In The Guardian, an action short about a supernatural guardian, the protagonists defends those who can change history due to an eternal charge, rather than a family killing. (Picture courtesty of Nick Denney, 2009)
Try to avoid killing off your hero's family to get him/her to begin the path to vengeance/justice/etc.
While the old “You killed my family, now I will kill you” plot twist is a guaranteed way to get your reluctant hero to go to war, it's been done to death. Every Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagall, and even Chuck Norris film had this as a twist almost every time. Even last year's phenomenal racing action film, Death Race, had this as the starting stressor. Every person has a reason they will kill or go to war that does not require you to kill someone off in their family. Almost all will go on the warpath to protect their family, but some will do so to protect their neighborhood, to rid the world of truly dangerous evil, to expose truth, or because the cost of their inaction will leave a burden on their soul they can never expunge. These are all elements that need to be explored in depth, so that your hero chooses to become part of the story for a reason that is not cliché.
Avoid the screaming woman and other main characters that simply annoy your audience.
When I watched the first Transporter movie, I remember how distracted and annoyed I was by the nearly constant screaming of the absolutely useless female character that the hero had to protect. Even though the fight scenes were amazing and the stunt driving was off the hook, the woman's constant wailing made me want to throttle whoever had cast her or even written her in the first place. You can have characters that are slightly annoying so long as they don't annoy the audience and they serve some sort of purpose. Even in a straight action film, having a slightly annoying character that adds some comedy can be a great help, so long as they are not too annoying. For example, Lethal Weapon 3 uses Joe Pesci's annoying character to great effect and his occasional high pitched screams work well in this place. (Some would say that the Lethal Weapon series are more “Comic Action” than “Straight Action”, but this is a matter of opinion.) Additionally, Short Stack in Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom serves a similar purpose.
By clever uses of XCUs, Jim Rothman's creative team crafted an amazing car race scene in I'm Not Matt Damon. (Picture courtesty of Jim Rothman, 2009)
If you want a car chase, XCUs are your friends!
In the Jim Rothman award-winning film, I'm Not Matt Damon, Rothman and his team shot a frenetic car “chase.” (Technically, the main character wasn't chased by anyone, but was instead trying to beat a clock. Nonetheless, the entire scene was shot exactly like chase movies such as The Transporter and The Fast and The Furious.) Even though they couldn't afford to destroy any of their cars in this LA chase the way a Hollywood film would, they managed to convey a huge amount of Hollywood suspense by shooting insert close ups of the main character's foot on the gas or mashing the clutch, his hand whipping the stick, the speedometer revving up, and a clock ticking down toward an impossible deadline. In addition to these close ups, they also grabbed some shots from the undercarriage of the car, on the hood, and following camera shots strapped to the hood of another vehicle. To do these last few, you will probably need to rent a camera rig that can attach to the car, like Rothman did. However, if you're creative, you can get a lot of these shots with a Cinesaddle, which can be strapped to open windows, the hood, and the truck of the vehicle. (To get the wheel well shots, you'd have to mount a clean mirror to the edge of the fender of the vehicle and lock the camera to shoot the mirror.) When these XCUS were cut together with the outside following shots and a few external, stationary camera shots, the sequence was amazingly believable.
