Camera Shake! PP#25

     One of the most important elements when it comes to the post-production aspect of fight scenes is camera movement.  Camera movement essentially allows certain actions to have more heft, or to have more volume in their motion, that wouldn't have been previously obtainable by just recording.  Additionally, camera movement would primarily be used to make the actions more, believable?  Make them so the viewer is fighting alongside them if that makes sense.  

    As I was actually filming, I would do a lot of camera movement alongside when I was filming my actors, but I had to be careful as I was doing so because I didn't wanna make the footage os fucking shaky that you wouldn't even be able to see what you were looking at  So with that in mind, I essentially would just record the fight scenes, add a little camera movement, like jittering the camera once David takes a punch, and move on from there.  

    Here is an example, but these movements only go a long way in conveying impact in the hits.  Also, what if I recorded a shot and I didn't add enough camera shake to it?  That's where editing comes in!

    Up above is a timeline for about 12 seconds, or about one fight sequence.  What I'll do, is I'll take the original clip and put it on the timeline, then cut out and duplicate a small portion of every clip, purposely trying to find the instances in which punches or hits are taken.  After that, I put them above and added the camera shake effect in order to make it so the rest of the fight is smooth, but whenever some of my actors take hits, it registers as having some large movement involved.  

    Here's another really great example, in which David receives a gnarly uppercut straight to the face!  But if you peer at the timeline, I simply cut out all the portions in which David would receive hits. and added the camera shake motion effect that you see on the side.  After this, it's important to fidget and figure out the best move that can be added, depending on how hard you want the hit to look.  In the photo above, I configured the motion so it would have more speed than usual, and screen back and forth at a much faster rate than normal, only to really enunciate the punch.  

    I simply do these to every impact, and yeah, they all look good!

-Noa