Need tips for a chase scene

H

Hank E

Member
Next weekend I'll be shooting a scene where a man chases a youngster through the woods. She eventually gets away.

I've not shot one of these scenes and was hoping for some tips. The only rules that seem to come to mind are:

If someone is running to the right don't edit in a shot of them running to the left without first inserting a neutral shot. Also, in one shot, if the two are 10 seconds apart, the next scene should also have them about 10 seconds apart (in other words be consistant).

Am I on track so far? I guess lots of tight close ups of feet and such.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Hank
 
The shooting style is obviously up to you as the filmmaker, nobody here can tell you what type of coverage you need without knowing the context and story. You'll have to construct that while keeping in mind how it fill fit with the "feel" of the rest of your film, ie. camera movement, angles, focal length, etc.

If you want to accentuate the speed and movement of your characters, a long focal length and faster shutter (1/120, 1/250th) will accomplish this.

I shot a chase scene through the woods in a recent film I shot and IMO, the most important thing for you to keep in mind is continuity of lighting. The day we were shooting it was going between overcast and sunny every few minutes. Try your best to manage the time of day you shoot in relation to the weather patterns.

Best of luck and have fun.
 
Also set your camera to shoot progressive frames instead of interlaced. This will allow you to slow down shots in post and there not be massive artifacting on the screen.
 
toolmodel said:
Also set your camera to shoot progressive frames instead of interlaced. This will allow you to slow down shots in post and there not be massive artifacting on the screen.
Click to expand...

You mean interlaced instead of progressive. You can slow down interlaced footage far better than progressive footage.
 
Huy Vu said:
You mean interlaced instead of progressive. You can slow down interlaced footage far better than progressive footage.
Click to expand...
But if you want to take a frame by frame interlaced will almost look blurry because is only refreshes everyother line at a time, progressive refreshes every line at the same time.
 
toolmodel said:
But if you want to take a frame by frame interlaced will almost look blurry because is only refreshes everyother line at a time, progressive refreshes every line at the same time.
Click to expand...

Not if you deinterlaced it to 60p. The point of shooting interlaced to begin with is that you have more motion information to work with when you want to slow things down. You can easily split the two fields in 60i, double them and ends up with 60p footage for a great looking slow-mo. Try doing that with 24p or 30p and you'll end up with a jittery mess.

BTW, it'll only look blurry if shutterspeed was too low. 1/120 shutterspeed shot at 60i is the minimum for achieving clean slow-motion footage.
 
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