How to shoot people walking

Shooting people walking is an essential skill for any director as it will come up in any film. It is important to not let the viewer get bored when watching something as simple as a shot of someone walking. Here are just a few of the ways:

A tracking or crab shot is an excellent way of showing the character(s) walking from a sideways perspective, while also developing the background and involving the viewer into what is going on. It is used here in Reservoir Dogs to help introduce the characters.

While some directors don't follow this it is a common practice to not cross the line. Also known as the 180 degree rule it basically says that there is an invisible line through the character(s) that cameras should stay on one side of. This stops the scene flipping and characters ending up on different sides of the screen. Eg. With a walking scene they should always be walking to the left or the right of the screen, not both.

Close ups are important for walking scenes especially to introduce a character at the beginning of a film. By having such an extreme close up there is no mistaking who our attention should be on. An effective use of close up is to focus on the persons feet while they are walking, for example, the intro to Saturday Night Fever. It keeps the audience interested in something quite mundane like walking.

The key thing to remember for shooting people walking is variety. Without it viewers lose interest as walking isn't exactly the most exciting thing to watch in the world, but with the right music and a range of different shots anything can be interesting.