Have you ever watched a movie or TV show and wondered about the automobiles you see in street scenes? Those parked cars and the ones moving along streets and highways just didn't happen to be there when the cameras were rolling.

They were hired as movie prop cars and each one of them earned their owner in the neighborhood of $300 for a day's work.

My father, my brother and I have had cars in movies, and you can too.

In some instances the vehicles are owned by the film production company, others are rented from a handful of rental sources that provide cars for films. But the vast majority of movie prop cars are owned by people just like you and me.

The fees paid to individuals whose cars are used on camera depends on the value and rarity of the car and how it will be used in a film. For instance, though $250-$300 is the going rate, a Mercedes Smart Car can rent for $500 a day since it's a relatively rare car not easy to find. Some expensive high performance cars will bring upwards of $900, or more, per day.

One opportunity that immediately comes to mind and is the exception to the rule is the TV show 'Cold Case'. Both daily drivers and classic cars can turn up any week. Though set in the present, the show's weekly plots depend upon flashbacks, often ten years or more, to portray the original crime. The 'flashback' scene cars most often used are almost always of the specific year of the crime or a year or two earlier at most. This current season they aired two different shows in which classics from the 1930s were in one, and more recent classics from the 1950s were in the other.

This article (edited) was written by Timothy B. Benford for Associated Content.