Evil Dead 1981: Running scene

                What many don’t know is that there is more to think about than just running while you film. They obviously didn’t really get that when they filmed The Evil Dead in 1981. Then again, like many people know, we have developed a lot technologically since then. You can look many different places for fancy ways to do things. You could also try and buy these super cool super advances and super expensive tools and machines. OR you could just control yourself and try something that costs no money at all! If I were you, I would go with the second option.

                To get a good effect of actually running in the eyes of a victim or attacker, or just to make it feel like the viewer is running with the character, the camera man has to have a lot of self control. The first thing the camera man needs to know is how to lock their elbows. When you lock them, there is less bounce in your arms and it is easier to keep the camera steady. A famous line is that two heads are better than one. Well, that goes for hands to camera as well. If you hold the camera normally with one hand and with one under the camera, it gives you more control and stability.

                Now that you have the top half of your body taken care of and controlled, you can worry about the bottom half. Even though you have more control of your camera and you have stability, you still cannot run like a mad man. You really have to think about how you are running. You can’t simply run normally. You have to stiffen your legs and take small steps. The smaller the steps, the steadier the shot will be. If you don’t like this, you can always try to take long glide like steps. This won’t make you go as fast, but if will be steadier than a normal run.

                One of the other options, assuming you are good with computer video editors, you can film the actor running in slow motion and you simply walking, and then when you upload the video you can speed the scene up. This will allow you to film normally and not even worry about running while filming. The only trouble I can think of about this would be that the sound would be tricky to edit. The only way I could think of would be to tape with things pre-marked and then record over the video like they do in music videos. Like I said before, this is possible, but you would have to be pretty advanced.

Dramatic exit—Director J