One thing to do is give each battle a sense of place, and purpose.

Example (1) the battle of the river. One group has to cross the river to escape pursuit, the pursuers are near and firing at them. Crossing the river will leave them exposed to that gunfire. You can have nice splash sounds and water splashes. Wet folks, floating bodies. blood in the river. Fighting the mud to get up the far bank while shots whip overhead. Finally some folks make it and in order to follow the bad guys have to cross the river as well. The river becomes an important line in the sand. It can be set up previously by having folks look at a map and say "Once we cross the river we'll be safe." followed by another saying "yeah but while we cross we'll be exposed. I remember once...."

Example (2) battle of the suburbs. One group set up an ambush and attacks the other as they drive along a surburban street. The ambushers storm the vehicles and the ambushes are forced to withdraw into nearby houses and over fences but basically there is no decent place to hide and they are picked off by snipers one after another. All except our hero who didn't run for the house, he slipped into the gutter and has to decide, does he fire back from relative safety and hope to help his companions or does he slip away into the sewers and inform his general that someone set them up.

Look at the Star Wars films.Fight in the desert, fight in the snow. Fight in the trees. Fight in an arena. Lucas uses the location to give a slightly different feel to each fight.

I have no idea how to make a fist fight interesting.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I'll say what I always say: Film is a language. Watch a lot of scenes that have similar aspects to your scenes. That way you get a good idea of what other film makers have done in the past.

Sit down with a pad of paper/pen and take lots of notes. Draw some simple story boards of interesting shots. After you have watched ten scenes ten times each you start to get an idea of the language conventions of action scenes.

When setting up an action scene I might suggest following some conventions of Dungeons and Dragons. Basically set up the scene with a table top representation of the setting/terrain with some pieces to represent the actors. Run the scene forward to get an idea of the blocking while inserting any lines/dialogue/stunts/jokes you have planned.

Then run it through and consider: what is important? what does the audience need to see?

An action scene should be a coherent story and not just random flashes of action. You have the overview of the story laid out on the table top but you can't show everything. So, what do you need to show to tell the story of the "Battle of ____" in a linear fashion that allows the audience to follow the action?

Since it is an action scene you will probably want to stick mostly with shorter shots edited together, of course, as you will see when watching the scenes of great film makers. There are exceptions of course, but often longer shots in an action scene work to show the character as being separate somehow from the frenetic motion in the fight itself.

Also, don't forget that the bottom line is that a movie is about characters. In the end it is about them being in a fight and not about the fight itself (my opinion at least) so make sure to include closeups/reaction shots of the fighters in the mix. Even in a firefight their personalities can shine through which can help you action scene stand out from more generic shoot-shoot-bang-bang action.

Also, as rjschwarz, mentioned it can be useful to set the stage for the action. This is useful in a variety of ways, for example:

Set the stakes.

Build anticipation.

Give the audience a framework to help them understand the chaotic action.

Set expectations of the action according to the characters plans, then the plans fall apart in the midst of battle. This can help the, "Oh, S--T!" factor when everything goes wrong. One side isn't just losing, but is taken by surprise. Also, this allows you to point out the cleverness/toughness of the winning side.

quote:

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Originally posted by hibbs02

An action scene should be a coherent story and not just random flashes of action. You have the overview of the story laid out on the table top but you can't show everything. So, what do you need to show to tell the story of the "Battle of ____" in a linear fashion that allows the audience to follow the action?

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I disagree my friend, some of the best and most chaotically effective action scenes I've seen are almost a montage of sorts with several different shots, one not really leading into the other. I feel it gives the sequence a gritty and visceral feel, which is otherwise left out by a smooth sequence, which will always look rehearsed, no matter how good the actors are. A good warlike sequence allows room for mistakes, because mistakes add to the realism. Come on, how often do we really see "perfectly executed" battles outside of Hollywood?

What I do is use lots and lots of camera angles, takes galore, and shots out the wazoo. Go nuts on your camera work. The nice thing about action sequences is that you can get away with continuity errors like crazy, just as long as its nothing major like a change of clothing or weaponry. Just by some crazy camera work you can add a whole side of chaos you didn't know the scene had. Then in post make your clips short, don't focus on one thing too long, it leads to boredom. Also, for an almost surreal feel, play around with the contrast. If you can tweak it just a bit a make your darks ultra dark and your lights ultra light. If you can get it right its balls, if not, it sucks.

But as you can tell, its all what you want.

That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough! I'm going to clown college!

swordofdoom - I read somewhere that lots of communication is lost through email/bbs writing and it is easier to become offended when only reading. So, know that this post has the same spirit as if I were debating a point with a friend over a beer. ?8D?

"Come on, how often do we really see "perfectly executed" battles outside of Hollywood?"

Exactly my point. ?:D?

I would give as two examples of my theory "Saving Private Ryan" and "Gladiator." It seemed to me at least that both had battles that told a linear story.

The beach landing was about the Tom Hanks character making his way to semi safety from the "boats" (don't know the military term) and then taking command of a group of men which he leads to the top of the hill.

There were a lot of random shots early on to show the chaos of the situation, thats true. But they were intersperesed with the Tom Hanks story.

Now once got to some cover and could recover a bit from all the trauma and begin to take command there were lots fewer random shots and things were much more linear.

So, the comparison in style between these two was very important as it emphasized the insane randomness of the beach landing. Death was everywhere. Whereas once Hanks took control the randomness reduced which emphasized how good a commander he was.

Now, of course, you are going to have a ton of "random" images in a battle scene. But for comparison, a group of screwups who don't know what they are doing and are just getting chopped down will have lots of random while a professional group will be more linear.

So, perhaps in the end we agree if that was the point you were making. But to say that Hollywood is a standard that no independent film maker should attempt to meet? (if that was indeed what you were saying)

I have to disagree. Strive, at least in regards to action scenes where they do have their shit together, to be as much Hollywood as possible. After all, I wanna work for them someday. Why would I make work that purposely ignores their conventions?

People like us obviously can't compete with productions that have millions of dollars for one action sequence. But, you can make the very best movie it is within your ability to do. And tht includes speaking the languge of film. Right now Hollywood controls that language quite thoroughly.

Sure, we are going to have an accent, no doubt. But, people will still be able to understand us.

Don't worry mate, I don't get offended that easily, anyway, its just a slight difference in opinons. Don't sweat it, its all good in the hood. Or as you would say, ?;)?

Regardless, the point I'm making is, if the movies were truly showing us real life, not a fantasy situation, we most certainly would not have a well coreographed and obviously queued. We would have a conglomeration.

I suppose though, that to an extent, it really depends on the charectors and their roles. If focusing on just one charector, it would be probably more effective to tell it in linear form. If it is a group of charectors, one should strive for chaos.

cheers

That's it! You people have stood in my way long enough! I'm going to clown college!

I would say, if you want your fights to be exciting you need one basic thing to start: A protagonist (in the fight) that the audience cares about. If the audience doesn't have any reason to either like the protagonist or dislike to antagonist, you're not going to get much of an emotional response from your audience. Working on/seeing many amateur atction films I can tell you this is often overlooked. Let me know if this makes sense.

Number 2: You need stakes. If you can, think like an actor- each character has a basic objective in each scene (with action or not) no matter the importance/screen time etc. of the character. If they don't achieve their objective they fail. If they fail something bad happens to them. In your case it may be, "if the protagonist loses the fight he dies" BUT it doesn't always have to be this. It can be a combo of that and something else. "If the protagonist loses the fight he dies AND his entire village crumbles." "If the protagonist loses the fight his fair maiden is killed." etc.

Let me know if this helps. They're just some basics I see overlooked all the time.

1. Look for unusual angles to shoot from
2. Do lots of cuts (like cut the angle every time someone gets punched in the face/hits the floor)
3. Throw away your tripod and keep the camera moving
4. Look for interesting "moves" your characters can do, cool kicks, little tricks with guns etc.
5. Watch lots of fight scenes and work out what makes the great ones great, like the shootout in Heat is probably so exciting because it constantly moves and is incredibly loud, same for Saving Private Ryan. Someone like John woo is great at keeping it close with lots of great cuts and funky kung fu moves.

Steve Piper
Coffee Films
www.coffeefilms.com
www.myspace.com/coffeefilms

3. Throw away your tripod and keep the camera moving

This is Robert Rodrigueze's advice as well. Problem is a moving camera doesn't always cut together well with other moving camera footage. I would say doing lots of cuts does the same thing as keeping the camera moving and the filmmaker should more or less do one or the other.

It is also far easier to composite CGI and stuff into a tripod mounted shot.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Where do you think the coolest place is to have a fight in a film. So far I'm thinking of a church pew shootout.

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You can't keep 'em out, they're already in!

Church can be good, but there isnt really a best location for a fight. It needs to fit in with your script. Having read your script i think that a fight scene over a river would be pretty cool or an ambush in one of the campsites could also work very well.

Church can be a difficult location to secure. Church pew shootout was done in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (or was it Desperado). Not saying it shouldn't be done again, but I'd rewatch those movies and make sure anyone doing a church shootout does it differently.

I thought the streets of LA in HEAT was a great place for a shootout. Probably a logistical nightmare to put that together for filming though.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Sound. Make sure you pay specific attention to the sound in your action sequence, as it accounts for so much; on screen and off camera.