Choreographing A Fight Scene

In the script there is a moment when Shawn the main protagonist assaults his sisters boyfriend, I had the idea that he would do this in a surgical and efficient manor rather than an animalistic and brutal though still deadly, however this changed when on set. Having no previous experience choreographing a fight scene I googled the logistics of directing and achieving a convincing fight. A lot of what the scene required was camera trickery and little actual fight coordination, I worked closely with Tom Newsham the director of photography to plan the scene and work out how we would shoot it. We both watched videos on how indie film makers created theres, stumbling on a video that covered the entire planning and execution of the fight.

We found that using a longer lens would compress the space between the actors and this would be the main technique that we would apply to our film to convince the viewer. The longer lens then was used for the initial blow delivered by Mark and worked as explained.

We also found that shorter lenses decompress space between the action, the video explained that these are often used for throws and flips and so we tried to avoid using these as my fight scene would only be simple punches and kicks.

Having been the to the location for a previous shoot we knew the size and layout of the rooms in particular the room the fight would take place in. This allowed myself and Tom Newsham to plan the fight heavily before getting on set, having an idea of what type of punches and kicks would be used.

I had also referred to ‘Blain Brown – Cinematography Theory and Practice', I read into lens theory and how the choice of a lens can dramatically affect the image, the text clearly displayed the difference between what a long lens suggests and creates in comparison to a shorter lens. I was particularly interested in how these lenses would compress and expand space between subjects in the scene. For my fight scene a longer lens would be the correct choice as it would close the distance between the punches from the attacker and the person being attacked, resulting in a convincing fight, these longer lenses allowed the actors to leave a safe distance between each other which was of course an element that could potentially lead to unwanted consequences.