I have finished editing the video, and I didn’t like it as much- it wasn’t what I visioned in my head. But I can’t hate myself too much because of time management. We only had 3 hours to practice and film. Also, our actual camera operator was unable to attend due to last minute urgent matters. But considering a last minute help from another friend, William, he does an amazing job though. However, as mentioned in the previous post, because I am not watching the frame and how the camera move while filming, I have a really hard time showing what I want. I only can direct before the fight and explaining the shot if it was a mistake after the fight. It was very time consuming and I can only skim through what was being shot.
The audio is terrible due to the ventilation and it changes every time we move the camera. I took some soundscapes of it to fix the sound in post but it does not seem to work because some areas are extremely loud and some are not. My last resort was to reduce the levels of the edited audio and then increase the levels for the sound effect to distract the viewers from the annoying ambience at the back.
Some continuity shots were pretty bad as well- such as the part where I was hit in the baby maker and then I counter it with a kick to the back knee and a backfist to the head. The angle was off- I failed to lie to the camera :/ Ugh. I remember it looked good from the view finder, I should have been more attentive but I was in a rush to complete the scene. Lesson learned- you need a larger crew to film a fight scene. Other than casts and a camera operator, we will need;
1. A fight choreographer
Because you tend to forget what you choreograph earlier and also you need a perspective from another person’s eyes.
2. Audio
The audio is off because the sound of the ambience was too soft and the punching sound was too high. Only certain hits matches with the sequence.
3. Someone with medical knowledge
Seriously! unexpected things could have occurred. For instance, I did not made the fight to be very intense, but still, I fell to the ground, hard, and sprained both of my wrists.
We did not use lighting because we thought the light was distributed quite evenly. Also, there is no narrative to this fight. We could not think of anything but what we came up with was we were basically fighting over who is ‘better’ in a Korean girl group. I didn’t need that narrative so I removed it and cut it to the part he swears “screw you!” and then continues with a kick to my face. But anyways, the big finish was something I really look forward to. We took three takes before I felt pain at my back. I performed quite well on the first take, but my friend’s reaction was a bit off as I hit downwards, he reacts as if I hit upwards. We took the second take but this time my performance was off because I was standing too close to him and I did not spin fast enough. The third take was similar to the first but I got hurt as I landed flat on my back. I wanted to continue to the fourth but that was I all I can endure.
The good news was that considering Jackie Chan films a fight scene takes months to shoot, we took 3 hours and although there are some shots that I am very satisfied with, especially the last one.