Smash Factory
	Location: Sony MovieGlide Theatre - Ridgefield Park, New Jersey (ATTRACTION NOW CLOSED)
	Venue: Cabin (with Sony Hi-Def video projection)
	Motion Base and Programming Software: Thomson Venturer 3-DOF
	Film Production: Midland Productions
	Director: Joel Hladecek
Bob the Test Driver has a bad day, and takes you along for the ride.

Smash Factory was one of the first comedy ridefilms - a hilarious whirlwind tour through the ultimate vehicle test range. "Bob", your off-screen driver, chats with you along the way - and turns out to be as dangerously unbalanced as his vehicle.

Done entirely with miniature sets and motion-control photography, Smash Factory is a three-minute blast of total sensory overload. There's far more detail in the film than can be seen in one viewing - or a hundred.

The film was conceived and directed by Joel Hladecek, who describes the experience this way:

"Oddly, one of the most difficult aspects of programming the motion for the Smash Factory film was the fact that the simulated vehicle was a car. In most rides the vehicles are more exotic: space ships and shuttles, time machines, submarines, and of course the "we have no idea what this vehicle is" or what I call the "flying camera vehicles". All of the moves these vehicles make can be pretty easily faked, because not many people have experience in riding them. Also, most of these vehicles have relatively smooth motions and are generally not in contact with any solid surface which makes it easier to program.

That's where Smash posed a problem: everybody's been in a car. We know how they feel, we know how they shift, we know how the individual shock absorbers bounce when we hit a bump, shift gears, or come to a stop. This made it very difficult to fake anything. Also, a car is in contact with the ground all the time! I always had to keep in mind the idea of four individual wheels touching the ground, and the shock absorbers between them and the camera. Sometimes I still get flashbacks from 'the pain'."

That's programming the camera motion Hladecek's talking about - but everything he says holds true for my experience in programming the simulator as well. The Smash Factory film has hundreds of tiny movements built into it as the vehicle shifts, bounces, and tilts all over the place - and I had to match them all. It was much more difficult than the generally smooth motion profiles of the average "flying" film. Overall, Smash Factory may be the most difficult ride I've ever programmed, too.

But at the same time, it's probably the most satisfying - audiences love this film.

Trivia: Smash Factory is one of the first examples of an "independent" ridefilm. It wasn't designed for any specific location or client - Midland Productions just made the thing. A ridefilm "distributor" picked it up, began leasing it to simulator owners, and now you might run into Smash Factory almost anywhere. (And if you do - see it. It's one of the best ridefilms ever made.)

Smash Factory marks another personal milestone for me - I've programmed it twice - for two different companies, on two entirely different bases. Once for Sony, then again for Tempus Expeditions (for whom I also did The Legend River.) As a result, I'm fairly sure I've seen Smash Factory more times than any living human being.

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Joel Hladecek is now Chief Creative Director at Red Sky Interactive.