Lock & Load: Positions You Want To Try To Fill For Your Gunfight Film

Okay now you have a bunch of ideas for your gunfight based on what you could lay your hands on. You've tested out your skills as an action filmmaker. What sort of positions do you need for making your action masterpiece?

These were the things we learned throughout the creation of Day 419 and I'm happy to pass them on to you!

Director of Photography
While some directors will shoot their own films, it's better to have a designated Director of Photography to help you create the look of your film and to shoot your film. In addition to helping you think through the look of the film, the DP oversees the lighting department to make sure the lighting up that look and will often help you figure out the color grading for your film.

As you may have noticed in some of the other articles in this series, my DP on Day 419 (Nate Eckelbarger) ended up providing valuable tricks and solutions I never would've thought of on my own. I highly recommend that before you shoot, you sit down with your DP and watch action films that you like together, clarifying for him/her what you like about the look of those films. Also, try to find photographs that resonate with you that fit with your film. Share those with him as well.

Make sure that, for fight scenes, you have as detailed a storyboard as you possibly can depicting all the shots you need to get. This will help you make sure you get everything "in the can" and assist you in not breaking the line of action. (In a gunfight, you can think of every bullet as creating a new line of action between the person firing the gun and his intended target. If you lose track of what side of the line you're on in this process, you'll suddenly discover that left is right, right is left, and your audience is confused. This is actually why most large gunfights, including the one in Day 419, establish two sides of the confrontation with reverse wide shot and then intercut fairly direct head on CU shots until the number of combatants has been cut down a lot. For most gunfights, you really don't see lots of different side angles until it's down to two shooters, as now it's far easier to not violate the line of action!)

Fight Choreographer
Some directors choose to orchestrate their own fights, but, if you have someone with fight choreography experience, it's really great to have them oversee the fight so you can see it from a separate head space. In Day 419, Jay Kerr served as our choreographer. Well versed in stage combat, including melee weapons and guns, Kerr was also a pyrotechnican for the live-fire outdoor play "The Legend of Daniel Boone" in Harrodsburg, KY for a number of year. Because of his additional training with bladed weapons as well as the fact that he's knife smith, we were able to cap off our gun battle with a knife fight with hand crafted blades that he and our armorer fashioned.  (The blades were polished so they looked exactly like a sharpened blade, even though they were dull.)

Armorer
This is perhaps the most misunderstood part of a low-budget gunfight creation. When micro-budget filmmakers hear the word "armorer," they usually assume they can't afford them or that they're only necessary on sets that use guns with actual "blank" ammunition. In reality, on low budget sets, the armorer is simply the anal retentive person who you choose to keep track of all of the weapons and make sure no ammunition gets into the guns. (For airsoft guns, they can still fire projectiles, so you need to make sure they stay clean and clear.) In Day 419, our armorer was Gabe Kinderknecht, a police officer with lots of experience with guns.  While our main weapons were all Airsoft guns, because of his experience with weapons, we were able to use a real shotgun that had specially prepared primer rounds.  This allowed us to have some "practical" muzzle flash we could augment in post, as well as authentically smoking shotgun shells being ejected.

Script Supervisor
This is another crucial portion of the team. The Script Supervisor (often called the "Scripty") is the anal retentive person who always spots discontinuity issues in Hollywood films and has therefore been recruited to keep track of problems in your film! While they're there to make sure you get all the shots you need in the dramatic parts of your film, they're perhaps even more crucial in gunfights, as they're to help you make sure people keep guns in the same hands, draw the same way, and that you get the proper coverage you need. (If you want to do more effects work, you'll probably need to take additional pictures for compositing.  If you've noted that on the script, they'll also be the one to help you remember to do it in the midst of the craziness.) In Day 419, World of Depleted's co-creator, Chris Tanchyk, served as our Script Supervisor.

Editor
This is the person who makes all the magic you arduously shot and all the notes the Script Supervisor took down come to life. In low budget circles, this is most often done by the filmmaker, but, as action films can be a great demo piece for up and coming editors, don't forget to check with your local film offices and associations, as well as websites devoted to the editing craft, to see if you can find someone to edit other than yourself. While I personally did edit Day 419, the amount of alternate perspective that a separate editor can bring to the table can't be overestimated. You'll find it much easier to know where to plug in effects and other elements if you're not the one doing everything!  (Fortunately, an experienced editing friend of mine from LA was able to provide helpful critique in this process, so I was able to get some of this advantage, albeit much later than if someone else had edited.)

As we'll go into this more in future articles, it is a good thing to remember that the editor is going to be responsible for dealing with a lot of Slow Motion work in the gunfight scenes, so access to things like Kronos or Twixtor would be a great help. In addition to editing the main film, the editor will also likely cut together your film's teaser and/or trailer. The following are two teaser trailers we created for Day 419. The earlier one clearly has rougher effects, whereas the later one has more polished visuals.

Sound Designer
This gentleman is almost as important as your DP, as much of gunfights are about sonic cues. The sounds of slow-motion bullets are all created in post by a sound designer, as real bullet sounds that are slowed down aren't even close to useful. As such, if your sound designer can be on board as early as possible, that will really help out, especially if they can see the storyboards and be thinking of appropriate sounds that might fit the type of shot. Like with your DP, watch movies with your Sound Designer and let them know what sort of things you like from an audio perspective. John Howard of Oakwood Sound Design was our Sound Designer for Day 419 and he was instrumental in helping us craft many of the more interesting concepts for this film. Before shooting, we'd watched films like Fight Club and the Matrix, as well as TV shows like Jericho and Fringe, discussing how the sound design motivated the action. Now, as with other positions, your sound designer doesn't have to be a professional or someone with their own audio studio.  Anyone who has a good ear for recombining sound effects (as most of the best sound effects in film are actually a combination of three to six often unrelated sound effects), some decent sound effects libraries could be a good fit for this position, and a good audio editing program like Audition.

Score Composer
Another crucial person is your score composer. While you could use "canned" music for your fight, if you can find a composer that really wants to do an action film, you will be far ahead, as they can create a musical signature that resonates throughout the entire piece. It took us a number of missteps to find a score composer we felt could fit with our material, but we eventually found David Singleton, a talented songwriter who was transitioning into more score composition.

As with your DP and Sound Designer, it's good to sit down with your score composer and watch movies whose scores you liked and tell them what you liked about them. After that, you want to discuss the sonic palette for the score. (Essentially, answer the question: "What instruments sound good to me as they apply to this film?") This will hopefully become evident as you discuss what things you've liked in the past. If it's not, sit down with your composer at his keyboard and listen to different instruments to see which you like or don't like. Sort of like having an eye exam, things will start to come into focus after you've sonically "seen" enough different "lenses"--or, in this case, instruments.

To make sure that you and your composer are on the same page, and to be able to give the composer the ability to be creative, it's a great idea to have him come up with a few skeletons (with just three to five instruments that show the basic melody) for each scene in your film. New ideas may come to the surface in unexpected ways or you may discover that two different skeletons actually can combine for an entirely unexpected and pleasant effect that really sells your scene. (This happened many times as we worked on Day 419, where each of the five main scenes had 3-5 skeletons created.)

In regards to music, don't be afraid to allow your composer to explore some strange tangents when it comes to music for gunfights. John Woo and Hans Zimmer chose to go to a completely unexpected place in Face/Off when the little boy was given a headset in the middle of a gunfight. Suddenly, amongst all the carnage, all we can hear is the dulcet tones of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and the audience gets shivers as the innocent music turns the carnage into something arcanely evocative! In Day 419, we jestingly threw in "Mad World" from Donnie Darko as a temp track for the gunfight and were shocked when it worked really well. While we obviously couldn't use Mad World, it opened up a whole new way of seeing this fight. Then we tried a waltz and suddenly the gunfight was dance of death. These sorts of explorations led us to a much more dynamic gunfight than we would have had otherwise!

In upcoming issues, we're going to break down the actual choreography elements of gunfights, the special effects which can be done on set, compositing effects in post, and, finally, coming up with a cool color grade!

In the mean time, if you'd like to know more about Depleted: Day 419 or any of the new Depleted content that is coming out from our Contributors around the world, be sure to check out the official World of Depleted website.

The director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films, Jeremy Hanke founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.

Mission | Tips & Tricks | Equipment & Software Reviews | Film Critiques
Groups & Community | Links & Savings | Home