FILM-FIGHTING 101 (Part1 of unknown)

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 After visiting more artists pages on AnD, I’ve been inspired to write something informative. (dun dun dunnnnnn!) No, the end of the world is not coming, I just thought after reading useful information at the sites of Jeanne Hartman, Mark Allen, Bey Logan and many others, I, too, have a field of study, film-fighting.

This is fueled in a major way by my friends telling me “Don’t blame people for not being able to tell the difference between good and bad film-fighting, if you don’t INFORM them!” Okay! So I understand that 4 out of 5 people aren’t able, just like how I AM NOT ABLE to tell the difference between good and bad ballet. You get me? There’s no blame here, just hugs and kisses.

So… I just realized… THIS is my attempt to educate. (inner monologue: what did I get myself into?) Keep in mind that this is just MY take on it. One may ask, “What are my credentials?” Long story semi-short, I couldn’t afford a martial arts school so I first learned martial arts by watching film-fighting. I would analyze fight scenes for days in order to learn it and do with friend; not just fighting, but beauty of expression, timing, emotion, command, and the many components I will explain to in order to compose a good film-fight. This began when I was 13 so I’ve been doing this along with coordinating and choreographing shows and film-fights for 17 years. The first show I choreographed and coordinated was for my high school at age 15. Okay, I know, I know, enough about me.

(I feel I have to protect myself because people are vicious) I’m not a writer. I can barely convey myself accurately. As a matter of fact, I’m totally INCOMPETENT with a hoola-hoop, but film-fighting is the one thing I DO know. So if you happen to LIKE to pick on people for technicalities/wording or happen to be a person COMPETING IN MY FIELD (LOL), please leave happily NOW!

I’ve never offered anything here more than some good-old fashioned salivating but here goes some information “one time for your mind” that WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU VIEW FILM-FIGHTING.  

Key Components to Film-Fighting:1. Command – selling the fact that you have the power to damage. There are 2 components to command, core strength and expression.

Core strength: the ability to stay in balance while you perform the moves. (Basically: Your spine is your core. The muscles around your spine make it tough.)

Good example:

Jet Li probably has one of the toughest cores ever expressed on screen; pulling difficult moves while maintaining good balance; the best wire worker in my opinion (Myth: people think wirework is easy). Of course, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen all have great cores. That is why they succeed well in it.

Anti-thesis: Gymnasts have super core strength but cannot achieve this, because they lack other components.

Bad example: Sonya from Mortal Kombat 1995

I can pick on real martial artist but that would be mean. I will not.

 2. Expression (the other component for command, I separated to keep clear) – this gives the audience a feeling and just like in acting, a real human emotion is not simply black or white, happy or sad, excited or angry. Within one second humans have many emotions simultaneously and so it is also true for the expression in a film-fight. Aggression (next component I will get to) can fall within this category however the expression in a film fight can go further than just aggression. Bruce Lee was a master at this. He always preached about emotional content and so far no one has reached his level of emotional expression in my opinion. Poses such as Jet Li’s Wong Fei Hong pose fall into this category, it can inspire one to feel proud, confident and so on.

This step is probably the toughest step. THIS IS WHERE NON-MARTIAL ARTISTS FAULTER. For how can one convey a MARTIAL SPIRIT, if one is not a martial artist?  They can only imitate… and often the imitation is simply a CONCEPT of martial spirit that is created in their MINDS, not authentic. It’s like, I am NOT from England but I can SORT OF imitate an English accent. I may be able to fool an American but will I be able to fool someone from England? Maybe not the best example but anyways.

EVEN REAL MARTIAL ARTISTS FAIL AT THIS STEP: zzzzZZZzzzZZZzzz

I’m tired… to be continue on the next episode of Film-Fighting 101.