best approach for typical bully fight scene?

Sithxace

Sithxace

Well-known member
I am planning on shooting a fight scene between two teens, like a playground bash. What is the best approach to make it look as good as possible like using angle/types of shots etc.

Thanks.
 
This is completely, 100% up to you. How you shoot it depends on the look and feel you want to achieve. Find fight scenes in movies and online, and imitate the style of the ones you like.
 
yeah i have an idea but I like to ehar others' styles and ideas to comapre with. I want it to look realistic, I am thinking shots from behind the dude who's getting hit is a great way of making it look real. I wanna do a lot of slow motion swings/punches... I am thinking about having them fight those scenes slow themselves, good idea?
 
The thread title is a little telling about your approach. you should start with "what story do I want to tell" and let the shot angles, etc. com from there.

If the camera was a character watching, how would it watch. Would it stand still, would it move in incredibly fleeting glimpses like your eye does in a supermarket when you are looking across the shelves for a certain brand or product - barely stopping, would it linger like when you are mesmerized by a beautiful woman? and WHY? To what end? That's the big question, and style should flow from that.

If you want to make one kid look huge and the other small, use a wide angle lens and place the kid you want to look bigger closer to the camera. If you want them to look more evenly matched use a longer lens. All of it depends on what kind of story you want to tell, which means you have to answer some questions that will be hard if you are thinking of the scene as "typical" rather than specific and unique.

The only techniques I can think of right of are 1) moving the camera counter to the punch for more impact 2) decide whether you want to show most of the body like in the matrix, or cut it up with lots of closeups on fists or arms etc so it's hard to see what's going on.

Editing: You can also experiment with double cuts where you show action twice, like a punch landing, then show it from another angle just a few frames back so you actually see it twice but it "feels" like once. You can see this in Wolverine's first fight scene in the 1st X Men. Also in that scene you can see what it's like to cut so that the punches land in rapid succession with no rear back, so it seems like an barrage of fists. The two techiniques are opposite - one implies fast flying blows, the other single powerful landing blows.

But again, it's all about what story you want to tell and how you want to position the audience - i.e., the camera in your fight.
 
Wow. Great response JDS. That got me to thinking about everything I would have done wrong.

Next time I need to film a fight scene, I will definately remember your post.

Thanks.
 
Emerging and beginning directors like us often parrot other styles, but we begin to develop our own when we start thinking in a more process, story telling way - like "what do I want to accomplish?" then make your choices to that end and style necessarily emerges, rather than a "what can I do that's cool?" method ... which I am often guilty of, don't get me wrong, but endeavoring to break out of that.

A lot of what I said is in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Directing-Fou...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208065075&sr=1-2

It's thick, but if you can stick with it it's worth it. I've gotten about a third of the way through it and I've been meaning to go back to it.
 
I personally hate copying other styles but Islowly am realizing that everything nowadays for the most part are recycled... theres no more originally or very little left just like movies that come out are all sequels and remakes due to lack of originality.

The book looks good. I have to finsih reading the screenwriters bible and judith's directing actors books first... there very good.
 
Well it's a vocabulary. So it's grammar, so no it can never be 100% original, I mean unless you are the first guy to shoot everything upside down or always point the camera just to the left of where the actor is actually standing so they are never in the shot or something. :)

I have some shot books, which I think are great but can be dangerous too. Right now I feel like I am in the stage where film grammar is a second language and I have to translate in order to speak it ... so it's not a pure process yet, I'm thinking "how can I say this?" and then translating that into a shot from a mental English to Cinema dictionary, rather than just thinking 100% in the language of film. Hopefully I will get past this stage soon.
 
Hah, that's always been a dead link, never had any FAQ's on there.

I'm trying to do a big overhaul of the whole thing, but man, no time.
 
go the easy route a lot of people do... just make a youtube account or myspace account if u dont already.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
Right now I feel like I am in the stage where film grammar is a second language and I have to translate in order to speak it ... so it's not a pure process yet, I'm thinking "how can I say this?" and then translating that into a shot from a mental English to Cinema dictionary, rather than just thinking 100% in the language of film. Hopefully I will get past this stage soon.
Click to expand...

Interestingly enough, and I'm being serious, I had the same problem when learning spanish. I would think in English and then translate as fast as I could. But, pretty much like a child learning to talk, I began to simply recognize the concept of the words and responding in kind. I was never truly to the point where when I was around my friends for whom spanish was their first language who think either in Spanish if that is what they are speaking it, or English when they are speaking that. Iterestingly though, ever friend I had for whom Spanish was their first language said they would dream in spanish.

Hell, I dream in hillbilly, so I have some issues to deal with I guess.
 
Here's a tutorial

Here's a tutorial

Do you have the choreography figured out yet? After you figure out how the fight will happen you can shoot it as many times and with as many angles as you want. Editing is where you will put it together. With many different angles you get many different options.
Here's a tutorial I made a year or so ago. It might help. I shot it in an hour so you'll see what can be accomplished in a short time. After watching, imagine what you can do if you took your time.

http://masteringvideography.com/2008/03/29/11-creating-a-fight-scene/
 
Hey markM, i didnt get a chance to read your response but I just finished editing everything, and i ended up doing what you said. I gave them a general idea if what I want to happen during the fight. Then i had them about 4 different times just fight how they think it should look. Worked great, like putting a puzzle together.

It turned out pretty good for a last second thing I made.
 
Nice Sithxase!
I left a comment on the youtube link you gave.
All you need is practice. Excellent start, make more and tell me about them.
 
Jack Daniel Stanley said:
The thread title is a little telling about your approach. you should start with "what story do I want to tell" and let the shot angles, etc. com from there.

If the camera was a character watching, how would it watch. Would it stand still, would it move in incredibly fleeting glimpses like your eye does in a supermarket when you are looking across the shelves for a certain brand or product - barely stopping, would it linger like when you are mesmerized by a beautiful woman? and WHY? To what end? That's the big question, and style should flow from that.

If you want to make one kid look huge and the other small, use a wide angle lens and place the kid you want to look bigger closer to the camera. If you want them to look more evenly matched use a longer lens. All of it depends on what kind of story you want to tell, which means you have to answer some questions that will be hard if you are thinking of the scene as "typical" rather than specific and unique.

The only techniques I can think of right of are 1) moving the camera counter to the punch for more impact 2) decide whether you want to show most of the body like in the matrix, or cut it up with lots of closeups on fists or arms etc so it's hard to see what's going on.

Editing: You can also experiment with double cuts where you show action twice, like a punch landing, then show it from another angle just a few frames back so you actually see it twice but it "feels" like once. You can see this in Wolverine's first fight scene in the 1st X Men. Also in that scene you can see what it's like to cut so that the punches land in rapid succession with no rear back, so it seems like an barrage of fists. The two techiniques are opposite - one implies fast flying blows, the other single powerful landing blows.

But again, it's all about what story you want to tell and how you want to position the audience - i.e., the camera in your fight.
Click to expand...


Completely agree

Like with all scenes, how do you visually want to tell this story ? From the perspective of the other kids watching ? From the POV of one of your dudes ? Maybe a traditionally composed scene may work ?

I love the Christine scene with Buddy Repperton; not much of a fisticuff but a well shot scene

Also reccomened watching The Outsiders and Rumble Fish

I agree; keep it real. Watch some online fights betweeb real people !

Angles are distance between actors is key !
 
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