{"id":2637,"date":"2009-03-09T09:13:28","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T14:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playfighting.ca\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2012-02-16T08:57:16","modified_gmt":"2012-02-16T08:57:16","slug":"fight-like-the-watchmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/stage-combat-2\/fight-like-the-watchmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Fight Like The Watchmen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.playfighting.ca\/images\/Watchmen_banner.jpg\" title=\"Watchmen Banner\" class=\"aligncenter\" width=\"500\" height=\"84\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"alignright\"><script src=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/tools\/diggthis.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Since all but one of the Watchmen (and\/or Minutemen if you&#8217;re a stickler) do not have superpowers, there are no energy beams, wind attacks or psychic invasions when they fight crime. Most of it is accomplished with their bare, er, gloved, hands. So there&#8217;s a lot for us to talk about on PlayFighting.<\/p>\n<h2>Faster Is Not Better<\/h2>\n<p>Stuntmen are always encouraged to go faster. It&#8217;s not for no reason: film tends to make action look slower. If you&#8217;ve never seen yourself run or fight on film, try it. You&#8217;ll be surprised how slow you look.<\/p>\n<p>In order to counteract that, an editor can change the playback speed, but until recently that technique looked like crap. You can tell when fights are &#8220;ramped up&#8221; just by the artifacts of dropping frames. With the advances in digital effects, you can&#8217;t perceive it as much anymore. <\/p>\n<p>To hide any remaining artifacts, a moving camera usually does the trick. The smoothest way to speed up any action is to have the camera move in the opposite direction. This is best illustrated in car chases. The car moves from the right side of the frame to the left, so truck the camera from left to right. The same technique can be used for fights that move in a linear fashion, like a fencing match. This technique speeds up the apparent speed of the motion across the screen, and eliminates the need for dropping frames.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;shaky cam&#8221; or filming a fight with a hand-held camera (not a steadycam) is a way to make a fight seem more chaotic, but more importantly to hide mistakes by stuntmen furiously fighting with more speed than coordination, and also hides artifacts of frame dropping. Most viewers hate this. Fight lovers can&#8217;t see what&#8217;s going on. Non-fight lovers get confused and can&#8217;t follow. And everyone feels nauseated.<\/p>\n<p>But we still want fast fights. We were spoiled by Hong Kong. Jet Li and Jackie Chan and countless other amazing martial artists used their decades of training to blow away any competition in the speed department. And they were so prolific in China and in Hollywood that they set an unrealistic standard for film fights. There are so many martial arts movies with champion martial artists that actors could never get remotely close. <\/p>\n<p>Then comes good fights, like we get in Watchmen. Watchmen contains excellent fights for pace. I&#8217;m not saying Watchmen is the first to break with tradition. The Matrix, for all its special effects and wirework was not only shot with angles that told the story well, the fighters moved at a speed the audience could follow (and how tempting would it have been when characters like Mouse say, &#8220;Geez he&#8217;s fast!&#8221;). <\/p>\n<p>I cannot emphasize enough that I fell in love with the filming of the fight sequences. The use of wide shots to show full-body motion. The use of slow motion for dramatic, big moves (maybe a bit overused? &#8230;nah). The speed of the actors that showed the power behind the attack: not so slow as to be deliberate, but not so fast as to be missed. The big lesson: plan everything ahead so that the best camera angle, film speed and acting moments are optimized.<\/p>\n<h2>Flash and Spin<\/h2>\n<p>Too much spinning. In a movie that should have focused on practical and tactical fighting, there was too much flash. Practical martial artists know that high kicks are easily dodged or countered and should only be used on a weakened opponent. And spinning moves mostly waste time, and present your back to your opponent. When fighters spin, they&#8217;re begging to be kicked in the spine.<\/p>\n<p><div style=\"width: 178px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Starts spin kick...\" src=\"http:\/\/www.playfighting.ca\/images\/Stop-Spin-Kick-1.jpg\" title=\"Brandon Lee Stops Spin Kick in Rapid Fire\" width=\"168\" height=\"97\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Starts spin kick...<\/p><\/div><br \/>\n<div style=\"width: 175px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"... and Brandon stop-kicks him.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.playfighting.ca\/images\/Stop-Spin-Kick-2.jpg\" title=\"Brandon Lee Stops Spin Kick in Rapid Fire\" width=\"165\" height=\"97\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">... and Brandon stop-kicks him.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n<p>Now, the opening fight that ends with the Comedian being thrown out the window was amazing. I love practical fighting. It&#8217;s the same reason I loved the Agent in Serenity and, to a lesser extent, the style of Jason Bourne. I think if you want to present modern fighters (without superpowers) who want to be quick, efficient, and have no need to show off, you have to study Krav Maga, the Russian Systema, Jeet Kune Do and its parent Wing Chun.<\/p>\n<h2>Clones<\/h2>\n<p>I think you have to devote time to making characters distinct in their choreography. Each fighter has different strengths, different priorities, and most importantly, they must have had different trainers. The Watchmen all looked like they were trained by the same guy.<\/p>\n<p>This guy: Fight Coordinator Richard Cetrone trained the actors and arranged the fight sequences. You may recognize his work from Underworld: Evolution, he was also a stunt performer\/double in 300, and he played Pierce in two Underworld movies. Fun fact: in 300, he&#8217;s the guy who&#8217;s always spinning.<\/p>\n<h2>Aren&#8217;t You Tired From All That Spinning?<\/h2>\n<p>Not enough exhaustion or wounds. In Fight Directors Canada certification fights, we always build wounds right into the fight. If you take a cut to the arm, you&#8217;d better act the pain of it for the rest of the fight. The heroes in Watchmen aren&#8217;t even breathing heavy at the end of the fights. That&#8217;s why I liked that first fight the best: the Comedian takes a supreme amount of punishment, but plays the pain and fatigue so well. <\/p>\n<p>When the Night Owl and Silk Spectre II take on a prison wing full of murderous criminals, not only do they destroy each of them with a single move, but they&#8217;re fresh as a daisy immediately after. Those two characters are supposed to be out of practice and out of shape. I want to see some heavy breathing at least.<\/p>\n<h2>How to Fight<\/h2>\n<p>Oh, you were expecting an article &#8220;How to Fight Like the Watchmen&#8221; and I gave you &#8220;Why Not to Fight Like the Watchmen&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Well, here&#8217;s my advice if you like that style: practice your spin kicks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since all but one of the Watchmen (and\/or Minutemen if you&#8217;re a stickler) do not have superpowers, there are no energy beams, wind attacks or psychic invasions when they fight crime. Most of it is accomplished with their bare, er, gloved, hands. So there&#8217;s a lot for us to talk about on PlayFighting. Faster Is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stage-combat-2","tag-stage-combat-3"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3423,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions\/3423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfighting.ca\/combat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}