fighting camera work

[belovedmonster]

sounds good, but its far to expensive for a DIY guy like myself.

[elmariachi]

the main thing to remember, is fast cuts. if your also editing the film, make sure you have a lot of quick shots. always have a fast fight scene. i wouldnt recommend slow motion either unless you have a really well choreographed sequence..

[Filmmaker58]

There are a couple of schools of thought on the editing thing. If you watch a Bruce Lee movie, there are few cuts as he liked to do a whole sequence without them because, like Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, he liked to show himself capable of doing the moves without using camera tricks. Some call this the Master Method, in that you shoot the fight in a wide master and just get coverage of anything that doesn't work in the wide shots. On the other hand there is the "Insert Method", which is to break the fight into short segments and shoot it that way. Watching a Jackie Chan film gives great examples of the insert method.
Slow motion can be dangerous in a fight scene because any problem in the timing of a reaction is accentuated by slow motion. If a punch reaction is 2 frames late it may be acceptable at normal speed, but looks like a total miss at 64fps. These and many other subjects are covered in depth in "Fightscenes For Motion Pictures", available at www.kbproducts.com (more self promotion)

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ June 10, 2003 03:30 AM: Message edited by: Pat Kerby ]</font>

[noddy754]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by belovedmonster:
this idea that zooming in ruduces the focal length, would i get a better effect using a wide angle lense and zooming in alot, than if i was to use the normal lense and zoom in abit?</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think you're confusing focal length and depth of field. When you "zoom in" you are actually increasing the focal length of the lens. On a stills camera, you might use a lens with a focal length of 28mm for a wide-angle landscape shot and a 500mm (telephoto) lens to get that close-up of a rare woodpecker in the distance (or whatever).

There are two effects of increasing the focal length which are relevant here. The first is that increasing the focal length decreases the depth of field, which is the distance between the nearest in-focus subject and the farthest in-focus subject. This means that while the entire landscape would probably be in focus, the branches of the tree behind the woodpecker might not (even if the aperture is not changed. the closer the F-number to 1, the wider the aperture and the shorter the depth of field)

The second effect is what eidde was referring to, and that is that subjects which are different distances from the camera will appear closer together when a longer focal length is used. To demonstrate this, hold a penny very close to the lens and another one 6 inches further away - the near coin will look much bigger than the distant coin. However, if you hold the near penny 6 feet away from the lens and the distant penny 6 feet and 6 inches away from the lens, and zoom in (increase the focal length) so that the near coin is the same size on the screen as it was before, the distant coin will look only slightly smaller than the near coin, even though the distance between the coins has not changed. You might also notice that only one of the coins is in focus, because of the shortened depth of field.

To answer your question, using a wide angle adapter and zooming in a lot will give the same result as using no adapter and zooming in a bit, except it'll look worse because of all the extra glass you're shooting through.