How To Do A Fight Scene

what makes for a great fight it's an easy enough question but after sitting on this video for over a year I found out the hard way then it's got a really difficult answer if there's one thing that's for sure though it's this when a fights done right you just know it when you see it I think what's really interesting on this is I've talked to around 30 people about the film Batman V Superman I've met some who loved it some who are indifferent about it and some who despise that film with every fiber of their being but one thing that all of those people unanimously agreed on is that the warehouse fight is the best Batman action sequence ever put to the silver screen that there's just something about it that resonates with everyone who sees it it doesn't really matter if you're invested in the plot or what your tastes and tropes and genres are because when you're in the cinema and you see this you can't help but squirm in your seat and feel the weight behind that crate crack that guy's skull open and if you're in the cinema and the action gets you moving around in your seat as you feel every last punch you know you're watching a great fight I mean one of the things that I think's most curious about this is how people disagree all the time as to whether a film is good or bad but when a truly great action sequence comes along almost everyone agrees that that's the case but what does make for a great fight what are the devices and techniques you can use to evoke that guttural reaction and investment in the outcome from your audience well I think a great place to start is as a general rule the less certain it is he'll win the more gripping that fight gets I look back to Titan in infinity war where the Avengers are 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 the Superman fight where the choreography was really good and I felt the weight point every punch it was for a different reason and I'm pretty sure that reason was because I knew that there was a very real chance that Thanos might actually win this and that heroes that we've come to care about might not just lose but they might die and as the Titan fight goes along as Thanos wiped the floor with hero after hero and that fear that someone weak about might dye grows that fight only grows more brilliant with it and I'd argue that that Titan fight is the best action sequence that the MCU is given us so far because of just how well it milks the audience's fear that fan oohs really might win and the thing is we've all seen those action scenes before that are the perfect opposites of this right and they're just the most boring kinds of fights where the heroes do nothing but win win win and overcome every obstacle as if they're all only an inch tall it's the fights where a hero has to struggle where they lose control of the situation where the plans fall to ruin and it looks like the villain really is about to win only for the hero to come out victorious in the end by the skin of their teeth those are usually the most compelling fights and when it comes to example that I think best embodies this point it is an infinity war or John wick or any superhero movie it's from the 2018 film up great and if you haven't seen upgrade yet you've really should because it's a really good action film but the basic idea of this movie is the protagonist is just an average guy who's had an AI implanted in his skull and it's advising him on how to be a badass and that in itself is great it's something we haven't really seen before so that originality gives this fight that we're about to die sex some really good entertainment value but what this fight we're about to look at does really well and what I think is the number one lesson you can take away from it is how well it does that shifting power dynamic so the fight starts with gray our protagonist in the corner when the bad guy walks in he's behind him and Ray's got the element of surprise therefore he's got the power but he freezes he's clearly never been in a fight before and he doesn't know what to do so now he's lost his surprise as the bad guy turns around throws gray into a table and sucker punches him and just wipes the floor with him and this right here is great the audience is afraid for our protagonist as it looks like he's about to get his ass kicked or potentially even killed and then gray fights back with a right hook maybe he'll win but no it gets blocked and now grey has even less power the bad guy is getting even more likely to win as he starts choking gray but then in the all hope is lost moment the AI calmly asks to take control of his body gray cries out permission granted and his body independent of Grey's will proceeds to absolutely kick the guy's ass in this cathartic fun twist of the fight we indulge in the ass-kicking for a while but I'll crap the villains got a knife maybe he's gonna win but oh no greatest calmly grabbed it and used it back on him and just continues to effortlessly beat his ass and what I'd argue is the glue that holds this fight together and makes it just so bloody fun to watch is that the power dynamic is handled so well the originality is great don't get me wrong the fact that this reluctant guy has this AI just smashing drink glasses into his head and Ray's just gawking in horror as hands as they do these things is just original and it's brilliant but if from the very start of this fight the AI has full control over his body and from the very first punch the hero was just completely on top of things then the fight would have been nowhere near as fun to watch as it was at that turning point in the middle where the AI takes control contrasts with the moments before where he was losing badly and as a result it makes those moments of loss feel all the more heavy with dread and those moments of victory feel all the more well victorious sever lack of a better work but when we see the hero do nothing but win that's boring and when the villain does nothing but win - that's also boring the best fights are in the middle and I like a seesaw where the hero is winning in one moment then the villain pulls out something unexpected and now he's about to win and back and forth like that but obviously a shifting power dynamic isn't everything you can have a fight where the hero takes a hits then the villain takes a hits then the hero takes a hit and then back and forth several dozen times and it can still be really boring and that leads us to the second rule for making a great fight and it's this Oh No is that a buffering symbol that's such a shame I won't give me a sec Oh oh that's bad apparently this videos just been blocked in your region I guess you'll never know what rule 2 was that's so annoying I I can scarcely imagine how annoying that must be for you if only you'd installed Nord VPN the sponsor of today's video and this crisis could have been 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people from your country watch our stuff because we hate you I'm not gonna be there to help you unfortunately so you're gonna have to buy Nord if you wanna watch any more reason bloc stuff anyway back to the video and that leads us to the second rule for making a great fight and it's this variety is king I mean that Batman fight was fun to watch him throwing that box and cracking that bad guy's skull was evocative as all hell but what if immediately after Batman used that exact same move again and achieved the exact same effect of hitting that guy's head and special little blood on to the wall I better that second usage would have not only been like far less evocative than the first but it would have cheapened that first use as well and when you're approaching a fight as a general rule you should never use the same move twice and this room's a big one I think it's one that's really worth trying to adhere to because far too many boring fights I've seen are boring because they're just so repetitive as the same move is used over and over again to the point that it numbs the audience's senses and when it comes to adding variety into your fight it's a lot more nuanced than just having people use different kinds of punches and kicks after example if you're writing a sci-fi with advanced technology then in your fight you should come up with several creative ways to use that tech for surprise and fight moves that the audience didn't see coming but in hindsight for the audience make perfect senses they're not only effective fight moves but they're also totally unforeseen for example if you've got a space-based gun designed to take out alien ships the aliens don't use singular large ships rather millions of tiny ones that will swarm in close proximity and this guns designed so once it hits a small ship it violently tears apart all the particles in close proximity to that ship and as a result it takes out whole swarms it's a cool gun but what happens if you use that tech in a way that it wasn't designed for but also totally works for example firing at the enemy planet and with one shot turning the entire planets crust 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 it makes that end fire all the more engaging it's the unexpected twists and turns in a fight that are the highlights that people remember long after they put down the book or left the cinema and those moments are often what elevates a fight into being a great one if you're writing with a magic system the exact same rule applies hopefully before this point in your story you've established how your magic works so in this fight it's a great idea for your characters to apply it in several different creative ways that the audience wasn't expecting yet when they happen there a cathartic surprise as they adhere to the rules of the system and make for a really effective yet shocking fight move and if you're not making a sci-fi with fancy guns or fantasy with out-of-this-world magic and you're just using everyday weapons in an everyday setting this still applies for you a great example of how it still does would be in Jason Bourne people don't really consider stationary as being a lethal weapon but when Jason Bourne grabs a biro in a fistfight and use it to stab the bad guy with a lethal precision it's kind of similar to that twist in Ender's Game because it's an effective move but it's also a highly original one that shocks in this memorable fun twist of the fight and while we're talking about variety in a fight I'm as per usual being a bit of a devil's advocate here because the other day I was listen to Brandon Sanderson's writing lectures and he said something about fight scenes that well I disagree with no no we've got a problem we're approaching and writing action sequences as well and that is that our culture is now saturated with visual media and visual media is really good and action sequences all right really really good for example you can have an action sequence in a movie that is basically 20 minutes of Jackie Chan kicking people or and occasionally throwing a hammer at them right what would happen if you wrote in a book one-sixth of your book being that fight sequence well it would be this yeah go and he kicked again and then he kicked him in a different cooler way and then he kicked him with his other foot and dust flew off and then the problem you're gonna run into is in a film blow by blows fun and a book blow-by-blow is not as fun now massive respect to Sanderson and his writing lectures he gives us some really good advice but on this I respectfully disagree because blow-by-blow is bad period in both film and the book I mean in that clip he's right in most of what he said film is just better at depicting action than the book and blow-by-blow in a novel with the same fight move repeats over and over again is much more boring than that same fight might be on film but that doesn't mean it's not boring in a film it's just slightly more tolerable for a viewer to watch than a reader to read I mean if you've ever watched a Jackie Chan fight you'll know it's a lot more than just 20 minutes of him kicking people and occasionally throwing a hammer if his fights were just that he wouldn't be the action legend that he is today instead he uses the surrounding area and the objects in it in creative ways with that variety that we just talked about for example when he grabs the ladder and beats three guys up with it by smacking a guy's legs with the end of it then folding it out and heating a guy with the other half and then trapping the last guy inside of it and while he's looking around totally confused Chan punches him through the hole every one 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 the thing is I firmly believe that most Jackie Chan fights out there could be converted into a great section of prose we're sure you wouldn't describe every single hit an exhaustive detail and if you did that would just be really boring fiction but you might instead summarize 20 seconds of the fight in one line by calling them a flurry of hits then go really in detail and describe the highlights where they move around an area and use the props in these fun creative ways I am 100% sure that it can be done like I know a good writer can take a Jackie Chan fight and figure out a way of converting it into a perfectly fun and enjoyable bitter prose because there are so many imaginative moments and bits of variety that Chan's already injected into that fight but to prove my point that blow-by-blow is just universally bad he is a great example from John wick 3 so I saw it in the cinema last year and the fight scene with Halle Berry and her dogs came up and it went like this we see our heroes take cover and then shoot a few baddies then the dogs bite some baddies and while the dogs grapple them and distract them our hero shoot them in the head there are heroes take cover and shoot some more bad guys than the dogs bite some other bad guys and while the dose distract them by biting them our hero shoot them in the head then our hero shoots some more bad guys for 30 more seconds and then the dogs appear grapples 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 eye is drifted towards the ceiling and I started thinking about what I wanted for dinner I was fairly sure I had some ravioli in the fridge no I definitely did what if I could get some like tomatoes and make a nice sauce with that that would be quite delicious and I needed to get some milk and then I heard a scream I snapped out my daydream and oh look the dog just left and bit a guy in this Funston all right cool I'm reinvested in the fight I see the dog by another guy but that time instead of the arm like all the other dozen times he instead bit him in the balls and then Halle Berry shoots him in the head while he is distracted okay and then soon after the dog bites another guy and then John wick shoots him in the head while he's distracted and then where was I right I needed to buy some bread do you see where I'm coming from when I disagree with Sanderson in that blow-by-blow is just bad generally I mean John wick is full of some really good fights with interesting imaginative beats in them I mean the first John wick is one of the best action films I've ever seen but that specific fight in the third one didn't evoke these guttural physical reactions from me that any great fight should instead it bored me so much that I spent more time daydreaming and going through my shopping lists that I did looking at the screen and the reason why it was so unengaging was because it was so extensively repetitious and if they instead came up with some variety some more imaginative ways of using dogs in a gunfight that fight would have been considerably more engaging for it whether you're an aspiring novelist or you're making films and you should know that blow-by-blow is always bad way to go it just is you can get away with it slightly more in the visual form than in the written one but it's just the most boring way of doing an action scene always very what's going on in your action never let your fight stagnate and as a general rule never use the same move twice but here's the thing yes having variety to fight where each blow 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 shifting power dynamic is also nice to have but in my opinion all of those things are secondary I mean they're definitely good to have your fight will be better if you've got them but if you fail to have what I'd argue is the most important ingredient your fight will lack that investment from your audience that you desperately want to have and it's this you're telling a grand story with characters and the plot and pacing and what I think is the most grievous error that most writers and directors out there fall for when it comes to the fights is they forget this I mean when you're outlining your plot you want every scene to somehow push things forward every last one of your scenes should somehow serve a crucial role in advancing the overall story you wouldn't have a random dialogue exchange that does nothing to serve the plot or the characters or the well building the kind of scene that has no reason for being there so as a result it just bogs down the plot you wouldn't add in such a dialogue exchange so why should you treat fight scenes any differently if you can only take one point away from this video today please please let it be this one your fight scene has to serve the story in some way and for the love of God it cannot 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 a fight scene sake please please don't do that maybe it marks a crucial point in your main characters arc and they make a decision in the fight that illustrates how far they've come maybe it marks another beat in the plot as the characters have a revelation that unravels a part of the main mystery or something along those lines and only once it serves the overall story in some invaluable way only what that's out of the way should you start thinking about choreography and the fight moves in the variety and all of the rest I mean here's a great example to prove my point in the stell was a new hope I think it's fair to say that the obi-wan Darth Vader fight scene itself is pretty lacking it's just two people tapping sticks together as they talk and it fails and pretty much all of the points that we've covered so far the fight doesn't have a shifting power dynamic it doesn't have a riot II however this fight is iconic it's arguably one of the most iconic fights in movie history and the reason why is because while on its own the fight might be pretty tame as a part of an overall story it serves its role beautifully up until this point Obi once been the mentor he's been the guy who held Luke's hand and kept him safe and guided the way but now as a result this fight spoiler warning Obi one is dead and the whole dynamic of the trilogy has irreparably shifted from this point on Luke's alone in his story he has to be independent and figure this Jedi stuff out without any help and it's all because of this fight this fight scene is an indispensable part of not just this movie story but the whole trilogies story sure it would have been nice if Lucas hired some saw rec spurts to give it some 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 film they'll quickly point out how the whole thing is filmed like it's one take so it's more immersive and how the action is brutal and full of variety and yes that's part of the reason why the fights so good but the hidden glue that makes this action so compelling is the fact that it's such a seamless beat in the overall plots are so far in this film the villain Valentine has been scheming and plotting to give away his SIM cards for free and get everyone to use them but the viewer hasn't figured out why yet it's this mystery element that this films been building up not only does this scene answer that mystery but it delivers that answer in a thoroughly 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 shows instead of tells and lets the viewer figure it out all on their own if I were writing that script I know which one I shrug also it does more than just reveal the mystery it marks the death of Harry who's been the mentor figure and now eggsy has to go on without him and figure all this spy stuff out for him hang on getting a bit of deja vu I swear I've seen this somewhere before I can't put my nose in it I wonder where they got that one from but if I had to boil this point down into one tweetable sentence a 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 what do you think am i right or am I wrong what does make for a great fight I'd love to know what you think in the comments down below anyway thanks for watching please do check me out on patreon if you haven't already and I've got a bunch of cool rewards and you could help me make more of these videos but anyway thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time on the closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,552,506

Rating: 4.8974438 out of 5

Keywords: fight scene, fight scenes, video essay, video, essay, the closer, closer look, the closer look, fight, writing, write, how to, how to write a fight scene, battle, battle scene, kingsman, avengers, marvel, star wars, creative writing, writing advice, tips, magic, scene, scenes, john wick, brandon sanderson, action, climax, advice

Id: ybYsElQD2o4

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Bbryant90]

I hate when it’s nothing but close up super quick cuts. Daredevil has some of my favorite fight scenes. I love that they do long shots, ppl actually get tired, and ppl also get back up during the fight.

[u/JaqenSexyJesusHgar]

Ahhhhh....the Bourne cut. Multiple cuts for just one punch

[u/My_Opinions_Are_Good]

The same things that make any great scene: Editing, composition, story, performance.