Choreography as a muscle

Yesterday I shot the first fight scene I’ve done since finishing Death Grip. It’s a videogame parody where I play a Karate man taking on two other players played by fellow Stunt People and  Death Grip actors Shaun Finney and Yun Lujhei Yang.

Stunt practices have paid off: I could still kick and punch pretty quick, and my bones took a decent amount of damage whenever hitting my forearm or shin against an elbow, but the lagging part was the later choreography, which came slowly once we hit the 4-hour point. In the past, I’ve usually muscled through these moments. The choreography gets more experimental, efficiency plummets, and suddenly one shot takes 45 minutes to accomplish. By the third shot I’m mentally drained and often cranky.

Instead, we played it safe. Rather than draining ourselves on two or three extra shots, trying to make weird choreography look good, we just did something fun and character-related, which ended the shoot on a good note. Now rather than dwelling on the frustration of a little test shoot, I get to remember how fun choreography can be. This makes me wanna jump back into doing short videos again, which will allow me to exercise that choreography muscle again in time for the next big project.