HUGE DAY: Storyboarding Problem Solved! PP#5

    A couple of posts ago I made a blog that documented how tricky it was to storyboard and plan this fight scene.  Sitting in class and trying to figure out how this would look was freaking impossible.  So I took a sigh and was like, "I'll save it for the weekend," totally under the impression that I'd just be stuck at home, similar to how I was during the school day.  The blog post I'm referring to is here, and I basically talked about how difficult the process of planning a fight scene was, and I needed a solution.  

    Fast forward to today, which started off like any normal day.  My friends were coming over to hang out, per usual, and my friend David and Saloman came earlier today, and my other couple of friends were running a bit late.  These names may sound familiar, as they were actually my actors in Nat 20, the film introduction I created last year.  Click here to check it out!  As we were waiting, a huge revelation came to me.  Saloman and David, these were the actors I was planning to shoot the film with.  I told them about the basic premise of my film days ago, and they seemed to like it, however, when it came to actually doing some fighting in preparations for the film, they didn't know when they would be doing some choreography.  So as we were waiting, I thought: "I had trouble planning the fight during school, why don't I start planning with them now?"  I asked them if they wanted to help me plan the fight scenes for my film, and they seemed okay with it.  Actually not even okay with it.  They seemed excited.  So we drove to the shooting location where we planned to film the short film.  I grabbed my phone to film, and notebook to take notes on the fight hopped in my car, and hoped for the best.  

    The first order of business prior to actually doing any fighting of any sort was to give them some hints and tips on how to sell a hit.  As I mentioned before, I watched a ton of videos on how to do this fighting stuff, and I told them the best parts that they could use when it came to be the actors in my fight scene.  

    THINGS I TOLD MY ACTORS:

1) First thing first, safety!  Fortunately, my friend is 18 and acted as our adult supervision throughout the whole planning for today, and I told them that staying safe was tons more important than anything we were going to do today.  I mentioned how throwing fists for the camera is different than real life, as camera fights are extremely more exaggerated, along with keeping distance between hits and blows.  I told them that I wanted around 6 inches to one foot of space in between the fake punches in order to make sure no one gets hit.  

2) Now down to business.  I told my friends there were three components to making a punch look legit for the camera.  First, the camera.  The camera was super important for how the hits would look, and although my actors wouldn't be handling the camera, I'd still mention the importance of the camera so they can be aware of the camera's position during fights and for stacking, which is a technique that allows hits to look like they hit when in actuality, they miss completely.

    This is an example of stacking, in which the camera would be placed behind the individual with the black shirt, seemingly looking like he lands the punch!

    Second, action.  The action essentially means the delivering and approach of the fight, like a punch for instance.  Punch placement is super important for the recipient to act like they get punched.  For example, I told Saloman, who for a scene would be throwing a punch, to imagine a line across David's face, and to follow that line with his fist (obviously from a distance)  This is what that looks like.  

So basically Saloman follows a line across David's face, stays about a foot from his face, and swings!

    Third, reaction.  David's reaction above is what really sells it.  Sure the punch is good, but the way the recipient acts, and the rotation of the skull, shoulders, and hips is what really looks like the damage is dealt.  

We trained with these three components, and we moved onto the final piece of notes that I told them.

3) The difference between real-life fighting and fake movie fighting is genuinely insane.  Usually, if someone is fighting in real life, take MMA for instance, their stance is tight and controlled, which makes sense as that would be most practical for fighting.  My friends are pretty experienced fighters, as they like to do MMA and wrestling themselves.  Because of this, I told them to ditch the traditional way that they would fight.  I told them that I needed big and powerful stances, as opposed to smaller, controlled ones.  This way, the hits they deliver would seem more powerful, without actually really doing anything.  

    The two stances above demonstrate what I mean.  The stance on the left is seen as more powerful, which is mainly what I want in a fight scene, while the one on the right seems smaller and less powerful.  

And with that out of the way, planning and fighting began >:D

    The videos and photos above are some concept footage that we shot in order to see if the fight scene would even work.  And judging by the footage, it seemed like a success.  We were just playing around, and some of these shots look really awesome.  We wanted to see what techniques would look cool for the camera, like the gut punch and the suplex maneuver.  (After every take we made sure everyone was okay!)  And this is what I needed.  Fight planning goes beyond pen and paper.  It's physical.  I needed my actors out here in order to write this fight scene.  I'm glad we came out today.  I actually now know how to finally plan this scene.  

    For shits and giggles, I made this little short film and put all the footage from today together to see how well it worked.  Lemme know what you think!

Obviously, this isn't the final product, but it's a good step toward the final goal.

-Noa