When Roger Corman attended the Raindance Film Festival in 1996, I asked him what he thought made a really good script.
Your first movie is likely to be a gritty slice-of-life in and or around your own turf, is it not? And aren’t you eager to spice up your film and make it look like you have a far bigger budget than you actually have?
One of the easiest ways to do this is to throw in a fight scene (or three). The trick is – how do you make a fight scene look real without hurting your actors? This is something you could learn at a specialist film school.
Another way is to hang out with one of my favourite independent filmmakers, Jason Satterlund. His west coast Big Puddle Films makes web series, shorts, corporates and has several different feature projects on the boil.
Watching this four minute video should give you enough information to make your next movie punch out look realistic. And for this one you don’t even need money!
Practice. And be safe.
Want some more lo budget filmmaking tips? Check out my weekend Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking weekend course for dozens more.
Have you some fight tips you would like to share with our readers? Add them into the comments box below.
About Elliot Grove
Photo Credit Jay Brooks / BIFA 2015
Elliot Grove is the founder of Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards. He has produced over 700 hundred short films and also five feature films, including the multi-award-winning The Living and the Dead in 2006, Deadly Virtues in 2013 and AMBER in 2017. He teaches screenwriting and producing in the UK, Europe, Asia and America.
Elliot has written three books which have become industry standards: Raindance Writers’ Lab: Write + Sell the Hot Screenplay, now in its second edition, Raindance Producers’ Lab: Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking and Beginning Filmmaking: 100 Easy Steps from Script to Screen (Professional Media Practice).
In 2009 he was awarded a PhD for services to film education.
