Directing the Camera
Page 13
INT. MAGGIE’S KITCHEN – NIGHT
Maggie takes a head of lettuce and a couple of tomatoes out of the refrigerator and crosses to the island counter where Seth waits. She hands him the lettuce.
MAGGIE
Here, can you cut this up?
Seth grabs a knife and uncertainly starts slicing through the lettuce.
MAGGIE (CONT’D)
So what province is it in Canada where you were born?
SETH
I wasn’t born in Canada.
MAGGIE
What are your parents’ names?
Seth unconsciously runs the knife right over his thumb. It passes through his flesh without making a mark. Maggie notices, taken aback.
PART THREE
DIRECTING ACTION SEQUENCES
CHAPTER 4
ACTION SEQUENCES – THE BASICS
OVERVIEW
When it comes to directing action sequences, the good news is, it’s easy. Not only in theory, but in practice. The truth be told, there are a lot of stuntmen, who are hardly rocket scientists, who have developed into highly competent action directors. Most stuntmen aspire to become stunt gaffers, or stunt coordinators, and almost all stunt coordinators aspire to become second-unit directors. The good stunt coordinators who possess the necessary people skills and the requisite amount of moxie usually can promote themselves into becoming second-unit directors.
Most of what I know about shooting action I learned from the stunt coordinators who doubled as second-unit directors on the episodic television shows I directed — especially The Fall Guy and Knight Rider. Stunt coordinators want their stunts to look great — to sell. Selling a stunt comes down to making something that was not especially dangerous or out of control look very dangerous and out of control. Or making something that was not violent in which nobody was hurt look like a world of hurt. To accomplish this you have to do three things and do them well:
1. Put the camera in the right place.
2. Put the right lens on the camera.
3. Get the right number of pieces (of coverage).
That’s all. It is not rocket science. If you were terrible at geometry you might have some difficulty with the above. Otherwise, if you apply yourself over time, and with some trial and error, you can become adept at executing the above three tasks. Stunt coordinators have a natural incentive to apply themselves and master the above, because if those three things are not done well by whoever is shooting their stunts, the stunts won’t sell and their reputation as stunt coordinators will suffer. So out of self-defense, they learn the three skills needed to shoot action well, and almost inevitably start coaching the directors they work with. From there it’s a short step to becoming second-unit directors themselves.
When you are directing an action sequence it is absolutely crucial that you and the stunt coordinator go to the location, prior to the shoot day, and work out how the stunts are going to be choreographed and where you are going to put the cameras. Otherwise, on the shoot day, everyone stands around getting paid big bucks to do nothing, while you and the stunt coordinator work through what you could have done, on your own, ahead of time. This is expensive, so unless you are Spielberg or Tony Scott and have an unlimited budget, I would advise against it.
HOW TO PUT THE CAMERA IN THE RIGHT PLACE
The essence of any stunt is motion through space. If it’s a car chase, it’s cars in motion (or trucks, motorcycles, etc.). If it’s a fight, it’s fists, or feet, or elbows, etc. You want to put the camera on the spot where that motion is going to look the most dynamic. In the case of fights, you also need to put the camera where it looks like the stuntmen are actually hitting each other, even though every hit, in fact, falls short of its mark. In this case you want to sell the impact.
HOW TO PUT THE RIGHT LENS ON THE CAMERA
Motion through space looks different when filmed with different lenses. Lenses can speed up motion and make it look faster or more dynamic than it looks to the eye. Lenses can also make objects look closer to each other than they are in reality. So in a fight sequence, lenses are the best tool to make a miss — a blow that fell short of its mark — look like a hit – a blow that found its mark. The right lens is the lens that makes the motion look as dynamic as possible and/or makes a miss look like a hit.
HOW TO GET THE RIGHT NUMBER OF PIECES
Of the three skills needed to shoot a good action sequence this is the hardest to master. Most people, unless they are truly gifted, like Spielberg or Zemeckis, learn through trial and error over a period of time.
When it comes to shooting action, the more pieces you have the better.
There are a number of different reasons for this. One is because you need pieces to make something that was not dangerous look dangerous, or something that was not violent look violent. When an object moves through space, that motion will look more dynamic from different camera angles. If you shoot it from a number of angles, then, when you edit the footage, you can cut between the angles that make the motion look most dynamic, or dangerous or violent. (And cut around the angles where it is obviously controlled and safe.) This sells the stunt.
A stunt punch thrown to the jaw will fall short of the jaw and pass harmlessly in front of the face. But if the camera is directly in front of or behind the stuntman taking the punch, this miss will look like a hit, provided the stuntman taking the punch whips his head around, faking the impact of the fist against his jaw (Figure 4.001 to 4.003). Therefore you need the piece you get from the camera angle behind the stuntman.
However, the angle that makes the punch look most dynamic is the side angle, because it shows the full extent of the punch across the space between the two stuntmen. In this angle, when the fist passes in front of the jaw, you will see the gap between the puncher’s fist and the punch-taker’s jaw — the miss (Figure 4.004 to 4.006). So, before you reveal the miss, you would cut out of this side angle and into the angle in front of or behind the punch-taker (Figure 4.002). Therefore, you need at least these two pieces to sell this punch.
The other reason why you need multiple pieces is because montage generates energy. As anyone who has ever watched a music video can tell you, quick cutting energizes the frame. Every time you cut from one angle to another you are jumping from one vantage point on the action to another. These shifts in point of view register on the viewer and generate an energy of their own. They give the viewer the impression that he is popping around the action as it unfolds. This, in itself, energizes the frame.
By having multiple pieces, shot from multiple camera setups, you can control the actual screen time of every part of an action sequence. In most cases, you use this control to speed up the pace of the action, but sometimes you use it to slow down the action and milk it, lingering on some especially cool moment.
So in order to sell a punch to the jaw, a good editor will cut the “air” out of the middle of the punch and make it seem like the fist is actually traveling through space toward the jaw faster than it did in reality. The “A” side of the cut will linger on the windup for the punch (Figure 4.007 to 4.009). The “B” side of cut will start with the fist already at the jaw and the punch taker spinning away from the force of the blow (Figure 4.010 to 4.012). This speeds up the punch and makes it seem more violent, and out of control, when, in fact, it was completely controlled and choreographed.
A good example of how an expensive or sensational moment can be slowed down and milked for effect can be found in the John Woo film Face/Off. Early in the film, the arch criminal, Castor (Nicholas Cage), tries to escape in a private jet from his nemesis, FBI agent Nick Archer (John Travolta). Archer, flying a helicopter, smashes down on the rear ailerons of the jet, crippling it, and Castor is forced to steer the jet into a hangar, where a shootout ensues.
A real Gulfstream jet was driven through the wall of an airport hangar in this stunt. I can count nine separate camera angles used to capture the action. To milk the moment, the editor repeats the sequence when the jet
breaks through the wall of the hangar and plows into some exploding barrels lined up directly in its path. The jet breaches the wall and goes at least fifty feet into the hangar (Figure 4.013 to 4.021). It is shown hitting the barrels and sending them skyward in a shower of sparks. And then the editor reverses the jet’s progress. He cuts to a shot of it back outside the hangar just as the jet is beginning to break through the glass of the exterior wall (Figure 4.022). This way he can repeat the fiery, spectacular sequence of the jet smashing into the exploding barrels a second time (Figure 4.022 to 4.028). And to make doubly sure the audience could savor every moment of this flashy stunt, about half of the camera angles were filmed in slow motion.
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So to summarize, when shooting action you need to shoot from multiple camera angles in order to:
1. cut around the angles that reveal the stunt was done under controlled circumstances;
2. stay in the camera angle that makes the motion of the stunt look most dynamic or violent;
3. use quick cutting or montage to generate energy; and
4. control the pace at which the action seemingly takes place, either by speeding it up or slowing it down.
The more pieces you have to do the above, the better the action sequence. This is why when John Woo put the Gulfstream jet through the wall of the airport hangar, he was running at least ten cameras. Very few directors have a big enough budget to get all the pieces they might need. So the key to making a name for yourself as an action director is being able to distinguish between the pieces that will give you the biggest bang for the buck — the pieces you must shoot to sell the stunts — and the pieces that you can do without.
You have to know where to draw this line. It is never easy. It is basically a process of self-denial. You start out thinking big; dreaming up every camera angle that would help. And then, you have to keep cutting it down until you have the most essential pieces. Knowing which pieces are the essential ones generally comes with experience. It is best learned by having shot a similar piece of action at some point in your career and noticing that one sort of camera angle shot with a specific lens did an especially good job of selling that kind of stunt, and then making a mental note of it and filing it away.
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When you are starting out as a director and have not yet acquired the experience needed to be infallibly correct in making those hard choices, it is wise to listen to the stunt coordinator and/or DP, and use their judgment to refine your own. A stunt coordinator who works all the time can actually work on more than a thousand projects over a ten-year time span. A DP who works all the time could have shot twenty features or two hundred television episodes over the same length of time. A hot director can make a movie every two years or, at best, ten hours of episodic television a year. So almost inevitably the stunt coordinator and DP are going to have much more experience shooting stunts. A director starting out should take advantage of that experience and keep listening to the stunt coordinator and the DP when trying to determine exactly which shots will do the very best job of selling the stunts he is going to direct.
With that said, there is a certain science to how lens selection and camera placement can be used to make motion in the frame look more dynamic. Once a relatively inexperienced director fully understands this science, he can extrapolate from it and figure out which are the key shots needed to sell a specific stunt, even if he has never shot such a stunt before.
Some people have a gift for this kind of extrapolation. Spielberg’s first wall-to-wall action piece — Duel — the movie for TV starring Dennis Weaver, which he made in 1971, is such a conspicuous display of virtuoso action directing, one has to assume that he could not have picked up all the tricks of the trade on display in this film, either from his own past experience, or from listening to his DP and stunt coordinator. This little movie was shot on a shoestring budget, so every camera setup had to yield the maximum bang for the buck. In order to have determined so successfully exactly which shots he needed to make the action as dynamic as possible, and which he could do without, Spielberg must have relied on his preternatural ability to make these decisions by extrapolating from the basic rules governing how lenses and camera placement can be used to heighten action. These rules will be described in the next two chapters.
CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY POINTS
● Selling a stunt comes down to making something that was not especially dangerous or out of control look very dangerous and out of control. To do this you have to do three things and do them well:
1. Put the camera in the right place.
2. Put the right lens on the camera.
3. Get the right number of pieces (of coverage).
● When you are directing an action sequence it is absolutely crucial that you and the stunt coordinator go to the location, prior to the shoot day, and work out how the stunts are going to be choreographed and where you are going to put the cameras.
● When shooting action you need to shoot from multiple camera angles in order to:
1. cut around the angles that reveal the stunt was done under controlled circumstances;
2. stay in the camera angle that makes the motion of the stunt look most dynamic or violent;
3. use quick cutting or montage to generate energy; and
4. control the pace at which the action seemingly takes place, either by speeding it up or slowing it down.
● The key to making a name for yourself as an action director when you are working low budget is being able to distinguish between the camera setups that will give you the biggest bang for the buck — the pieces you must shoot to sell the stunts — and the camera setups that you can do without.
CHAPTER 5
LENS SELECTION
WHY FORCE PERSPECTIVE?
If you are going to make it as a director of mainstream theatrical features, you have to force perspective. Why? For the same reason that you have to move your camera — because every director of note has been doing it since Spielberg burst on the scene in the early ‘70s using forced perspective as part of his signature style. (See “The Basics of Perspective” on page 91 below for an explanation of how lenses can be used to alter or force perspective.) Orson Welles was among the first mainstream Hollywood directors to practice “lensemanship” as we know it today — although, to my knowledge, one of the first Hollywood movies that made regular use of forced perspective to heighten its story was Disney’s animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938). Many other directors, notably, Hitchcock, Kubrick, and Kurosawa, made regular use of forced perspective before Spielberg started directing. But since the mid-’70s, when Spielberg’s style became the money style, it has become de rigueur for all mainstream Hollywood directors to force perspective.
Like camera movement, forced perspective should only be used to heighten the story. Using lenses in a manner that calls attention to itself, making the audience aware of the camerawork and taking them out of the story, is ultimately counterproductive. It weakens the overall impact of the film for all the same reasons moving the camera in a self-serving manner does. The best rule of thumb on the set of your first feature is to force perspective whenever possible, so your films come up to the visual standard of today. But make sure that such cinematographic enhancements always serve the story, and so remain invisible.
LENS SELECTION AS A JOINT RESPONSIBILITY BETWEEN DIRECTOR AND CINEMATOGRAPHER
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sp; You should understand the basics of lens selection in order to control the look of your movie. If you always leave the decision for which lens to use up to your DP, your movie will not look the same way on screen as it does in your head. The lens you use for a shot, along with the camera position/movement and composition, determine the look of the shot. You have to understand and control all three in order to control the look of your movie. But relax. Of the three, lens selection is by far the easiest to master, and once mastered, it can yield impressive results. A little understanding goes a long way toward the goal of putting a distinctive personal stamp on the visual aspect of your film.
Most of the professional DPs I have worked with put up some form of resistance to my coaching them on lens selection. Some are polite or lighthearted about it and some are downright ornery. The message is always the same, whether it’s given jokingly, in the spirit of cooperation, or meant to have the same effect as the brittle crack of a rattlesnake’s rattle. What all these cameramen are saying is “You’re out of your territory Mr. Director, so watch your step!” Take your DP’s resistance in stride. Understand that you are sort of treading on his turf. One step further and you would be questioning his selection of the f-stop.