by Gil Bettman
1. Perspective — the telephoto or long lenses enlarge objects in the middleground and the background. Because they are bigger when the camera moves past them, they generate more blur and more eye candy.
2. Field of Vision — the telephoto or long lenses narrow the frame. Because the frame is narrower, when the camera moves laterally past objects they pass through the frame more rapidly and this generates more eye candy.
3. Depth of Field — the telephoto or long lenses have very limited depth of field, so most objects in the frame are out of focus and slightly blurry to start. When the camera moves past them they blur even more, generating yet more eye candy.
In the foot chase from Point Break Bigelow uses Strategy #2 more out of necessity than out of choice. Her plan of attack was to keep the chase in narrow spaces and use Strategy #1, which prescribes using the wide-angle lens as much as possible. My guess is that she only switched to Strategy #2 and the long lens when she ran out of tight spots through which to route her chase. Why does she buck the trend here and resort to Strategy #1 instead of relying on the contemporary action-director’s method of choice — Strategy #2? Time and money. As explained above, the wide-angle lenses are easy to use. Put the wide lens on a camera, put it on a Pogo Cam, point it at something, and have that something take off running. Then you can run after it and you will have a good, in-focus, in-frame shot.
By contrast, the telephoto lenses show the slightest vibration, so the camera has to be on a solid tripod or an expensive insert car. The telephoto lenses have very little depth of field and very narrow field of vision, so it is difficult to keep a moving object in frame and in focus. To do this you need highly skilled, highly paid camera operators and assistants. Shooting action with the long lens using Strategy #2 may be hip and happening, but it is also time-consuming and expensive.
This is why Bigelow uses primarily Strategy #1 to energize her foot chase in Point Break. She wanted to get the maximum bang for the buck. As explained in Chapter 5 above, when shooting an action sequence, you need to get as much coverage as possible. This way you can quick-cut it, staying in each shot only at the moment when the energy level peaks in the frame. The properties of the wide-angle lens allow you to get more good shots in less time. This is crucial. You need to get absolutely as many setups a day as possible when shooting action, otherwise your stunts will not fly.
When you are breaking in as a director, and shooting action, the deck will be stacked against you. The bean counters will be terrified they are wasting their investment handing the reins of power on the set to an unproven director like you, so they will minimize their risk by squeezing every dime out the budget. They will give you enough money to barely complete the film, provided nothing goes wrong. Things will go wrong every day; sometimes less, sometimes more; but every day on a motion picture set, shit happens and things go wrong. So, before you start, you will be behind. The only way to get out ahead and prove yourself as a director is to shoot as fast as possible. This is doubly true when you are shooting action and you must get multiple setups on every stunt or the stunts will fall flat.
Therefore, you must shoot all your action sequences the same way that Bigelow shot the foot chase from Point Break — with an eye to get as many shots as possible in the shortest amount of time by making the wide-angle lens your lens of choice. Strategy #1 —
● You use the wide-angle lens in narrow spaces and make sure the action passes right in front of the lens.
— is Strategy #1 because it is the one you go to by choice as much as possible. Yes, Strategy #2 —
● You use the long lens in open spaces and make sure the action passes on the X-axis across (perpendicular to) the lens.
— is the hip, sexy way to do it, and the way all the big-name directors whose films you love do it. But Strategy #2 must remain the forbidden fruit for you, until you have made your first financially successful film and the bean counters have relaxed and started to give you the kind of big money you need to shoot action with the long lens.
With that said, it is still worthwhile for a director starting out to understand exactly how to use the long lenses to energize a chase. Even if you are avoiding using them in order to shoot faster, sometimes, you must use them, such as when you are shooting a foot chase and, out of necessity, the chase must be routed out across a wide-open piece of terrain. And sometimes, even when shooting low budget, you decide to splurge and spend the extra time and money to do it the same way as Ridley Scott or James Cameron.
In the car chase from Point Break, Bodhi (Swayze) and his gang of bank robbers wearing masks of former presidents and driving a red Lincoln are pursued by Utah (Reeves) and his partner, Pappas, played by Gary Busey, in a brown Ford. Long lenses generate more eye candy, but only if the action is moving laterally, on the X-axis, across the frame. So throughout the chase, Bigelow keeps the Lincoln and the Ford weaving through intersections (Figure 7.148 to 7.151) or going and around corners (Figure 7.157 to 7.160). She either trails them or leads them, shooting off the moving insert car, and since they are always weaving or cornering, she has to keep panning them from left-to-right, since it is a left-to-right chase. Because she keeps panning, or tracking with the Lincoln or the Ford as they move across the frame, everything static in the shot, like the trees in the background in Figure 7.148 to 7.156, strobe right-to-left through the frame, generating lots of motion blur and eye candy. And to jack up the amount of eye candy, she packs the frame with other moving vehicles that also strobe through the frame, generating eye candy as the Lincoln and the Ford weave to avoid them (Figure 7.148 to 7.156).
7.148
7.149
7.150
7.151
7.152
7.153
7.154
7.155
7.156
7.157
7.158
7.159
As a working professional, Bigelow knows that to make this death-defying mayhem exciting for her audience, she must do as I recommended on page 120, Chapter 6 and
● Put the real-ies in the action as much as time and money allow.
The audience is living through this story by identifying with Keanu Reeves, and to a lesser extent, Patrick Swayze or Gary Busey. So she has to keep showing their faces and their eyes, in which the audience can read their feelings. To do this, she uses the same two camera setups on both the Lincoln and the Ford — one side angle, hostess tray mount that shoots through the passenger-side window and produces a sort of over-the-shoulder shot on the driver — either Busey as in Figure 7.161 to 7.162 or Swayze (behind the Ronald Reagan mask) as in Figure 7.163 to 7.164. The other setup is shot from a hood-mounted camera looking straight back in a front-on CU on Reeves (Figure 7.165 to 7.166) or straight back in a front-on four-shot of all the thieves (Figure 7.167 to 7.168), which favors the two in the front seat.
The side angle, hostess tray shot is the shot of choice in a chase such as this because all the buildings, trees, and parked cars that the mounted car passes, when seen through the driver’s-side window from this angle, will perpetually strobe from right-to-left through the frame in a never-ending stream of eye candy (Figure 7.161 to 7.164). By contrast, there is very little motion blur in the frame of a hood-mounted shot because it looks straight back through the rear window at everything receding into the distance behind the car and so long as the car is moving straight forward, these objects will only blur very slightly. Through a hood-mounted, straight-back shot all the motion is on the Z-axis and this generates less eye candy than motion on the X-axis. However, if the car is going around a corner, or weaving through traffic, then, that which is behind the car and seen through the rear window from a hood-mounted camera, will strobe through the frame on the X-axis and provide an abundance of eye candy. So the hood-mounted shots on Reeves in the Ford (Figure 7.165 to 7.166) and the thieves in the Lincoln (Figure 7.167 to 7.168) are cut into the chase whenever the Ford or the Lincoln are cornering sharply or weaving through traffic. All the more rea
son for Bigelow to keep them cornering or weaving perpetually throughout the beginning of this car chase.
At the end of the car chase, she finds a different way to generate a surfeit of eye candy using the long lens. She stops the constant weaving or cornering and routes the Ford and the Lincoln onto two parallel streets, where they run side-by-side, neck and neck. Because the two streets are only separated by a narrow meridian strip with cars parked along it, Reeves, in the brown Ford, has a clear view of the red Lincoln just twenty-five yards away to his left, camera right. He keeps looking off camera right (see Figure 7.169) and Bigelow shoots this portion of the chase from his POV. Reeves’ POV of the Lincoln, seen through the driver’s-side window, first wide enough to include Busey in the shot (Figure 7.170), and then just within the frame of the driver’s-side window, is an eye-candy junkie’s dream come true (Figure 7.171 to 7.178). The two rows of parked cars that separate the Ford from the Lincoln streak through the frame in a never-ending stream of motion blur. At first, the telephoto lens Bigelow uses for Reeves’ POV is about 150mm, so that the parked cars whipping through the frame are discernable as parked cars (see Figure 7.171 to 7.174). But then she tightens up and uses a longer lens and Reeves’ POV turns into a sea of motion blur which parts occasionally to provide a glimpse of the Lincoln (Figure 7.175 to 7.178). You cannot get more eye candy than is packed into these frames.
In the eyes of contemporary audiences, this is what an action sequence is supposed to look like. But this style of shooting will also very quickly deplete the precious resources of a limited budget. So, as cautioned above, it should be used sparingly.
7.160
7.161
7.162
7.163
7.164
7.165
7.166
7.167
7.168
7.169
7.170
7.171
7.172
7.173
7.174
7.175
7.176
7.177
7.178
CHAPTER 7 SUMMARY POINTS
● Speed is the component you try to pump into every frame when directing a chase. When reduced to the basics, there are three ways to do this:
1. You use the wide-angle lens in narrow spaces and make sure the action passes right in front of the lens.
2. You use the long lens in open spaces and make sure the action passes on the X-axis (perpendicular to) the lens.
3. You isolate each participant in the chase in separate setups and quick-cut between them.
● Do not to shoot tie-ins!!! They cost you more and give less because they eliminate the possibility of accelerating the action in editorial through the use of ellipses and quick cuts. Put Strategy #3 above to work to energize your chase.
● Putting it simply, shooting action with the telephoto or long lens is time-consuming and expensive. By comparison, shooting action with the wide-angle is cheap and easy.
● If you are going to do a great foot chase, you either need a great location scout, or you have got to burn the shoe leather and find the locations yourself.
● The key to a great foot chase is to shoot handheld off the Pogo Cam and chase the chasers running through as many tight spaces as possible, using Strategies #1 and #3 above.
● When you have exhausted all of the tight-spot locations where you can energize your chase using the wide-angle lens and Strategy #1, above, before you make a company move, switch to Strategy #2, above, and route the chase through some open spaces.
● Strategy #2, above, is made more effective by shooting in open spaces that contain lots of vertical objects, such as fences and trees. Strategy #2 can be made even more effective by filling the space with as many additional predominantly vertical objects, such as cars, people, or potted plants, as can be sensibly located in that spot.
● In order to maintain continuity in a chase, you run the action camera left (right-to-left) or camera right (left-to-right) and when you want to switch you go through a neutral.
● In order to make a chase appear smooth and continuous a director has to:
1. maintain screen direction; and
2. connect the different locations through which the chase passes by maintaining a continuity of landmarks.
● When reduced to the basics, the all-important story of a chase is that it goes from A to B to C when A, B, and C are each approximately the length of a football field, in the case of a foot chase, or the length of a couple of city blocks, in the case of a car chase.
● If there is no continuity of landmarks from A to B, then the chasers must exit A cleanly and reappear cleanly in B. The easiest way to disappear and reappear like this is to go around a corner.
● Be creative and load your action sequences with humor. This will give you more entertainment bang for your buck. Humor is free.
● Humor is unique. If you can add gags to your stunts this will distinguish them from the thousands of times these stunts have been done before. This is the principle upon which Jackie Chan built a monumental career.
● Strategy #2, which prescribes using the telephoto lens, is more effective at energizing action. It pumps more eye candy into the frame in three ways:
1. Perspective — the telephoto or long lenses enlarge objects in the middleground and the background. Because they are bigger when the camera moves past them they generate more blur and more eye candy.
2. Field of Vision — the telephoto or long lenses narrow the frame. Because the frame is narrower, when the camera moves laterally past objects they pass through the frame more rapidly and this generates more eye candy.
3. Depth of Field — the telephoto or long lenses have very limited depth of field, so most objects in the frame are out of focus and slightly blurry to start. When the camera moves past them they blur even more, generating yet more eye candy.
● When you want to put the real-ies in the action in a car chase use the side-angle hostess tray shot. When seen through the window opposite the camera, all the buildings, trees, and parked cars which the mounted car passes will perpetually strobe through the frame in a never-ending stream of eye candy.
FOR TEACHERS
At the end of Chapter 8, I describe an assignment that can be used to test and solidify all the lessons taught in Chapters 4 through 8. This assignment can be modified slightly and given now, at the end of Chapter 7, if the teacher wishes to test the students’ understanding of the material in Chapters 4 through 7. This modification is easily accomplished. The teacher gives the same assignment described at the end of Chapter 8, but takes out the option to shoot a fight, dance, or sports sequence and limits the choice of subject matter for the assignment to what is taught in this chapter — how to shoot a great chase.
CHAPTER 8
DIRECTING A FIGHT SEQUENCE
THE BASIC RULES
The science of shooting a fight sequence is quite basic. Reduced to its simplest terms the director’s job is to make that which is completely controlled and not violent look out of control and violent. The stuntmen never hit each other — hard. Their punches, kicks, head-butts, and other blows are all carefully choreographed to fall short of the mark or land without any damaging impact. To make a blow that is not violent and hurtful appear violent and hurtful the stuntmen have to first “sell” the blow. The man throwing the blow has to do so with good speed and range of motion. This makes the blow look big and forceful on camera. More important, the man receiving the blow has to throw his body back from the point of impact, miming the force with which the blow landed.
If the stuntmen do a good job of “selling” each blow, and if the stunt coordinator choreographs a fight that appears spontaneous, then the director can make the fight look wild and violent on film by simply making sure that he shoots each blow from a minimum of two different angles that effectively convey either: (1) impact, or (2) range of motion. Showing impact makes the fight look violent. Showing range of motion makes it look wild and out of co
ntrol.
Of the two, impact is the most important, because without it, the fight immediately becomes phony. The best way to make a punch look like it landed with damaging impact is to shoot it with the long (or telephoto) lens from either in front of or behind the stuntman who takes the punch. The on-axis position of the camera disguises the fact that the blow actually fell short.
By contrast the best way to convey the range of motion of a punch or a kick is in a wider, off-axis shot that shows each fighter from head to toe or from the knees up. Even though these more off-axis shots sometimes reveal that punch or kick never landed they are needed because they: 1) make the fight look real by showing the full range of motion of moves the stuntmen make when they throw their bodies back from the point of impact to mime the force with which a blow has landed, and 2) establish geography, which is key. In fight sequences, like dialogue sequences, it is necessary to establish and maintain geography throughout the scene. This is fully explained below, under The Importance of Mastering Fights.
The most efficient way to shoot a fight and make sure that you have a minimum of two angles on each blow that convey either impact or range of motion is to shoot it simultaneously with two matching over-the-shoulder shots. For the initial takes each camera operator shoots wide enough to show every move that every fighter makes in relation to the other fighter or fighters. With each successive take they shoot with tighter lenses until either the A camera or the B camera has a good tight shot on each blow.
