I've never done any scenes on that kind of scale before, so I can't share any "inside information."

However, I would think that a big factor would be the number of special effects. This gets very complicated, for example, in a modern war story where there are explosions and bullet hits going off all over the place. In a situation like that, you would want to carefully choreograph your actors so they are in the right place at the right time to hit their cues correctly, but more importantly, so that nobody gets hurt.

On the other hand, I can think of quite a few examples where at least the camera operators, if not the actual cast, are very loosely rehearsed and may not even have a good idea what will happen next--in other words, shooting it in a war documentary style.

A lot of is is just about the look you want, but it's still probably a good idea to storyboard at least general shots, and you should definitely pay attention to carefully choreographing any fighting (especially close to the camera) so that it looks convincing but still keeps your cast and crew safe.

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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my vodcast on iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=96931870
and my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com

Yes, I think for the main events of the fight, such as the part when the rebels are using a homemade ballista to pin their enemies to trees, I will storyboard it meticulously. But the parts where men are shooting and being shot can be just half an hour's video of controlled anarchy.

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