How do i drag someone?

RoJo

RoJo

Here in the next couple weeks we will be filming a scene where a girl gets strangled and after dying is drug across the ground and hung to be shown on display for the others to see.

Question- How do/should I do this without harming my actress along with a great shot?
Also she is drug with the rope she is strangled with.
http://www.thecampgroundfilm.com
 
Personally, without stunt professionals being involved, I wouldn't do it with a person at all.

Being completely unqualified to give advice on this, I'll give my advice anyway.

I would do a static shot showing her being tied to whatever it is that is going to drag her. If people are doing the dragging then I'd rethink that scene since dragging even a lightweight person is not as easy as many people think. Then I'd do a shot that was far enough away and with wide enough angle that you could use some sort of dummy replacement to do the actual dragging.

I'd also never actually tie a person to anything like horses or a car. The 'tying' would be fake as well. Accidents happen and I could see this being a tragic event if done improperly.
 
If you are wondering where you can find stunt dummies, I bought two of them on Ebay. I bought a male and a female stunt dummy. They only weigh about 20 pounds, which even your actresses can lift up over their heads and throw away.

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These are my stunt dummies. One is more preped than the other for the production and already in costume.

Here is the other one used in the production.

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The image is purposely blurred in post of the stunt dummy with velocity effects to make it more difficult to spot the dummy. I studied the technique on TV shows. The dummy is always obscured out in post with shadow or blur effects. It is NEVER shown in clear focus.
 
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I actually think you can pull this off, without a professional stunt coordinator, and without a dummy (which would look really shitty, for more reasons than one).

Bottom-line, safety MUST come first, so the rope that is around neck must ABSOLUTELY not have any pulling tension on it. THAT portion of the rope needs to be costume only, and you need to be really careful not to design the costume in a way that it could get tied up with the actual pulling rope.

On an ultra-low budget film, I don't think you'd be able to show everything in your shots. You'll have to get creative with how you shoot it, but I think you can get away with tying a rope around their chest (with proper padding, and stuff), while making it look like they're being pulled by their neck.

I'll be honest, I'm just shooting from the hip here. I've never done this. But if it were me, I'd feel confident that I could shoot it. Choose your angles wisely, mix close-ups with wider angles, I think you can sneak the truth past the audience on this one.
 
Don't drag anyone, ever. In fact, don't even tie anyone to a vehicle that is drivable. I'll happily provide links to pets that have been dragged by their owners inadvertly.

Rewrite this scene.
 
GuerrillaAngel said:
Don't drag anyone, ever. In fact, don't even tie anyone to a vehicle that is drivable. I'll happily provide links to pets that have been dragged by their owners inadvertly.

Rewrite this scene.
Click to expand...

I could've read it wrong, but I got the impression that this person is to be dragged by a person. No car, no horse, no vehicle. Just a person. Not too much that can go wrong there.

If I read it wrong, then I agree with GAngel. Don't drag anyone by a car, that would just be stupid.
 
Cracker Funk said:
Not too much that can go wrong there.
Click to expand...

If the knot is tied incorrectly and placed around the throat it could definitely go very wrong, even if pulled by a person and even if the rope that's actually got the tension on it is a separate one entirely. Just having a rope around someone's neck is a bad idea all around.

There are ways it could be fudged though by not having the noose as a closed loop. You could use some duct tape on a portion behind the hair or something. Anything that would break with only a bit of tension on it. But a closed loop with any sort of knot... yikes. If that thing closes a person could die in the time it takes to loosen it or cut it off.
 
Shoot the scene creatively.
More suggestion rather than direct expository images.

The actual rope tension is applied to is attached to some improvised "sled" the actress is seated upon hidden by clothing or creative camera work, thick plastic cut from something may work well.
Expect it to be good only for a few takes and thrown away.

Any rope around the throat is pure display.

Also, don't forget about the "puller's" potential shoulder and back injuries.
Hopefully there's a sensible puller to pullee weight ratio.
180lb healthy male pulling a 180lb "healthy" female might not work out so well, plastic sled be d@mned.
 
An insurance company will tell you a stunt dummy is your safest bet.

Also, I forgot to mention to ramp up the frame rate two to three faster than the original speed to look more convincing. That covers switching to dummies and dolls better.

Besides Hercules The Legendary Journeys using stunt dummies at times, if you have John Carpenter's Star Man, put the morphing scene of the energy creature morphing into Star Man Jeff Bridges human form in slow motion and you can easily spot the blow up rubber dolls cut into the shots.
 
We had a hanging scene in my feature, and the director talked me out of using a dummy.
Here's a photo of her (director) testing the harness that we used.



And here is the shot from the movie - the rope around the neck was decorative only.


I think you could effectively use a similar harness for dragging a person.
 
Camera angles. Actor 1 ties actor 2 (then untie, do not drag). Heavy weight on rope. Show actor 2 pulling with rope over shoulder so it is taught, cut to Actor 2's feet causing drag marks, cut back to Actor 1, closer, rope over shoulder and him struggling to pull the weight, then finally drops it. Cut to actor 2 tied and on the ground. Done with the dragging part.
 
The opening scene in Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate is a scene of a man writing a suicide note just before he hangs himself. Study the shots they use in the film for learning techniques of how to do it.

Reference scenes helps when looking to visualize a shot list for something you never shot before.
 
I am not dragging the girl in real life.. that's why I posted for a "how to". after reading some of these I am pretty sure I know how im gonna go about the shot. Thanks for the responses.
 
The last time I had to have an actor drag another actor across the frame I pu't the camera on a locked off tripod, and put the actor being dragged on the camera dolly. The other actor then "dragged him" by the feet.

It's one of the last shots of this: vimeo.com/1186238 (about the 7:15ish mark or so)

Did basically the same thing in another short with the actor being dragged away from camera, and the camera mounted on the dolly tracking along with her as she was dragged down a hall. In that instance he was being dragged down the hall by a necklace around her neck, if I remember correctly I think the dolly was actually being pushed from behind camera, and the actor doing the dragging simply kept some tension on the necklace so it didn't go loose around her neck, that particular shot was sped up significantly in post.
 
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