 So why don't fights look like they do in the movies? I mean if you go on YouTube and you Google real fist fights for fights, they're messy, they're sloppy. It looks nothing like John Wick. Why is that? Mainly because movies are made for entertainment. They're not real. In real life, when people fight, there's real harm intended. There's anger, there's drama, there's no puns, there's no dramatic timing, there's no perfectly executed techniques. It's for entertainment. So today we're going to highlight some of the differences between real fights and staged fights or fake fighting. Now one of the partial inspirations for this episode is a class that Whitebell Zach and I took way back in 2001 in college. It was one of the coolest classes I ever took. It was called Stage Combat and it was for theater and it was literally how to do combat on stage for dramatic purposes but be believable enough for the audience. The thing is taking that class actually opened up my perspectives to different contexts. I'm a movie lover. I've grown up, you know, studying martial arts and my other passion is filmmaking and movies. So I always looked at the differences. Doing the stage class was even a different perspective altogether because there's different considerations for stage than there are on screen. Well for one, in theater, on stage, there are no retakes. Your timing and sound has to be done on the spot. There's no dub overs. There's no cutting camera angles. And also, yeah, in film, you can just try again and do another setup or pick another angle and add sound effects. You can add makeup, whatever, you know, for spots. On stage, it's got to be done right then and there with the resources you have at hand. When you're on stage, performing on stage versus on the movie, there's usually a lot more upscale in terms of more drama, more exaggerated movements, speeches a little bit more exaggerated, mainly because it's a single camera shot if you want to refer to it that way. The energy has to come from the talent and the performances versus editing music cutting. On stage, well, how do they make up for the lack of the filter? How do they make up for these fights to make them dramatic? Well, let's just talk about some of the things we learned in our class that were kind of fun. Grabs. When it comes to grabbing, one thing is on stage and when you're acting, safety is paramount. So you're not actually grabbing someone's hair trying to hurt them. So one of the tricks we learned was when we did hair grabs or somebody grabs by the hair, we would grab their arm. And it wasn't so much that they were pulling us along as we were almost almost we were guiding kind of guiding them. We were going with it and they were following us. So there's no actual pulling intention, but it looked funny. It looked convincing because there was a struggle there. When it came to like slamming body parts, like slamming someone's head into something was a similar approach. The trick was you kind of, you make a dramatic and oh, no, you grab me. And when you slam down, you use your hands to hit the surface and you kind of time it. So it looks like it's your face or psychologically it registers as your face, but then you get that nice wham, smacking sound. So for stage, this kind of has some of that is done just it's sometimes the victim is helping guide the action when you're choking someone. Obviously, you're not really choking the person that is sold with emotion. So obviously, you know, you're going to put the hands around the neck, but it's very like contact. You sell it with the acting. You sell it with the emotion. You sell it with the facial expressions. That's what the audience is watching. They're not trying to see if your thumbs are applying on their layering or anything like that. They're looking at you slaps and punches. These were kind of cool for slaps. The technique was actually simple. It's how you stage it and you would stand a certain way. So the person being slapped usually had their in our case in our class, we had our back to the audience and the person slapping was more of an over the shoulder. And a little trick we learned was our hands were down and it's a little bit of a slide of hand that when you would turn like you would react to the slap, your hands would actually kind of do a little bit of a slapping sound. But the way you move, it kind of looked like you were just reacting. And the more practice you got with that, the smoother you got, it actually led itself to some convincing slaps, even though we were never touching each other. Punches were very similar. Punches were cool. The person would throw the punch. The person reacting did the same thing. Hands came up and you would react it. But instead of slapping your hand, your hand would kind of hit your chest. So for like more of a deeper thud. This took a little bit more effort because it was very easy to get more of a slapping sound. So you wanted this deep penetrating thud, this guttural sound. So basically reacting to the punch, you would turn your head, same hand reaction, but you would just kind of glance off and kind of slap yourself in the process. It'd be more of a if you do it right, it can be very convincing. And when you hear the audience go, it's that you know you sold it. And sometimes you just have to get creative using props or whatever your scenario is. White Bill Zach and I basically this was this was a class that we had. It was a full full semester course. And for our final exam, we all had to come up with our own fight scenes. And White Bill Zach and I, we came up with our own like a little school setting. The whole performance is actually up on our Patreon. For those who want to see it, I'd recommend checking it out, make fun of us all you want. It's it's old, it's 2001. And sometimes you just have to get creative. In one of the scenes, I'm sitting in a chair and White Bill Zach was going to kick me in the groin. Well, we're like, well, how could we make this a little bit more dramatic? The simple thing was I sat at the edge of the seat and Zach came up and he kicked the bottom of the chair right under me. It made this horrible sound. And the crowd went, Oh, obviously it was even it looked fake, but the sound and the reaction and the whole moment sold it because it was unexpected. So when you're on stage, you got to get creative with stuff like that. The camera, there's all sorts of freedom, but on stage, it's all about creativity and ingenuity. When it comes to film and movies, okay, we know the actors aren't really fighting and hurting each other, but it has to be believable. We don't want to be reminded that it's fake. We it doesn't it can't feel stage. It has to feel real. That's where we immerse ourselves into the film. And part of that to make it believable is we'll determine the appropriate style of fighting with your characters and your story. You're not going to have do a street fight, you know, try to portray as a realistic street fight whenever your character is flying around on rooftops, you know, in like the old kung fu movies. Also, if it's a comedy or a fantasy, you've got more leeway. It can be, it can be sillier. You can get away with a lot more. There's definitely an appropriate approach to each film and how you're going to choreograph it. So the number one difference I think in terms of presentation is watch someone on stage versus film is the camera. The camera is a tool and it can be used to your advantage to simulate the fight scene. So for example, if you've got two people fighting and you want to simulate a hit, if the camera is physically close into the actors, it has a better chance of seeing the depth between them. It can see better spatial difference between them versus if you move that camera way back and use a telephoto lens and you zoom in, what happens there is you're magnifying the picture. Well, you know, the foreground background, they're all magnifying at the same time. It's the space illusion compresses. So it actually looks like someone who might be three, four, five feet apart, look like they're right on top of each other because you're compressing the image. That's a very, very big advantage to film. And you see a lot of movies where sometimes it looks like they connect, but they really didn't. But similarly to theater and on stage, the actor still have to emote and portray the reactions to sell it. Additionally, since the camera is a tool, a lot of times the camera will react with the actor. So if somebody gets punched, pay attention to the next time you watch a fight scene. If a person that your main character gets punched, does the camera ever do like a little rattle or a shake or if they get knocked over? Is it ever tilt? It's pulling you in. It's giving you the perspective psychologically of what they're feeling. The camera pulls you into the fight whereas on stage, you're a spectator of the fight. And then when it comes to editing, editing, it takes the pacing. So you have multiple angles of the same fight scene. You can cut it slow. You can cut it quick for an intense battle or you can put your pauses in the middle. Again, stage play doesn't have that. The actors have to set their own timing. Props, weapons and films, okay? If somebody in the movie gets a bottle broken over their head, the actor's not getting hit with a real bottle. It's usually sugar glass or some sort of breakaway prop. Same thing with chairs. They're made out of the balls of wood or something very very fragile said that breaks looks great on camera. If you actually break a wing chair over somebody's back or head, you're killing them or seriously hurting them. In movies it's exciting and adds to the tension but the props are designed that way to be breakaway. Now when it comes to the weapons and films, knives are often sometimes just the hilt and they'll animate the blade and later. Or it's a rubber knife that a lot of times you can just buy rubber weapons and you paint them a certain way and it makes them look real but they're totally safe to work with. And in today's movie environment, especially with films like John Wick, sometimes the action gets so intense they just animate the whole thing outright or they'll animate the action scene outright so you get away with a lot more. You have a lot more freedom with that. But when it comes to the actual real action, you have to give credit to the stuntman. The professional stuntman and what they do in the films sometimes will make or break the film. You can tell when a stunt looks real they've done their job. A lot of times it's safely done like with wire work and pads but then if you look at the old Kung Fu movies, Jackie Chan and his crew, sometimes they just throw themselves off building and hope they land okay. So a big shout out and a lot of respect to the stuntmen of films. You guys make the action look fantastic. That's on you. Now this part can get a little bit subjective. My pet peeves when I watch fight scenes, what draws me out of a fight scene in the movie and this might not necessarily align with yours but I'll be curious to know what you guys feel. I don't like when I'm watching film and the choreography is obviously rehearsed in choreographed where it looks like choreography. That pulls me out of it because then it feels more like they're playing and usually lower budget movies will do this. Doing a fight scene that looks realistic and highly intense takes skill. It takes a budget. It takes a lot of work. So when the movie kind of skips on that and it looks two-stage in a film it draws me out of it. Also when the camera's up their nose for a fight scene that drives me nuts. You're showing us these really cool characters that are going to fight. Let's see some of the fight. When the cameras are up close and they're shaking all you see is blurs. That doesn't tell me much. I can hear it. It sounds good but you're taking me out of the drama a little bit. Pull back a little bit or at least show some establishing and then cut it into close. Balance it out. Some of the culprits of this were one of my favorite movies was Lethal Weapon. I love that movie but the very end scene when Riggs is fighting the bad guy, you can't really see what the heck is going on. It's just too blur, blur, blur, blur, blur. Even Batman Begins did that a lot too. So that's just my personal preference. I want to see some of the fight. If I'm going to go see an action film let me see some of the action. And sometimes this is a stylistic choice or they'll put it in for dramatic or comedic purposes but when the fighting feels like it's a trade-off like I throw a punch, you throw a punch. I throw a punch, you throw a punch. It feels more like a fighting game rather than a real-life fight. People don't do that. People don't throw a punch and miss. They stop to go like uh-oh his turn. So people will just keep on swinging. Remember, in real fights, people are enraged. So if you're portraying this on camera try to get that rage in there. When it feels like they're just taking turns that kind of takes me out of it unless of course it's for comedic value or specifically done that way because of the context of the film. And this is a big pet peeve of mine when it comes to weapons and movies. Nothing will kill the mood for me for a fight scene than two people sword fighting and they're just tipping each other swords. Tip, tip. It looks like kids playing sword fighting versus someone actually trying to hurt each other. Weapons scenes, okay a weapon in presence in the film is supposed to up the drama, up the intensity. You got to match that. Make it exciting. A well choreographed cut edited shot scene will be very effective but it has to look real. Not just you know people don't really fight with weapons just kind of just aim for the tip of the weapon just to make that clanging sound. So that's just my personal thing and a lot of you I know you know what I'm talking about. You know the movies out there that you can see where the effort is and where it's not. And since we're on a topic of weapons when a person gets hit with a deadly weapon in the film and they shake it off it's kind of like come on. And yes there's a lot of over-the-top action movies but if someone gets hit in the face with a wrench full blast they're not going to turn their hand and go ow and keep fighting. There are jaws over there and they're dead. So that's something that pulls me out of a film. If it's portraying a realistic fight and they're taking hits from something like a piece of metal on the face and they just brush it off that kind of kills it for me. And also on that same effect with standing so many hits you know everybody comes across as Iron Man sometimes if the good guy takes a thousand hits to the body and the face he goes over and he's like oh he looks tired but he gets that energy he comes back and fights it's like sometimes it's not believable. I really respect the films when the character gets hurt you see them react they feel they're hurt and a lot of films do that. Characters who get sudden skills. I get it that a lot of these are character pieces and we're trying to see development and growth but when a character has trained in something and all of a sudden they're a master by the end of the film depending on how it's presented can be kind of silly. And as much as I love the show Cobra Kai seems to be an example of this where these kids train for a few weeks and they're all black belts in the tournament competing and they're doing crescent kicks every time they're fighting somebody. To do a good crescent kick and knock somebody out with it is a skill that you don't develop in a week. It's a harder kick to perform it takes a long time to get your power behind it and it's not that practical to walk up somebody and just crescent kick them and for some reason that show likes to do that all the time but you see this a lot of times movies where where the character only has a little bit of experience but at the end they've mastered it all and that's like that again that kind of kills it for me. Now to be even more subjective here's just a couple of examples of fight scenes that I personally like this is by no means a complete list and honestly I'm going to leave a ton of stuff out because everyone out here is going to have different opinions so tell me your favorite fight scenes but some of the ones that stick in my mind because the way they made me feel when I watched it for example the New James Bond movies Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace both those movies open up with a fight scene and a struggle that may be uncomfortable the very first time I watched it because it didn't feel staged it there's anger it's raw there's more scrambling it's not clean like they're slipping they're kind of moving it felt like a real fight and that just kind of stuck in my mind because not too many movies at that time were doing that in the same way so I love that it totally pulled me in Jackie Chan movies let me come on how is there anyone better who can use this environment in the fight and make a fight scene even though a lot of his movies are comedies I love that he doesn't just try to stand or take on an army in most Jackie Chan fight scenes when he's fighting the group of people he's just trying to get out of there he's trying to escape and just the use of his environment is just some of the best that I've ever seen so we gotta give a hand of applause to Jackie Chan and what he puts into his fight scenes and it would be at the service if I didn't mention the daredevil hallway scene and I mentioned this one specifically because one it appears to be one long take it was filmed in a certain way to appear like you're there walking with the character but it starts off intense and the differences are the bad guys get back up they don't knock out easy like he'll knock a guy down they get right back up and he's look so over and you can see the exhaustion you see the frustration and as the fight goes on the characters you can feel them getting tired more tired they get sloppier they have to stop to catch their breath it kind of feels a little more natural and as a viewer since you're with them start to finish almost you can kind of feel that sense of exhaustion and I thought that was hands down a beautifully choreographed fight scene definitely standout moment in the show if you have not seen it I do recommend watching it it's got some great choreography in that series and sometimes the actors really will hit each other it's not always choreographed case in point Rocky Balboa okay Sylvester Stallone is kind of an anomaly in himself he is one tough dude and he puts his all into his films he's in fantastic shape at 70 now than most people are in their 20s and when they were filming Rocky Balboa he wanted to change it up a little bit from his other films he wanted to feel a little bit more like a real boxing match which is why they filmed it in the HBO video style versus the dramatic film style of the previous movies and it wasn't choreographed as much as they actually hit each other so they actually made contact he wanted it to feel real he wanted to be a little bit more authentic and I think it comes across and there's even a shot in there too that he he said in an interview that Antonio Carver actually hit him hard enough that it actually really rung his bell so the reaction you're seeing Sylvester Stallone give on screen is his real-life reaction he said he had to fight to stay conscious while they were shooting that and they filmed that in front of a live crowd which even added to it it was a real event in Vegas and as a pre-fight they announced to the crowd they were going to film a scene from Rocky and the actors came in and they did their shot right there they did the sequence right there with a real crowd so the energy is real the fighting is realistic and realistically portrayed and it just to me it added so much to that moment so those are just some examples of movies that stand out to me in terms of their fights there's a lot more I could list I'm sure a bunch of you are screaming right now oh you left this movie out or how about this one yeah I am I want to hear from you tell me your favorite fight scenes what are your best moments and what made them cool to you what made them stand out to you so basically those are some of the key differences between real-life fighting and staged or fake fighting if you're in the training the martial arts don't train like you're going to fight in the movies I have unfortunately no people who have thought this way I have known people who thought that if they were fighting against two people if they duck they'd punch each other knock each other out that's not how the real world works if you're really training for real just understand that movies are entertainment and they're crafted to be exciting but they are no way realistic and also for those of you who are more interested in how film stunts work and fighting stunts work I do recommend the channel Rustic they they're a stuntman they do kind of break down some of the tips that they go and how they portray fights in realistic manner so go give them a quick quick look some cool stuff there so thank you guys so much for watching please like subscribe tell me your favorite fight scenes explain to me why the why the scene came across you why it speaks to you what drew you into it I definitely want to hear what I might have left out on this list and for those of you who want to check out our whole stage combat performance we do have it on our patreon so please please go support a channel go check that out and the other exclusive content thank you so much