Shooting Fight Scenes

[Eduardo Mayen]

I'm shooting a short film, which includes a fight scene. We don't have an action director, but we have a couple of stunt guys to perform the fight. Any advice on how to capture and cover the fight scenein order to sell the stunt effectively..

[Dominik Muench]

if they are professional stunties then they will have a pretty good idea what to do, the key is...rehearsing....a lot, let them do the fight scene over and over again, first at half speed and when that works well let them do it in "realtime", it helps to break the fight scene in smaller parts during the rehearsal as well.

when it comes to shooting i suggest that you shoot with a higher framerate, simply to give the motion a nicer flow.

[Jayson Crothers]

I've found that stunt coordinators typically know the best way to shoot their stunts - I've always had good fortune in viewing the rehearsal and asking for their opinion on what types of angles and frame sizes will sell the illusion of the fight better. Do you have one camera, or is this a multiple camera set-up?