Producer's Notebook: The sorcery of the driverless car

On every shoot, someone has to be the big bad boss: Making sure the crew has time to set up, everyone gets fed, that we don’t rack up too much overtime. But shooting for “TechKnow” is also a lot of fun. And fun eats up time. Our contributors get to do some really cool stuff.  But as a producer you just have to know when to put the brakes on the fun. And so it was on our two days shooting the story about autonomous—also known as driverless—cars with contributor Kosta Grammatis, our resident engineering whiz.

On our first day, Kosta took a spin in Nissan’s driverless car prototype. Kosta is a seriously smart guy so I gave him lots of space to chat with Nissan’s top engineer Tetsuya Iijima during their test “drive.” What I didn’t expect was two brainiacs giggling over the technology—and I’ve got the tape to prove it. Every time Tetsuya showed Kosta another nifty feature, Kosta would quiz him about it, and the two would giggle like a couple of school kids.

The only time things got tense was when I made the huge mistake of opening the trunk. It was like the NSA had just discovered I was working for Wikileaks. About a half dozen Nissan “minders” swooped in and quickly pulled down the lid. “No! Not for shooting!” they said. Or apparently for looking. At least not by me. That’s when Kosta jumped in with Tetsuya: The two laughing as if there was nothing funnier than watching a producer getting the corporate smack down. But then, Kosta asked if he could look inside without the camera. While I brooded, banished back in the tent, Tetsuya was busy entertaining Kosta with secret tales of circuitry. Just a couple of engineering guys marveling at hardware.

But that wasn’t when I felt distinctly like the adult in the room. After our test drive, where we got to see how the driverless car negotiates life’s obstacles, Kosta started negotiating with me. Nissan had a race car and he wanted to take a ride. It had nothing to do with the story and the crew would have to unpack their gear. I was tired and wanted to get the tape to the office… but Kosta’s sheepish insistence that we just “HAVE TO” let him take a spin, reminded me of a kid begging Mom… “Please? Please! I will DIE if I can’t do this!” Then he solicited the crew for support, like they would TOTALLY understand his need for speed. (I worried how would I justify the need for overtime or a mangled contributor.)

It’s not that I’m a spoil-sport. It’s just that I spent my formative years taking the Number 7 in Queens and then when I finally got my own car I spent most of my time in gridlock slowly negotiating alternate side of the street parking. I just don’t have the “car” gene. But when those 5 sets of beseeching eyes turned to me, I melted. “Okay, but just one lap.” Secretly I was hoping he’d take that back turn at 120 MPH and hurl the ice cream he’d just inhaled. But, Kosta came out of the drive… yup, you guessed it, giggling.

That wasn’t the end of it. On day two, we were the first news crew to take a “spin” in the autonomous car simulator at Stanford University’s Automobile Lab, run by Professor Clifford Nass. It’s a $600,000 simulator built to help car manufacturers build a safer car.

The room is almost completely ringed by a special screen that plays a 360-degree animation of driving through different scenarios. This is serious stuff, although it was hard for me to look at Kosta and not laugh. Not with more than a dozen wires from his head that looked high tech hair extensions. Once he got into the car and they started plugging him into a series of monitors, the simulator began playing the driving scenarios.  Suddenly Kosta reverted from probing scientist to teenager in the world’s most expensive video game. He floored the gas pedal, swerved through traffic, slamming through farmland, doing wild figure eights across a four lane highway, before finally doing an Evel Knievel across a bridge, slamming down onto a house before the simulator flashed a black screen with some ominous looking text. It was the simulator’s version of TILT from an old manual pinball game.

“Now you’ve done it! You broke it.” I intoned a stern parental manner akin to the I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed vibe.  But, Kosta pulled out his secret weapon: His charismatic smile and his ability to be serious about the science. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it right when the cameras are rolling.” Damn him. The grad student running the simulator assured me that all they needed to do was re-boot and Kosta was on his way: In fact proving the point that turning over the car to the human driver is a dangerous exchange: Apparently more dangerous than annoying the producer. I only wish I could have put the crew on overtime to take that awesome ride myself.