The greatest inspiration I get to film a fight scene would be Jackie Chan. His fight scenes always make me question how are not other big blockbuster movies’ fight scene as as good. A few key points I figure out from my research would be the framing of the fight and the edits. Jackie likes clarity, and hence he shoots his scene with a wide angle lens whereby the audience sees the whole choreography in that particular shot. In most blockbusters movies, they do not do that because;
1. Not enough time
2. Safety reasons
Jackie is a perfectionist and he is willing to make it happen. He wants the shot and the moves to be perfect. Patience is the key.
Moving on,
This scene shows that a lot is going on. Too many moves and too many chaos. After one sequence, I notice Jackie runs away to another location. This allows the audience to breathe for awhile before the next brawl begins. I figure this is quite interesting as it also prevents the audience from getting bored.
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One of the best fight scenes I’ve ever watched recently would be Kingsman’s church fight scene. Overall the fight looks very appealing and very violent. What makes it look violent? From my point of view, its definitely the speed of the hits and the sound effects. But of course in this video clip has some copyright issues and we can’t hear it, but it from it’s visuals we can imagine the sound of the hits.
Another great point I want to point out would be the cinematography. I could stress how much I love the way the shoot it. The fight scene is shot with one camera tracking around Harry’s (Colin Firth) back showing the full choreography of the fight with one shot. With so many cast at the back doing whatever they have to do, I assume this is extremely hard to direct, choreograph and film.
I notice there was a short pause where we see a POV shot of Harry killing the church goers and I assume that shot was for the audience to breathe a little. The same with Jackie Chan’s kind of style.
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I’m not saying the movie is bad, but I did enjoy it for the most part. However, the fight scenes ALWAYS bothers me. If you notice, the way the fight is good, but I get pretty annoyed when they kept changing the camera angles as one person its. A cut in every single hit does not make it feel like a hit at all. Some of these guys CAN fight, but why are they using this editing technique to cover up? I also notice that the camera operator swings the frame a lot to make the hits to look more violent. If anyone notice this, some of the punches or kicks look like its quite slow but the damage it deals is massive. They could have sped up that hit so it looks more violent. Why is that? From my experience in a recent shoot for this research (have yet to finish edit, lots of mistakes to cover up as well), they shake the camera angles too much. Hence, if they sped up at that particular hit, the frame would move inconstantly; revealing to the audience that that shot was sped up. If you watch it again, look at how the frame shakes as the camera operator shoots it hand held. It moves quite consistently but if made some speed changes, it would be very obvious.