Shooting a high octane, action-packed fight scene can really have an impact on your audience, but really only if it looks realistic and -- well -- truly painful. Tuts+ offers some excellent tips and tricks on how to achieve a believable brawl between your characters, including which lenses to use, tried and true blocking and choreography, as well as an editing trick that will speed up your strikes, making them more impactful. Check out the video after the jump.
There are many different tricks and techniques, whether they're captured during shooting or in post, that will help you make you fight scenes look more believable. In fact, several months ago we shared some excellent tips from Vashi Nedomansky of Vashi Visuals on how to make your general action sequences more exciting, but this tutorial from Tuts+ focuses specifically on fight scenes.
As you'll see in the video below, there are several things you might want to consider as you gear up for your shoot. Tuts+ suggests using a zoom lens (a 135mm is used in the tutorial), which will not only give you the ability to quickly change your focal length, but will reduce the depth of your shots so you can pull of the illusion that your characters are closer than they really are, a trick known as the "long lens stunt." The tutorial also teaches you how to pull off techniques like the "hero punch," the "knock down," and "cutting for impact," all of which will not only help make your fights look realistic, but will also pump energy into your scene.
Check out the tutorial below:
Are you shooting a fight scene for your project? Are you going to employ one (or all) of these techniques from the tutorial? What other techniques do you use to help make fight scenes look realistic? Let us know below!
[via Tuts+ Photo & Video]
