Directing the Camera

by Gil Bettman

  Without the story, the fight lapses into a jumble of moving body parts. The story is needed to put the audience into the fight and convince them that throughout the fight things are going from bad to worse for the hero, until the very end, when the hero does something unforeseen and wonderful and triumphs. If you can thoroughly convince the audience that the hero is on the verge of extinction, you fill them with dread. In this you have the makings of a great fight. To do this you need a wide shot master of everything that happens in the fight.

  When shooting a dance sequence with three or more dancers, these masters are equally crucial. Again, they are needed to enable the audience to piece together in their mind’s eye a coherent picture of (almost) everything that each dancer does during the dance, as if they were watching the dance taking place on a stage. This view of the dance in its entirety is needed to fully appreciate the choreography and grasp the story or theme of the dance.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD OPERATORS AND GOOD ASSISTANTS

  Shooting with two operators and two cameras and no video tap is the most efficient way to shoot a fight. It is the only way to go if you are working low budget. But, it puts the director at the mercy of his camera operators and assistant cameramen. The final, edited version of the fight will only be as good as the operators and assistants. To some extent, this is true of all action sequences. Just as a director, no matter how good, cannot make a good movie without good actors and a good script, he cannot shoot a good action sequence without good operators and assistants (and good stuntmen).

  As was explained in Chapter 7, the telephoto lenses require precision operation because they have very limited depth of field and field of vision. The opposite is the case with the extreme wide-angle lenses. Much of the famous foot chase in Point Break was shot with the extreme wide-angle lenses, and as this bears out, you can shoot an excellent chase relying almost exclusively on the wide-angle. So shooting a chase can be more forgiving when it comes to the demands on the operators and the assistants.

  But the only good way to make a stunt punch look like a real punch is with the long lens in front of or behind the person who is being hit. This is the lens and the angle that sells the impact. The long lens is unforgiving and requires a good operator and a good assistant. And to make it more difficult, the operator has to frame up multiple blows that land in multiple places, so during each take he has to keep readjusting his frame and often his focus. For example, the first time Badham’s A camera operator framed up a tight shot on the fight for Las Vegas, he had to keep adjusting his frame so that he first had a good angle on Lesure’s roundhouse right (Figure 8.014 to 8.015, p. 165), then Peters’ right hook (Figure 8.019 to 8.021), then Peters’ left hook (Figure 8.022 to 8.023), then Peters’ gut punch (Figure 8.024 to 8.026), etc., until the end of the fight. This always looks easy when you view the finished product, shot by a great operator and a great assistant, such as the operators and assistants on Las Vegas. But operators and assistant cameramen on primetime TV shows get paid top dollar and are among the best in the business. When you direct your first low-budget feature you can only hope and pray you get operators and assistants who are that good. And the odds are that you will not.

  In all likelihood, when you start out as a director, your operators and assistants will also be starting out and learning their craft. This will probably slow you down. It will take them more takes to get a print take on a segment of a fight. So, at the end of the day, you will have shot fewer pieces of coverage. This will limit your editor’s ability to jack up the energy of the fight in editorial. Therefore, the wisest plan of action is to keep your fights shorter and have each fighter throw fewer punches. Then, even though your crew is green and moving slowly, you will have enough time to shoot all the coverage you will need to make the fight convincingly violent and energetic.

  THE JOY OF STUNTS

  With that said, shooting fights can be a lot of fun. Action sequences are usually more fun than dialogue sequences and of all action sequences, fights are the most fun. What makes action fun is the general attitude of stuntmen, compared to actors.

  Getting an actor to deliver his best performance can be excruciatingly difficult for a director. Some actors are completely professional and easy to work with. But, as a rule, actors usually range from prickly to impossible. Werner Herzog claims that Klaus Kinski threw so many tantrums during the shooting of Aguirre: the Wrath of God, the Amazon tribesmen working as extras on the film offered to do Herzog a favor and kill him. And yet, the film is great, to a large extent, because Kinski is brilliant in it. At the risk of oversimplifying it, I would say actors are difficult because their instrument — their emotions — are unpredictable, and this drives them crazy. An actor can never accurately predict if his performance is going to be good or great or uninspired; and, if it is great, he can never be certain exactly how he made it great. This makes them insecure and their insecurity makes them misbehave in a myriad of ways.

  On the other hand, stuntmen can practice and perfect their stunts, just as circus acrobats or great ballet dancers can train themselves to do something seemingly impossible, like a grand jeté (the splits in mid-air) with effortless ease. Once they have learned it they can nail it every time. This tends to make stuntmen self-confident and sane.

  But to prove to the world that they can do the stunt and to get paid a lot of money on a regular basis to do it, they need someone to put it on film. Once it is on film, it goes on the stuntman’s demo reel and his career is launched. So most stuntmen are inclined to beg the director to let him do the most sensational stunt he can do. If you want a stuntman to jump from a height in your film, and you walk up to a building together, with an eye to figure out which floor he will jump from, without fail, the stuntman will beg to jump off the top. Or as close to it as is humanly possible. The stuntmen almost always want to give it their all, or as they say, to “sell out.” Generally the stuntmen are as eager as the actors are reluctant.

  This energizes the set in an electrifying way. Suddenly, the crew, the actors, the extras, the cops, everyone who is on the set wants to sell out. When you are shooting car chases, this energy tends to get dispersed, because the stuntmen and crew are spread out up and down a highway, often isolated in separate moving vehicles and communicating via walkie-talkie. But when you are shooting a fight this positive energy gets focused right around the cameras. The stuntmen know exactly where the lenses are and they are determined from the first shot to sell out as hard and as fast as they can right in front of the lens. The crew immediately picks up on this can-do attitude. They know when they are shooting a fight that the way to make it great is to shoot, shoot, shoot; to keep moving the cameras and changing the lenses and framing up new shots, so at the end of the day they have shot a record number of setups. When the stuntmen attack their end of the equation with such overwhelming zeal, the crew immediately follows suit. The result can be the most enjoyable, most productive working experience imaginable.

  As I described in Chapter 7, to shoot a great action sequence, you cannot just shoot the stuntmen doing the stunts. You also must make the actors mimic the motions of the stuntmen who are doubling them, no matter how ridiculous it may seem at the time. It is the tight shots on Christian Bale’s face that convince the audience that Batman is in jeopardy and make Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films so suspenseful.

  Even though actors, especially TV or movie stars, can be prickly and difficult, in my experience, if you are shooting a fight, and working with the stuntmen, usually the actors will do anything you want them to do in front of the camera. In part this is because the actors, like the crew, get swept up in the stuntmen’s orgy of productivity. But, to a greater extent, it is because the stuntmen are genuinely virile. What they do on the set makes them undeniably “real men” in a way that most male actors can only hope to be. This undeniable virility also makes the stuntmen attractive in the eyes of most actresses. So the actors, both male and female, are predisposed to emulate the stuntmen.
When you start shooting a fight, suddenly, even your Klaus Kinski type is being helpful in the extreme. It can be a delight. Enjoy!

  CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY POINTS

  ● 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, and/or (2) range of motion.

  ● The director can make it look like a punch landed with damaging impact if he shoots it with the long (or telephoto) lens from either in front of or behind the stuntman who takes the punch.

  ● The best way to sell the force of the punch is to show the full range of motion of the move the stuntman who takes the punch fakes in reaction to it.

  ● There are four good reasons why a director should always aim to energize his fights by shooting each blow from at least two angles:

  1. Reason #1 is because one angle can be used to amplify the impact of the blow, while the second effectively conveys range of motion. By cutting back and forth between the two, the director can make the audience feel both more intensely.

  2. Reason #2 is because montage generates energy. With two angles, the editor and the director are able to shift the vantage point from which the audience views the fight. These shifts in vantage point energize the frame.

  3. Reason #3 is that montage disguises the fact that a stunt fight is choreographed.

  4. Reason #4 is because with two angles an editor can often shape the character of the blow.

  ● When you are shooting a fight exterior night, to save time and money, keep the fighters standing (more or less) on the same marks. This minimizes the lighting.

  ● If you are shooting your fight during the day, or at night with available light, you can make your fight longer, more varied, and more interesting by having your fighters fight from room to room to room, if you are shooting interior, or from spot to spot to spot, if you are shooting exterior.

  ● If you divide your fight into segments and choreograph it so it moves from spot to spot — from A to B — then you can shoot faster because you do not have to use video tap and/or rewind to decide on your coverage.

  ● Since it is absolutely essential to have two angles on every blow, the only logical way to shoot a fight is with two cameras and two operators.

  ● It is better to do a shorter fight and be able to cover each blow with at least two setups than to do a longer fight and not be able to shoot enough coverage to make the fight explode off the screen. This is especially true when shooting with an inexperienced crew that is moving slowly.

  ● When shooting fights, you need to shoot masters, because you need a head-to-toe shot on everyone in the fight in order to show the audience who is on top, who is on the bottom, who is winning, and who is losing, because in this is contained the story of the fight.

  ● Just as a director, no matter how good, cannot make a good movie without good actors and a good script, he cannot shoot a good action sequence without good camera operators and good assistants.

  ● As a rule, if a stuntman thinks it will look great on screen, he will eagerly do anything the director asks him to do. This can-do attitude tends to electrify the set and make it a joy to shoot stunts.

  FOR TEACHERS

  Just like learning how to shoot a good moving master, learning how to shoot action sequences takes practice. The more the better. The best way for the student to fully absorb the lessons contained in all the above chapters dealing with action sequences — Chapters 4 through 8 — is to repeatedly apply the strategies for shooting action contained in those chapters to the endlessly diverse demands of different chase and fight sequences staged in different locations.

  The teacher can initiate this process by requiring each student to shoot a chase or a fight sequence of his own design. The sequence should be two to three minutes long. It should have a clear beginning, middle, and end and there should be suspense built into the progression of the action. The scene should be long enough for the student to display his mastery of the techniques for using a camera to enhance action, but not so long as to result in an inadequately executed assignment.

  The more ambitious and experienced students can fulfill this assignment by shooting a dance routine or the story of a climactic moment from a football, basketball, soccer, baseball, or lacrosse competition.

  The best way to record, edit, hand in, and critique this action sequence is to follow the same procedures recommended at the end of Chapter 3 for completing the moving master assignment.

  Specifically, this assignment can be shot handheld, using any consumer-grade, digital camera. If the student is going to attempt a fight, dance, or sports sequence, he should try to work with two or three cameras shooting at the same time. This is more demanding, but this is the professional approach and the students should be encouraged to try it. The sequence can be edited using any digital editing program, and handed in on DVD, USB drive, or whichever format is easiest to screen in the classroom.

  The teacher should critique each assignment in the classroom. As described in the For Teachers section at the end of Chapter 3, it works best to use the Socratic Method, drawing all the students into the process of the critique so that they learn by detecting flaws in the work of their peers, and by formulating solutions to correct those flaws. As described at the end of Chapter 3, the in-class critique works best if the students whose work is going to be critiqued in class post their completed assignment on Vimeo or YouTube forty-eight hours before the class. The links to all the assignments are then passed on to all the students in the class using group email or a group web-posting site. All students are required to prepare a one-page written critique of each assignment, which they will hand in after class for a grade. The critique should identify all the areas that can be improved and make suggestions for improvements. This assignment facilitates in-class discussion and usually results in a very constructive critique of each assignment. Students today are programmed by our educational system to work hardest when a grade is in the balance, so having them prepare a critique prior to class for a grade will push them to learn more both before and during each class.

  Those students who have grown up playing video games and religiously attending the Hollywood tentpole movies should enjoy this assignment. If they have picked up a video camera prior to becoming film students, the chances are good they have already shot a number of action sequences of their own design. They will be eager to put into practice everything they have learned from this book about shooting action.

  Many film students have practiced martial arts at some stage in their youth or have friends who are adept martial artists. For these, staging a fight should be an interesting and enjoyable challenge.

  If, for whatever reason, staging a fight is not within the realm of possibility, every student who studies the lessons taught in Chapter 7 should be able to design a good chase by finding as many narrow spaces as possible to route their chase through, and then shooting two of their friends running through those spaces. To a large extent, the physical layout of the locations determines the best visual design for a chase. In this way, a good chase designs itself.

  If the teacher wants to make the assignment appealing to those students who are not enthusiastic about shooting a fight or chase, it can be broadened to include a dance sequence or an action sequence from any team sport, such as basketball, football, or soccer. The strategies taught in the chapter above for heightening the action in a fight can all be used to visually intensify the action of a dance or a sports sequence.

  There is one added difficulty involved in successfully shooting a dance or a sports action sequence. Unlike a fight or a chase, a dance or a sports sequence usually involves more than two participants. The demands of maintaining continuity between different setups will increase with each additional participant. The teacher is advised that those students who undertake to do a dance or a sports sequence will need a superior understanding of shot continuity.

  It is also wis
e to emphatically forbid the students to attempt to do any action sequence involving moving vehicles, with the exception of a bicycle chase. Specifically forbid this, or one of your more foolhardy students is bound to try it. And even a bicycle chase should be done with great caution, at moderate speed, and with as much adult supervision as is deemed wise.

  The good news is that learning how to shoot action sequences is comparatively easy. Of all the elements of craft that must be at a professional director’s command — script breakdown, directing actors, politics on and off the set, shooting with a moving camera, to name a few — directing action is the easiest to master. Along with scheduling and budgeting for directors, it takes the least amount of raw talent and can be fully learned through diligent study and repeated practice.

  CONCLUSION

  I started working as a professional director in Hollywood in 1980. That was thirty-three years ago. I spent the first half of those thirty-three years learning my craft the best way possible — by doing — by directing episodic TV, rock videos, and feature films. I spent the last half of those thirty-three years teaching what I had learned. What I have put in this book are the lessons about directing that can be most effectively taught and learned.

  There are three crucial skills that every successful director uses to make great films. He must understand how to tell a story on film. He must be able to elicit great performances from his actors. And he must direct the camera so that his images are the most powerful visual expression of his story.

  Having taught all three of these skills for eighteen years I have discovered that the first two — script writing/development and directing actors — can only be taught and learned to a limited extent, whereas the last — directing the camera — can be fully and effectively taught and learned.