look intentionally "off" as a stylistic choice. Some of the shots of characters walking against a very obvious rear projection in Rebecca just couldn't have been done that way if they were trying to be realistic. Also the two-d shots rp shots in the otherwise three-d Dial M for Murder.

Time and budget.

If you're talking about a half-hour sitcom, then they're shot on a tight budget and a tight schedule so they can't really take the time and expense of shooting outside in a real car.

It's a bit easier for hour-long dramas to do location shoots, but it also likely comes down to budgets and schedules.

What cracks me up about a lot of these fake driving scenes is that the actor driving usually over-acts with the steering wheel and moves it around so much that they'd be swerving all of the road or ditching the car.

Another thing about cars in TV shows I just thought of....

Seems like when they are in cars that are "moving" the gear selector is almost always in PARK.

These two things (actually, the same thing in a sense) explain the reasons behind 90% of the questions about why things are done the way they are in television.

I'm guessing insurance for the actors might have something to do with it as well. Studios would have to pay bigger coverage on their stars if they are putting them in riskier situations. So I guess this would fall under "budget reasons" as well.