How To Do A Fight Scene

Which makes a big

fight

is a pretty easy question, but after watching this video for over a year, I found out the hard way that it has a really difficult answer. If there is one thing that is certain, it is when a

fight

is done well. Just know it when you see it. I think what's really interesting about this is that I talked to about 30 people about the Batman V Superman movie. I've met some who loved it, others are indifferent, and others who despise that movie. every fiber of their being, but one thing that all of those people unanimously agreed on is that the fight in the warehouse is the best Batman action sequence ever brought to the big screen and that there is something about it that resonates with everyone. those who see it, but it doesn't really matter if you're involved in the plot or what your tastes, tropes and genres are because when you're in the theater and you see this you can't help but squirm in your seat and feel the weight behind that box that's breaks.

The guy's skull opens up and if you're at the movies and the action has you shifting in your seat as you feel every last blow, you know you're watching a great fight. I mean, one of the things I think is most curious about this is how people disagree all the time about whether a movie is good or bad, but when a really cool action sequence comes along, almost everyone agrees. that's the case, but what makes a great fight good? What are the devices and techniques you can use to evoke? that guttural reaction and investment in the outcome on the part of your audience, well, I think a good place to start is, as a general rule, the less certain you are that you will win, the more exciting the fight becomes.

I remember Titan in Infinity War, where the Avengers. They're trying to take down Panos and how much I was glued to my seat when I first saw that fight and it wasn't the same kind of investment as that Batman and Superman fight where the choreography was really good and I felt the point of weight every time. Hitting was for a different reason and I'm pretty sure that reason was because I knew there was a very real chance that Thanos would actually win this and that the heroes we care about could not only lose but also die and as the fight goes on of Titan as Thanos wipes the floor with hero after hero and that fear that someone weak might stain grows, that fight only gets brighter with it and I would say that Titan fight is the best action sequence that The MCU has given us has done so far because of how well it taps into the audience's fear that the fans can actually win and the thing is, we've all seen those action

scene

s before that are the perfect opposites of this right and are just the right types of fights. more boring ones where the heroes do nothing but win, win, win, and overcome every obstacle as if they were all just an inch tall.

They are the fights in which a hero has to fight, where he loses control of the situation, where plans are ruined. and it seems like the villain is actually about to win only for the hero to barely emerge victorious in the end. Those are usually the most compelling fights and when it comes to examples, I think it best embodies this point. an infinity war or John Wick or any superhero movie, it's great since the 2018 movie and if you haven't seen the update yet, you should because it's a really good action movie, but the basic idea of ​​this movie is that the protagonist he's just an average guy who's had an AI implanted in his skull and it's advising him how to be a badass and that in itself is cool, it's something we haven't really seen before so that gives this fight that originality. that we are about to die sex.

It has really good entertainment value, but what this fight that we're about to see does it really well and what I think is the number one lesson you can learn from it is how well it does that shifting power dynamic, so what the fight begins with our gray. protagonist in the corner when the bad guy enters, he is behind him and Ray has the element of surprise, therefore he has the power, but he freezes. He's clearly never been in a fight before and doesn't know what to do, so now he's lost his surprise when the bad guy turns around, throws Gray into a table and punches him and just wipes the floor with him and this here It's great, the audience is scared for our protagonist as it looks like he's going to get his ass kicked or even potentially. killed and then Gray fights back with a right hook, maybe he wins but no, it gets blocked and now Gray has even less power.

The bad guy has an even better chance of winning when he starts choking Gray, but then all hope is lost. The moment the AI ​​calmly asks to take control of his body, Gray shouts permission granted and his body, regardless of Gray's will, proceeds to kick the guy's ass in this cathartic and fun turn of the fight, us We indulged in the butt-kicking for a while, but I Damn, the villains have a knife, maybe he'll win, but, oh no, the best thing is that he calmly grabbed it and used it again on him and just keeps hitting him. effortless butt and what I would say is the glue that holds this fight together and makes it.

It's so fun to see that the power dynamics are handled so well that the originality is great, don't get me wrong, the fact that this reluctant guy has this AI just smashing glasses over his head and Ray just gapes in horror as the hands do these things is simply original and it is brilliant, but if from the beginning of this fight the AI ​​has complete control over its body and from the first hit the hero was completely in control of everything, then the fight would not have been even close. fun to see that it was at that turning point in the middle where the AI ​​takes control, it contrasts with the previous moments where I was losing a lot and as a result makes those moments of loss feel even heavier​ of fear and those moments of victory feel much better victorious cuts the lack of a better job but when we see that the hero does nothing but win that is boring and when the villain does nothing but win - that is also boring the The best fights are in the middle and I like a seesaw where the hero is winning one moment, then the villain does something unexpected and now he's about to win and it goes back and forth like that, but obviously a shifting power dynamic isn't everything. that you can have in a fight where the hero takes a hit and then the villain. gets hit, then the hero gets hit and then it goes back and forth several dozen times and it can still be very boring and that brings us to the second rule of making a great fight and it is this Oh no, is that a symbol of cushioning which is such a shame, I won't give it a second.

Uh oh that's bad, apparently these videos just got blocked in your region. I guess you'll never know what rule 2 was. That's very annoying. I can't imagine how annoying it must be for you, if only you had installed Nord VPN, the sponsor of today's video, and this crisis could have been avoided entirely. I don't know about you, but I hate regional blocks with every fiber of my being, as you know when browsing the Internet. a page that you want to see but then it turns out that it is blocked in your region and now you really want to see it, but before you wanted to spend two minutes looking at it and then just click to exit, but now it turns out that Someone said no and you can't see this.

I'm looking at you last week tonight, presented by an Englishman, but for some reason it's banned in England anyway for no reason. Thank you very much - Oliver, wait, run. finished and if you're like me and you're like well now I want to see that thing more than anything in the world thank you very much well my rebel friend who also likes it and is subscribed today is your lucky day because if you click that link in the description that es nord vpn comm forward cut closer look or use my closer look coat at checkout you will get unparalleled freedom to see all the weird stuff you would never otherwise be able to see and if you use my link or code you will get a 70 % off a three-year plan plus an extra month free, which is great I must say, and no, buying the screen hasn't made me crazy with enthusiasm to the point where my usage This may be a bit excessive and yes if you click on that link in the description which is nord vpn calm/when you look closer or use my closer look coat at checkout you will get a percentage off a three year plan and an extra month free is a very good offer you should do it you should do it do it look I'm a good guy so I'll lend you the My Lord subscription so you can watch the rest of this video and is it there?

Come on, you can watch the rest now, but I won't be around for the next recent book you come across, which means the next time you come across something that says no, no, no, we hate your country, we mean no. let the people of your country see our stuff because we hate you. Unfortunately, I won't be there to help you, so you'll have to buy Nord if you want to see more of the reason block stuff anyway, let's get back to the video and that takes us there. to the second rule to have a great fight and that is that this variety is king.

I mean, Batman's fight was fun, watching him throw that box and crack that bad guy's skull was evocative as hell, but what if Batman used the exact same move immediately afterwards? again and he achieved the exact same effect of hitting that guy's head and some special blood on the wall. Better that the second use not only would have been much less evocative than the first, but it would have also made the first use cheaper and when you're approaching a fight as a general rule you should never use the same move twice and this room is big.

I think it's really worth picking up because a lot of boring fights I've seen are boring because they are so repetitive since the same move is used over and over again to the point of numbing the audience's senses and when it comes to adding variety to your fight, is much more nuanced than simply having people use different types of punches and kicks after an example. If you're writing a science fiction with advanced technology, then in your fight you should come up with several creative ways to use that technology for surprises and fighting moves that the audience didn't see coming, but that, in retrospect, the audience makes a lot of sense.

Not only are they effective fighting moves, but they are also completely unforeseen, for example, if you have a space weapon designed to destroy alien ships, the aliens do not use large, singular ships, but millions of small ones that crowd together. very close and these weapons are designed so that once they hit a small ship they violently break up all the particles in the vicinity of that ship and as a result eliminate entire swarms, it is a cool weapon, but what happens if you use that technology in a de a way it was not designed for, but it also totally works, for example, shooting at the enemy planet and with a single shot it turns the entire crust of the planet into molten slag like in Ender's Game, in the climax of Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card uses an unpredictable application of a previously established weapon and consequently makes the final shot even more attractive, it is the unexpected twists in a fight that are the highlights that people remember long after putting down the book or leaving of cinema and those moments are often what escalate a fight.

To make it cool, if you're writing with a magic system, the exact same rule applies. Hopefully, before this point in your story, you'll have established how your magic works, so in this fight it's a great idea to have your characters apply it to several. different creative ways that the audience wasn't expecting yet when they happen there, a cathartic surprise as they stick to the rules of the system and create a really effective but impactful fighting move and if you're not doing a fantasy sci-fi. weapons or fantasy with out of this world magic and you are just using everyday weapons in an everyday environment, this still applies to you.

A great example of how it still works would be in Jason Bourne, people don't really consider stationary to be a lethal weapon, but when Jason Bourne grabs a pen in a fist fight and uses it to stab the bad guy with lethal precision, it's something similar to that turn in Ender's Game because it is an effective move but also very original that surprises. in this memorable and fun twist on the fight and while we talk about variety in a fight, as always I'm a bit of a devil's advocate because the other day I listened to Brandon Sanderson's writing conferences and he said something about fight

scene

s that well, I don't agree, no, no, we have a problem that we are approaching and writing action sequences as well and that is that our culture is now saturated with visual media and the visual media is really good and the action sequences are fine , really, really.

Well, for example, you can have an action sequence in a movie that's basically 20 minutes of Jackie Chan kicking people or occasionally throwing a hammer at them. What if you wrote in a book that one-sixth of your book was that fight sequence? Well, it would be this, yeah,go and kicked it again and then kicked it in a different and cooler way and then kicked it with the other foot and the dust flew and then the problem you will run into is in a movie. It's a lot of fun and a book, step by step, is not so fun now.

Great respect to Sanderson and his writing conferences. He gives us very good advice, but I respectfully disagree with this because step by step is a bad moment in both the movie and the movie. book, I mean in that clip he is right about most of what he said, the movie is better at depicting action than the book and step by step in a novel with the same fighting move repeated over and over again , it's a lot more boring than that same fight could be in a movie, but that doesn't mean it's not boring in a movie, it's just a little more tolerable for a viewer to watch than for a reader to read it.

I mean, if you've ever seen a Jackie Chan fight, you'll know that. It's a lot more than just 20 minutes of him kicking people and occasionally throwing a hammer. If his fights were alone, he wouldn't be the action legend he is today. Instead, he uses the surrounding area and the objects it contains in creative ways. that variety we just talked about, for example, where he grabs the ladder and hits three guys with it, hitting one guy's legs with the end, then bends it and warms up one guy with the other half and then catches the guy. last inside. and as he looks around completely confused, Chan punches him through the hole, each of Jackie Chan's fights has dozens of moments like this where he takes boring everyday things and uses his creativity to turn them into lethal weapons and thing is that I firmly believe.

While most of Jackie Chan's fights could be turned into one big section of prose, we're sure you wouldn't describe every punch in exhaustive detail and if you did it would be a really boring fic, but you could summarize 20 seconds instead. of the fight in one line calling them a flurry of punches, then go into detail and describe the highlights as they move around an area and use props in these fun and creative ways. I'm 100% sure you can make it like you know a A good writer can take a Jackie Chan fight and find a way to turn it into perfectly funny and enjoyable bitter prose because there are so many imaginative moments and bits of variety that Chan already has injected into that fight, but to prove my point, that blow... by-blow is universally bad, it's a great example of John Wick 3, so I saw it in the theater last year and the fight scene came up with Halle Berry and her dogs and it was like this, we see our heroes take cover and then he shoots some bad guys, then the dogs bite some bad guys and while the dogs grab them and distract them, our hero shoots them in the head, there's heroes who take cover and shoot more bad guys than dogs bite other bad guys and while the dose distracts by biting them, our hero shoots them in the head, then our hero shoots more bad guys for 30 more seconds and then the dogs appear , grabs some more bodies and while they bite them and distract them, our hero shoots them in the head and it was at this point in the cinema where my gaze went to the ceiling and I started to think about what I wanted for dinner.

I was pretty sure I had some ravioli in the refrigerator. No, I definitely did. What if I could get some like tomatoes and make a nice sauce with that it would be quite delicious and I needed to get some milk and then I heard a scream. I pulled out my daydream and oh look, the dog just went and bit a guy in this Funston, okay, cool, I'm reinvested in the In the fight, I see the dog next to another guy, but that time, instead of the arm , like all the other dozens of times, bit him in the balls and then Halle Berry shoots him in the head while he was distracted, and soon after the dog bites another one. guy and then John Wick shoots him in the head while he's distracted and then how was he right?

I needed to buy some bread. See where I'm coming from when I disagree with Sanderson that, blow for blow, it's bad overall? I mean, John Wick is full of really good fights with interesting imaginative beats. I mean, the first John Wick is one of the best action movies I've ever seen, but that specific fight in the third didn't evoke these guttural physiques. reactions on my part that any big fight should, on the other hand, I was so bored that I spent more time daydreaming and going through my shopping lists than staring at the screen and the reason it was so unappealing was because it was very repetitive and if instead, they came up with some variety, some more imaginative ways to use dogs in a gunfight, that fight would have been considerably more engaging, whether you're an aspiring novelist or you're making movies, and you should know it step by step.

It's always a bad way to do it, you can just get away with it a little more in the visual form than in the written form, but it is the most boring way to do an action scene, always depending on what happens in your action, never let you fight. stagnate and as a general rule never use the same move twice, but here's the thing: yes, having variety in fighting where each hit spices things up is great. Yes, having good blocking and easy to understand choreography is great too. Yes, having the ebbs and flows of a change.

It's also nice to have a power dynamic, but all of those things are secondary in my opinion. I mean, they're definitely nice to have. Your fight will be better if you have them, but if you don't, what I would say is the most important ingredient in your fight will be the lack of that investment from your audience that you desperately want to have and that is that you are telling a great story with characters , plot and pacing and what I think is the biggest mistake most writers and directors make. When it comes to fights, they forget this.

I mean, when you're outlining your plot, you want each scene to somehow push things forward. Each last of your scenes should somehow play a crucial role in advancing the overall story. Not having a random exchange of dialogue that serves no purpose to the plot, characters, or well, building up to the kind of scene that has no reason to be there and, as a result, just bogs down plot that you wouldn't add that way. dialogue exchange, so why should you treat fight scenes any differently if you can only take one point off this video today? Please let it be this.

Your fight scene has to serve the story in some way and for God's sake it can't be. because there hasn't been a fight scene in 20 minutes and the audience is going to get bored, so you're having a fight scene for the sake of a fight scene, please don't do that, maybe it marks a turning point in your main characters . arc and make a decision in the fight that illustrates how far they've come, maybe it marks another step in the plot as the characters have a revelation that unravels a part of the main mystery or something like that and only once does it serve the overall story somewhat invaluable just what's out of the way you should start thinking about choreography and fight moves variety and everything else.

I mean, here's a great example to demonstrate that my point on the stell was a new hope, I think. It's fair to say that the fight scene with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader itself is pretty lacking, it's just two people hitting sticks while talking and it fails, and the fight misses almost all of the points we've covered so far. a shifting power dynamic, riot II doesn't have it, however this fight is iconic, it's possibly one of the most iconic fights in film history and the reason is that while on its own the fight can be pretty tame as part of a general set.

The story plays its role beautifully up to this point, Obi was once the mentor, he was the guy who held Luke's hand and kept him safe and led the way, but now as a result, this fight spoiler warns Obi that one is dead and the entire dynamic of the trilogy has changed irreparably from this point, only Luke in his story has to be independent and solve these Jedi things without any help and it's all because of this fight, this fight scene is a part indispensable not only to the history of this film but to the entire history. story of trilogies, sure it would have been nice if Lucas booked in some filming episodes to give it better choreography, but this fight does the main thing a fight needs to do, so it works perfectly well.

Another great example of a scene that does this is the church. fight in Kingsman the Secret Service when people talk about this movie they are quick to point out how everything is filmed as if it were a single take so it's more immersive and how the action is brutal and full of variety and yes that's part of the reason. The fights are very good, but the hidden glue that makes this action so compelling is the fact that the overarching plots are so smoothly paced. Until now in this movie, the villain Valentine has been planning and plotting to give away his SIM cards for free.

Have everyone use them, but the viewer hasn't figured out why yet. It is this element of mystery that this film has been building up to. This scene not only answers that mystery, but offers that answer in a completely fun way. I mean, we could have had Harry. find a blueprint for the device and then give us the exposition where he just tells us Valentine's plan. Oh, we could have been shown that information in the entertaining action-packed scene that he shows rather than tells and lets the viewer discover on his own. If I were writing that script, I know which one, I would shrug my shoulders and it does more than just reveal the mystery: it marks the death of Harry, who has been the mentor figure and now Eggy has to go on without him and solve all this stuff of espionage for him.

Wait, he's still having a little deja vu. I swear I've seen this somewhere before. I can't stick my nose into it. I wonder where they got that from, but if I had to summarize this point in a tweetable phrase, wink. Wink, nudge, nudge, if you're writing a fight scene and once the fight is over, nothing has changed in the status quo, then you have a bad fight because it doesn't serve the story, it only serves itself, but does it serve itself? what do you think I am? Are you right or am I wrong? What makes it a great fight?

I'd love to know what you think in the comments below anyway. Thanks for watching. Please check me out on Patreon if you haven't already and I have a ton. of cool rewards and you could help me make more of these videos, but anyway thanks for watching and I'll check you out next time for a closer look.