• Closeup: Key turning in the ignition
• Medium Shot: Driver through the windshield
• Wide Shot: Side of the car with driver inside
• Closeup: Speedometer

In action scenes, shooting in sequential order is simply not practical. Shoot all the exteriors in a row, then all the medium shots, and finally all the closeups and inserts.

For the wide shots of a car chase, using the zoomed-in shots will make the ground and everything around a car more blurred and appear to be moving faster. Because of that optical trick, you can be moving 25mph and it will look more like 50mph.

The best thing about the closeups is that you can shoot them while the car is going 15mph and cut them in with the faster-moving footage, and no one will ever know. In the closeup of a speedometer, for example, you can take the car out on a freeway (as long as it's not the 405 in Los Angeles and you're not driving!), get the car up to 70mph, take a shot of that, cut it into the inner-city footage and - in the audience's mind at least - the car is moving at 70mph.

At its core, fast editing tends to make the viewers more tense, excited and at the edge of their seats. By contrast, if you want an audience to be more relaxed, longer cuts will ease them into the scene. More edits in less time works more effectively in action scenes. Because of the rate of cuts, the more traditional idea of showing a master or establishing shot first can go out the window, because the geography will be established a few seconds later. No one watching will be lost, as long as you get those wider, establishing shots that show viewers where the scene is.

To finish off a good chase scene, you need the accompanying sound. Sound is 50% of the experience, and that is especially true in action. Adding sound FX to match the picture is essential. The sounds of the tires squealing, the off-camera sound of a police siren, the car behind honking and many other sounds can heighten the tension and make the action seem more real. Ambient sounds of the city streets and the constant revving of the engine are all sounds that add a subconscious connection to the visuals. All that, and we haven't even added the thrumming, fast-paced music yet.

Most people understand that music controls the mood and music of a scene, in the same way that the editing increases its pace in an action scene. Music that matches the action and drives the scene will always add to the level of tension and excitement.

Your tools for making an action scene more dynamic are shot variety and coverage, fast-paced editing and the sound FX and music that glue the edit together.

Caption: Cutaway shots (image left) and neutral direction shots (image right) afford the editor much more flexibility when editing an action sequence.

Peter John Ross is an award-winning filmmaker and author of Tales from the Front Line of Indie Filmmaking.

You can watch our Car Chase scene tutorial and download clips to create your own chase at www.videomaker.com/tutorials