How Martial Artist Scott Adkins Trains for Action Movie Fights | Vanity Fair

technically martial arts is the art of war it's basically the art of kicking the crap out of someone sorry hi vanity fair scott adkins here today i'm going to walk you guys through how a martial artist trains for a movie i don't remember the first time i saw bruce lee but i was growing up and bruce lee was just the best martial artist in the world and enter the dragon would always be on tv late at night so i think martial arts and films almost impacted me at the same time in a way i remember starting judo at age 10 thinking i want to be like bruce lee and then when i was about 13 i went into taekwondo and then i went into kickboxing a little bit of capoeira a little bit of krav maga a little bit of cheat condom a bit of wushu kung fu and then these days it's it's mma one of the great things about making movies is you always come into contact with masters of various different martial arts i've met amazing people and have always been able to gain knowledge off of these people so the films has actually been great for that as well my first experience in a martial arts film was a baptism by fire let me tell you it's called the extreme challenge and it was directed by stephen dunway who's the little boy and enter the dragon the one that gets slapped on the back of the head by bruce lee never take your eyes off your opponent it was very difficult i remember doing this one fight scene for two whole days on this raft in the middle of this lake with this other wushu expert champion i remember thinking jesus this is difficult this is hard work i was ready to a degree but i don't think anything can properly prepare you for it especially if it's a if it's a hong kong movie because it's just hardcore the way they do it there's no rehearsal period you turn up on the day in hong kong movie and the fight coordinator works out what that section of the fight's going to be and he shows at you and there and then you've got to remember exactly what's been shown and repeat it at a level that is going to be able to be captured on film and then that's it that's it's going to be on film forever then so it's very stressful when the other guy and yourself are moving at such fast pace trying to remember what the next step is it's so fast that actually you can't think of it it's it's done on instinct and if you make a mistake if you don't duck at the right time you're getting hit [Music] doing a hong kong martial arts movie as my first movie was great to be honest because i learned exactly how to do it the correct way in an american or european movie the typical way to shoot action would be you know the way you'd do a drama you'd have your master shot wide shot and then you come in and you get your coverage from from this side and from this side and then a close-up and a closer so if you do that with the fight sequence you're going to end up doing the whole fight sequence from beginning to end many many times so by the time i've done it i'm absolutely shattered but the thing is you can't do the whole fight scene from beginning to end at full speed and make it brilliant for every angle every time it's just impossible but how much of that footage is going to be on the editing floor wasted so the way the hong kong guys do it is that they will say okay we're going to do this section of the fight six to ten movements whatever it is and we're going to use this angle and you're going to throw that kick and i'm going to come in the camera is going to come around here we're going to capture it beautifully we're going to frame it perfectly and then we know that we've got that section of the fight we're going to move on to the next bit that is basically the hong kong way and it wasn't until the matrix when young woo ping was the fight coordinator on the matrix that hollywood actually did it the proper way but then at a certain point they regressed and the shaky cam came in you didn't actually see the fight you just heard it the reason they're shaking the camera is to hide the shortcomings of the performance that's the only reason to do it i'm afraid the born franchise they don't shoot the fights properly and greengrass is a brilliant director and there's a reason he does that shaky cam thing it's more of a documentary style and it puts you in the moment more i was in the bourne ultimatum and uh i didn't know which camera we were supposed to be making the punch well for it had about five cameras going is it for this camera is it for that one or is it for this one the films are great i love them but i'm glad we're not shooting fights like that anymore bloody hell one fight scene that sticks out has a perfect amazing fight sequence is jackie chan drunken master ii otherwise known as legend of drunken master i mean there's many amazing fights that jackie chan has done but this fight i want to point out particularly because i know that they spent three months just on the end fight and it absolutely shows perfectly framed it's brilliantly acted and performed by jackie chan and he fights ken lowe who's known for his amazing flexibility and kicks it's probably jackie chan working at his very very best what's difficult about it is that days on end sometimes you can do it for a whole week every day you come in and you're fighting and yes it's not a real fight but you're going at it the whole day for 12 hours straight if you're a professional fighter you get warmed up and you're warm and you do your thing after 25 minutes you're done yeah you're gonna be banged up and bruised but the thing about film fighting you can't stay warm for the whole day it's impossible so inevitably you're going to cool down you're going to pull a muscle and then the next day you've got to use that pulled muscle to do outrageous crazy things for the whole next day and then eventually that pulled muscle is is a full-on injury and this is what's so difficult about making martial arts films it's hard not to get injured the fight that i have with jason statham in the expandables 2 was actually really easy to film i was injured at the time i tore my acl it had gone but when they said action to be honest you don't really think about it your adrenaline gets going a little bit and you just get on with it it's in between takes that it really hurts but working with jason was great because obviously he's a martial artist himself and he's very experienced with film fighting the thing that most people don't understand about film fighting it's got nothing to do with real martial arts it's got more in common with dancing a real martial artist will really struggle to show the technique to the camera and they also have this thing in the head well that's not the right technique i have to do the right technique but no no you need to do what looks right for the camera and statham absolutely understands that so it was a joy to work with him the thing about making a fight sequence is that you're a partnership yeah i'm trying to make it look like i'm trying to rip your head off but the truth is we're two performers working together to create this violent ballet and really trust is so important making a martial arts film if i'm working with someone and i don't have the trust that they're going to be in the right position at the right time or they might end up hitting me then i'm not going to be able to go 100 because i'm going to be worried that this guy's going to make a mistake either he's going to hit me or i'm going to hit him obviously for the movies you need to look the part you need to look a certain way so muscle mass is a part of that you want to look like you're carved out of stone but the thing about being a martial artist is it doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with martial arts the the bigger you are the bulkier you are it's going to slow you down it's going to make you heavier sometimes you have to do gymnastic movements on film or flashy kicks if i weigh more it's much harder to do and it's a lot more pressure on the joints but you better believe that i wasn't going to turn up on a set with jason statham schwarzenegger stallone looking out of shape so we've got the pull-up i'll start with a wide grip that's going to put more emphasis on the muscles in my back and then if you go for the underhand grip you're going to actually recruit the biceps and then you've got your push-up i like to do these reps very slow and controlled and then i move from side to side so i'm really using my core and then of course the squats and the reason i like to do plyometric squats is because i'm a martial artist i need to be able to jump i need to be able to need to move so i like to train my legs in a very plyometric way so when i did doctor strange one of the main things that i needed to make sure i didn't mess up with the fight signatures with benedict cumberbatch because he is dr strange as we all know he's carrying the weight of the whole film if something should happen to benedict the whole film's gonna have to get shut down the interesting thing about dr strange is that all the other marvel superheroes most of them wear a mask doctor strange does not wear a mask so that means that benedict's had to do the majority of the fights himself it was very important for me to as the trained martial artist keep him safe and not kick benedict in the face too hard and so one of the things i i use to train for the movies is taekwondo paddle and i will train some of my more athletic and the basics as well but it's a way of keeping me accurate and understanding the distance to keep the other people safe you don't want to be hitting them in the face when you're not supposed to with doctor strange i think i did a pretty good job in keeping benedict safe but there was this one day there's a scene where my character he runs up the wall and then i jump onto this banister jump off the banister and i have to sidekick doctor strange in the chest so you know you're skating this uh fine line of i need to make the kick look like it's a proper kick and that it hits and hurts him but it's benedict cumberbatch i can't hurt him and it wasn't happening for us and i i don't like to keep people waiting so i thought to myself okay i'm gonna give him a little bit extra on this one and i'm gonna jump out a little bit further and that should get the job done and i think somebody may have said the same thing to benedict so he came even closer and i hit him with a very hard flying sidekick in the chest and i just remember seeing dr strange smash off the banister making a sickening thud but luckily for me benedict is a really nice guy he took it in good spirits and we got the shot and it's in the movie one thing that i do for every film and as a martial artist you've got to train your core you have to have a strong call because every time you kick you're using your core every time you punch you're using your core a few exercises i like to do are the l-sit which is a difficult exercise and then i'll move on to what i call planked kettlebell pull throughs another great exercise which again is quite an advanced exercise but i love it are the windscreen wipers and then the final one and this is what you shouldn't forget about your core it's not just about the abs your core is your back as well you need good back stability so i've got a back extension and i like to get on there and do back extension holding a weight in front of me and again a slow and considered movement but that's going to work your posterior chain and give you a great call so you can do some great kicks i don't really switch my training up depending on the film for the most part i'm always training in martial arts so i'm always ready to perform i don't want to be caught off guard and go into a movie not ready to perform because obviously that's what's expected of me so i've got a little saying and it is stay ready and then you never need to get ready the debt collectors was a tough shoot because we had to move fast we didn't have a lot of time that's why i need to go into this staying ready we have a fight scene that opens the movie in a bar it's me the english kid against all these loudmouth americans that needed to be taught a lesson at least that's what my character said okay we had half a day to shoot this fight not long enough at all and the thing is before the fight scene there was a big monologue that i had to deliver to these guys so there's always this sort of internal struggle where i've got the actor in me wanting more time for my monologue and then i've got the martial arts action performer in me going get the acting done we need to make the fight good it's just being able to move fast and having the experience to to get things done and uh understand where the camera is every time i usually shoot fights with two cameras i can make one technique work for this camera and i know that i'm going to make the next technique work for this camera i'm constantly juggling the editing in my own head

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 305,401

Rating: 4.9642787 out of 5

Keywords: martial artist, action movies, scott adkins, martial artist scott adkins, scott adkins martial arts, martial arts, martial arts training, vanity fair scott adkins, scott adkins vanity fair, martial arts vanity fair, martial artist vanity fair, how martial artist scott adkins trains, martial artist training, scott adkins training, scott adkins interview, action movie fights, movie fights, movie fight, action movie fight, yuri boyka, scott adkins yuri boyka, vanity fair

Id: pWFf-wIbSR0

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/SaamsamaNabazzuu]

Adkins has been posted a lot of videos on his YouTube channel during lockdown about techniques, training, etc. Worth subscribing.

[u/Will_FoFPodcast]

Hearing him talk about his prep work for the Undisputed films is interesting. He had to bulk up as much as possible to look menacing for the roles but that impacted his ability to do his acrobatics. It's impressive as hell given the results