Final Major Project Evaluation- Born To Die
THE IDEA
For my final major project I planned to create a fight scene for a film idea I created. It is the final Fight Scene in the Film and Raven is an assassin who kills Luna’s sister in a job. Luna seeks revenge, kidnapping Raven’s brother, Logan, and trying to kill him. Raven runs in just in time to save him before Luna unfolds why she wants to kill Logan to him. Raven wants to protect Logan, leading them to fight. It doesn’t reveal who wins but implies it at the end, leaving it to interpretation- Who they feel was right in this situation and who was wrong.
CHANGES
Originally I was going to be creating a trailer for the film idea, including a fight scene at the end, and base it off of a psychodrama. This became too ambitious and unrealistic to complete in the time we had to complete this assignment. I changed my idea to just completing the fight scene from the film and was going to have four brothers. In the end, I changed my idea to two girls fighting and the brother spectating. This also changed as the actor for the brother dropped out at the last second, causing me to have to alter the script ever so slightly.
INSPIRATIONS
Some of my inspirations for this fight scene were Kill Bill and Naruto Shippuden: Kakashi vs Obito for the choreography styles. These were the two inspirations for my fight scene because of the pacing and the style of fighting that was included. Both are based off of martial arts and allowed me to see some moves I recognised and could perform. The styles helped me to understand how to pace my fight scene overall.
Naruto Shippuden: Kakashi vs Obito gave me inspiration for my fight scene for many reasons. The first reason is that they talk beforehand, giving backstory and allowing you to understand why they are fighting and what relationship they used to have. I wanted this to be evident in my own, making the act of revenge evident from a scene similar to this one. Another reason that this inspired me was the fact that it had moments where they both got knocked over or hit. This makes the fight feel more even in their fighting skills although one will end up with the upper hand; Kakashi.
This is how I wanted it to feel in my fight scene, Luna having the upper hand for the beginning and Raven gaining the advantage near the end of the fight. Another part I took inspiration from was the fact that they start with fist fight and move onto weapons, showing how much the fight escalates and how serious the fight is overall. This was again something I wanted in my own fight scene and watching this allowed me to see a way of doing this. The camera work was also something else that inspired me, such as the close up of the eyes before the fight scene to show emotion.
Kill Bill also inspired me, especially the fight scene between the Bride, Gogo and The Crazy 88's. The choreographed fight scenes are well planned and quick. It keeps the audience entertained from the wide use of different camera shots and works incredibly as an overall scene. Although some moves are unrealistic, the stand off when they are readying their weapons is very realistic and is also a way to build tension for the upcoming fight scene. I respect the amount of people that had to learn this choreography and how much time and dedication went into this scene alone. I took inspiration from the still moments throughout the fight scene, allowing the person to observe their enemy even if it is for a split second.
The inspirations for the camera movements came from the fight scene called "London Brawling", choreographed by Yung Lee. The camera moves with the action and stops when the action stops. This makes the audience feel involved in the action and allows them to see every movement perfectly. The low angles are used to show the one guys power with the weapon that he has, which is an umbrella. I loved the fluidity of this movement, myself including it in my own fight scene a couple of times to follow the action. Although this fight isn't from a movie and has comedy value, the camera work is very unique and allows you to follow the action better than multiple camera shots to show it in great detail like this shot. It managed to inspire me to do similar in my own, using a dutch tilt to follow the action and a moving camera to do the same effect during the pole fight section.
CHOREOGRAPHY
Choreographing the fight scene took a long process, myself trying to include high performance moves in martial arts to keep it entertaining but not too hard that my actors couldn't perform. I decided on kicks being higher level, such as the back kick and jump kick, and to keep the rest on a steady level. I choreographed the fight scene with Anna on the first day, trying to see what was easy enough to perform and could be made to look more brutal in the use of camera angles. As I am trying to keep mine realistic, there are no ridiculous flips like you see in films because of the fact that there are no actual moves like this in Shotokan karate which I studied and practiced for 4 years under training, still practicing in my spare time without classes. I taught them the bare basics in punches and the punches that I wanted to show impact, those being ones that make hard contact and would be very harmful in a real fight. I taught some people martial arts moves before, making teaching this choreography much easier and because I have the knowledge of a martial artist.
Before choreographing this, I would sit and think about the moves that I would perform in this kind of situation and against this kind of opponent in my head whenever I got the chance to do so. I imagine this to be an important and brutal fight, myself including blows that would knock someone flat to the ground and could even knock them out. Luckily, the actors fighting aren't trained in martial arts and won't hit hard enough to do any damage to each other if they accidentally hit each other. I tried choreographing from the character, Ravens, point of view as I was originally going to play this character before asking Rhino to play this character. Raven has martial arts kicks very similar to my own. Myself being a direct puncher and a strong kicker, I split these two elements into two characters. This made it easy to choreograph, myself knowing how you could block these attacks and even completely dodge them to get a blow in on the other person. The choreographing I have done is how this fight could actually turn out, one being stronger but the other quicker and more direct which allows them to turn the fight to their own advantage.
FILMING PROCESS
Lots of things in the filming process went well. The camera shots and movements flowed like I thought they would when I watched them back and gave off the sense of danger that I wished to create in my fight scene. I was also very well organised and prepared as I had all of the documents ready and knew which shots I wanted to get and in what order. My actresses were also well prepared and organised as they practiced the fight scene in their spare time and I kept them up to date with every change throughout the process. I was told I directed well by my two actors, Anna quoting, "Kerrie was a very good director. She gave us lots of tips and directions on how to perform."
I directed them and gave them multiple tips on how to perform the moves correctly and how they would look on camera. There was many times I would stop them and teach them some more basic karate to allow them to perform it at the best of their ability. The actresses performed very well for two people with no experience in the martial art field. They managed to come across as the characters that I wanted to present in this scene and performed the moves very well for beginners in martial arts. Some other things that went well was the acoustics of the hall were good enough that the sound was correct and there was no need for a Tascam or microphone to capture the sound.
EDITING
The editing process went well and helped develop my editing skills dramatically as the fight scene had to be edited to a fast and accurate pace. I started with lining up all of my shots and making sure they were in order, myself the day before numbering the shots I wanted to use. I then cut the clips down and tried to make them edit to a pace to add a sense of adrenaline and timing to the action. Listening to the audio, I knew there were areas that there could be sound effects to make the video impact the audience much more than the video would without them. I added some sound effects that I scoped out on YouTube and add music over the sound effects. This made the sound effects fade in and make them sound a lot more natural than they sounded separately. I used sound effects such as punches, blocks and screams to add some suspense to the fight scene.
ISSUES
Some issues were that one of the cameras seemed to have no audio in the playback or at least very little audio. Luckily, it seemed to catch the audio well and performed to a high standard like the other camera used. Another issue was I was going to use a boom microphone but the wire wasn't in the bag that makes the boom microphone work. Luckily I had a Tascam for back up but the acoustics of the hall, as I mentioned, were good enough for the sound levels. Another issue was one of my actors didn't turn up, leaving me with the two main actresses and myself having to retreat to my back up script which didn't have any lines with this character speaking and continued to tell the story well enough to the audience. Another issue was the chairs in the background couldn't be moved into a different room as there was no other rooms that it could have been moved in to. The bags can also been seen in the background but seem as if they can be edited out by cropping the shots.
COMPARING TO A PROFESSIONAL
In Kill Zone SPL, the choreographed fight scene is fluent and amazing overall. It keeps the audience entertained throughout the whole fight scene as it added a thrill of danger by using the weaponry that they had; one being on a advantage. The movements are quick and strong which made the whole scene more impactful and tense throughout. The camera angles didn't change much throughout but still seemed to work. These camera angles more focused on the expressions of the characters and the hits that they took. The camera stuck on one angle for most of the fight but was angled enough to make the fight look realistic. The sound is also well done, making all of the hits sound painful and every movement sounding as if they were fighting with all of their power. The sound was amazing and it made the scene much more tense because it gave across the impression that they are trying to kill each other.
In comparison, my fight scene has a lot more faster cuts and more cuts overall to show different angles but their fight scene has much longer choreography than mine. Their fight also has weapons all throughout where as my fight scene only gained weapons half way through the fight scene. Their setting was a lot better than my own, fitting the purpose much better than my own but doesn't address the reason why they are fighting unlike my own. They also used make up like my own but went more over the top with theirs where as I tried to keep mine realistic and accurate to where the punches and kicks landed on them.
I think mine looks good but could have been longer and had a better setting like the fight scene from Kill Zone SPL. Mine isn't quite professional but more semi professional as the mis-en-scene let my video down and gave it less of a purpose.
FEEDBACK
This is some feedback I have gathered about my final edit of my fight scene. All the responses I gained gave positive feedback and helped to point out areas of improvement in my video and gave ideas on how to improve them. The feedback was critical and allowed me to understand the points of weakness and the points that were strengths, such as the music being a negative and the movement shots being a strength. With the feedback given, I know how to improve in the future and what I could change to make the fight scene look more professional.
"The moment where the girl sends a punch out, her opponent catches it and swings her around and away. The camera movement in this is brilliant, really captures the movement. You'd built up to a frantic pace and as a viewer you wanted more of that and it just tails off before it […]The extreme close-up on the punch to the face would have benefited from a possible camera shake and the actress reacting with more whiplash at having been face punched. […] I'd just suggest that as it's a fight scene cuts should be faster and shots should be shorter it's an action scene it should be frantic but this did come across in some places."- Giles Cosgrove (Peer)
"Good variety of shots and great make-up. Fight scenes are very difficult to plan and pull off so I think you have done a good job tackling this one. At times, especially near the beginning, there is a bit of soft focus going on but it does correct itself throughout. Also the mise-en-scene needed some consideration and I have said this to you before. Maybe a different location would've added more to the narrative. One final note; I'm not keen on the change in music, I like that the music stops to build suspense (as they pick up the poles) but think it should go straight back in to the fast paced music we had before the silence. Overall some great work here, very difficult to achieve but you have achieved it."- Jake Elson (Lecturer)
"I liked it, your best shots are where the camera follows the movement, and the narrative is clear, i dont know if it was the cameras themselves or just lighting but some shots are nice and clear whilst others are quite yellowish but that makes it look a tad weird, but I do enjoy it, music fits well and dialogue between fights keeps it intriguing."- Goncalo Santos Ganga (Peer)
WHAT I HAVE LEARNT
I believe the video I created fitted to my target audience of teenagers and young adults, being slightly gory but not too much to go over the line. I learnt that colour correction is the primary colour changing for any kind of clip. This makes the image look more natural and gather the correct colours such as the skin colours. It focuses heavily on the amount of light in the colours of the image. Meanwhile, Colour grading focuses on the actual colours in the image, allowing you to alter the colours by balancing the red, greens and blues in the image. Colour correction changes the lighting and colour grading enhances the colours in the image. I also learnt how to follow the action by using dutch tilts throughout the fight scene and how to edit to a fast pace to give impact.
WHAT I WOULD CHANGE
What I would do next time would be to try and remove the chairs from the background to give off a better sense of isolation. I would also make the choreography longer as I didn't expect my other actor to not be able to turn up which made the choreography a lot shorter than I expected. I would of also made the actors practice more if we had more time to plan and film for this shoot; more than the times we practiced.
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References
"Kill Zone - S.P.L Donnie Yen Vs Wu Jing (HD)". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 15 May 2017.
"Kakashi Vs Obito - English Dub - Last Battle - Naruto". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.
"Kill Bill - The Bride VS. Gogo And The Crazy 88'S (Alternate Version)". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.
"London Brawling". YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 23 May 2017.
