She's Robin Hooded an arrow, which is where you shoot an arrow down the back of another arrow. It's actually really hard
to do with wooden arrows. It's a lot easier to do
with sort of modern arrows, 'cause they're a tube of carbon. My name's Jim Kent. I'm also known as Grizzly Jim,
and I'm a traditional archer. I've been shooting the bow
and arrow for 35 years. Today, we're going to be
looking at some archery scenes from TV and film and seeing
how realistic they are. He's got what we call a
cant on the bow there. I tend to shoot with a
little bit of a cant. It opens up the sight windows. If your bow is up straight like that, generally the thing you're trying to shoot is going to be hidden by the bow. So I tend to drop the bow
out of the way a little bit, which is what he's doing. He's clearly pointing one way, but you can see the arrow in his hand pointing the other way. And a lot of people call
that the archer's paradox. The archer's paradox is the fact that the arrow is pointing off to the left when you're actually pointing
at the target at the right. That's the paradox. And it's the flexing of the arrow that makes it travel downrange. Could I kill this dude running away? Depends on the distance. I am only really accurate up to probably about 30 meters. I'd get him eventually. See, I'd be zigging and zagging. I'd be serpentining. There is a type of archery called clout typically done by English longbow archers, which is long-distance shooting where you'd shoot at a flag in the ground 100 meters, 200 yards away, shooting up, shooting
down, closest to the flag. So there are people that can shoot very, very well at long range. Medieval longbow archers
could be pretty accurate. The bow looked like it had
what they call pony limbs, where you've got the basic bow, and then you'd have another set of limbs that come off the front. So that limb is attached to that limb, and that limb is attached to that limb, and that gives you way more power. So it would be perfect for that kind of killing-dudes-running-away
kind of archery. I'm going to give it a 9 for
"Game of Thrones," I think. Compound bow is typically sort of either a target
style or a hunting bow. Basically, you can adjust the
angle that the limbs are at, and if you wind them in, it gives you a little bit more power. And I think what he's doing there is maximizing his power
on his compound bow. Now, you can buy arrows
that come in parts. That's not how arrows work. That's just asking for trouble. There are points in an arrow that flex. And if you are cutting an arrow into three and assembling it, it's not
going to behave like it should. [laughs] That there, that's John
Rambo's grenade-tipped arrow. There was a type of
broadhead you could buy, and it came in a case like that. I think that's just the case
of a broadhead sprayed bronze. Shooting left-handed, so that's OK. But I know later on, he
shoots it right-handed. The arrow flight on that is utter garbage. I mean, he's shooting it OK. He's shooting a compound off
his fingers, which is fine. Compounds tend to use a release aid, which gives you a much straighter release. I mean, this type of bow,
the further you pull it back, the higher the poundage gets. A compound bow starts
high and gets lighter. So you can hold it at full
draw for long periods of time. They're a little bit more
fast, a bit more powerful. No! Grenade-tipped arrow? Yeah, they do exist. Whether or not they're commercially
available, I don't know. Everything else looked really good. The way he was setting up the bow, the way he was changing his
poundage and everything, I like that. And the fact that he shot the
arrow, it flew like garbage, but if you got a grenade
siting on the end of the arrow, it probably would fly like that. So, weirdly, I think it's
probably quite realistic. I'm going to give "Rambo" an 8. [bell thuds] There's a huge tennis ball
on the end of her arrow. The more weight you put
on the front of an arrow, the less efficient it's going to be. It's just not going to go very far. Kate: Let me just fix
this. Give me a second. She has a little grabber or something on the end of that arrow. Again, that's going to
add even more weight. It's not a case of one arrow fits all. Arrows come in spine weights, and that refers to the
stiffness of the arrow. And obviously certain bows
need a certain spine weight. So the higher the poundage the bow, the stiffer the arrow needs
to be, and vice versa. So by adding a lot of weight
to the front of the arrow, you dynamically weaken
the spine of the arrow, so therefore the arrow would be outspined, and it would probably just
veer off to the to the right and not hit the bell at all. You can shoot something called a blunt, which is a flat arrowhead, which would be for either dump shooting, shooting tin cans, that kind of thing, or small-game hunting. She's moving her arm up. And when you're shooting at distance, whether it's low down or high up, you don't really move your arm. You move from the waist. So you kind of pivot your whole body, not just your arm up and down. That's something I just spotted. [bell dings] The shot itself, not
very realistic at all. But her shooting is pretty good. We'll go 5. 5 out of 10. In the middle. Ready your bows! Fire! You've got really long arrows there. It looks like she's only using
two fingers on the string, one above, one below. I've seen people do that. And she's got quite an overdraw there. She's got this explosive release, which, again, in order to make a good archery shot, you need to keep it concise and simple. Because something like that, you're not going to be able to repeat it time and time again. If you've got a simple
release that comes back, you can repeat that. You've got to be safe
with everything you film. And I imagine that bow was
probably a very real bow, but it was probably such low poundage and had such a stretchy string that it goes straight back to being a straight piece of wood. The distance between the lowest point of
the bow and the string, that's called the brace height. If your brace height is too low, your bow becomes very noisy. It becomes quite quick,
but it becomes very noisy. And you're really, really in danger of getting some real nasty
string burn on your arm. Shooting multiple arrows
off a bow at the same time, what happens is, all the energy comes from the limbs and
pulling the string back. And what that does, it
pushes the arrow forward. And the heavier the arrow
that it needs to push, the more energy it needs to sort of get that arrow
to where it needs to go. But if you're shooting
multiple arrows, essentially, the bow doesn't know there's
multiple arrows on there. It just thinks there's
a really heavy arrow. Two arrows is double the weight, and the more arrows you put on, the heavier weight that
bow is going to need to push the arrows through the air. And it basically just takes
all the guts out of the bow. We'll give "Wonder Woman"
a 5. They did all right. Curse this dress! In order to shoot well, you
need to be able to move. So I think the fact that
they've got her in a tight thing and she can't shoot properly,
I think it's brilliant. Archery is all about
keeping everything straight. The less influence you
can have over the bow, the better the arrow is going to fly. So if you're influencing the shot, the shot's not going to go right. So if you can keep
everything nice and simple, which she's doing, she's coming back on the same plane as the
arrow's going forward. Archery is all about being able to repeat the shot time and time again. There's a famous book called
"The Art of Repetition," which is all about archery. And if you can replicate your
shot time and time again, you will be a fantastic archer. She seems to have a nice
repeatable kind of form there. Now, look at this loose. The trick is, with archery, you don't let go of the string. The trick is to try and no
longer be holding the string. So you've got to relax your
hand, let the hand flow back. If you're kind of trying to open your hand as hard as you can, you'll
never beat the string. The string is going to be quicker than your reactions across the board. So if you can just get your anchor point and then relax your hand
and let it come back, you're going to get a
much smoother release, and you can see her hand just relaxes. A lot of people think arrows
fly straight. They don't. If you watch an arrow in slow motion, it's like a wet noodle going downrange. She's Robin Hooded an arrow, which is where you shoot an arrow down the back of another arrow. And the grain tends to split, but the grain never
runs perfectly parallel down the back of an arrow. It
will always kind of peel off. It's actually really hard
to do with wooden arrows. It's a lot easier to do
with sort of modern arrows, 'cause they're a tube of
carbon, and it's easier to kind of put an arrow down
the back of another one. That's 10. One of the best representations of the way an arrow and
a bow work together. Stark, got a lot of
strays sniffing your tail. Trying to work out what bow that is. Obviously he's got some gadgets on it. That could be a modified
Hoyt Buffalo sprayed black. He's using a finger and thumb draw, which isn't really necessarily going to work for that kind of thing. Hawkeye, that's a bit of a mess, dude. He's got a shooting glove,
which is good to see. He's got a couple of
armguards on there as well. That's what's called a Beiter armguard. That's just a make of armguard. Thin strip of plastic, and it just protects you from the string as it sort of vibrates back
to where it's supposed to go. Sometimes it can just catch your arm and just give you a little sting. So you tend to have a
little bit of an armguard. It just protects you. Traditional archers tend to wear a bit more of a leather kind of bracer. You wouldn't wear two unless you're doing
something really wrong. Well, they can't bank worth a damn. If you can't look at it, how
are you going to shoot it? The trend with these
kind of dynamic things is that there's never
any kind of anchor point. It's always just pull it back and let it go from whatever
position you're in, which is fine, but you're not going to get that kind of level of
accuracy that he gets. Like, he's shooting moving targets. Now, there is a famous trick shot, but you're looking in a mirror. And I've tried it and um ... almost succeeded. He's got, what, maybe 36 arrows maximum when he first starts? It's like films with guns. You get people shooting, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, ch, and they never seem to have to reload. But it looks like it's fun, so I'm going to have to give it 4. Too slow! Fast as you can. Again! Come on. People can knock arrows out of the air. It's not something I
would recommend trying, 'cause if you get it wrong,
you only get one chance. I want people to enjoy archery, but I also want people to be really safe when it comes to archery. There's a huge safety element to it. Although a bow isn't classed as a weapon, it's classed as sporting goods, it can be used as a weapon. He's shooting arrows at the guy, and he's knocking them out of the air. I'd hate for some kids to
think, "Hey, let's try that," and do it and get hurt. It would break my heart. Try the other side. It will save you a second on the reload. He gets to show him a
different way of shooting. Now, this all came from
a Lars Andersen video that came out a few years back, and it kind of turned the
archery world on its head. And it suggested that you took the arrow from the left side of the bow
to the right side of the bow, which goes from essentially
a Western style of archery to an Eastern style of archery. Changing anything in
archery is a slow process. Takes time for your body to
get used to such a change, and going from one side
of the bow to the other, it would take time. Come on! Again! Faster! Yes! If you shoot the arrow on
the right side of the bow with a Mediterranean release, one finger above the
arrow, two fingers below, what happens is the arrow
veers wildly off to the right, which isn't ideal. And there are people that can shoot a Mediterranean-style release, like the way they get Robin
Hood to do in this film. Got to pull the bow out this way. If you're doing big, dynamic movements to try and get the arrow to go straight, they're very difficult to repeat, so you're not going to be
fantastically accurate with them. It's just something that I personally am not a huge fan of. There are people that shoot hybrid style, sort of East and West. At the end of the day, you've got to shoot in
a way that's comfortable and that puts the biggest
smile on your face. Because it does require a
certain amount of fitness, certain amount of stamina to shoot. 'Cause they're not easy to pull back, and you've got to hold
sometimes tremendous weights for a good few seconds
before you make the shot. You know, various lifting weights isn't necessarily going to
work the archery muscles. Faster, stronger, faster! That is actually a good archery
muscle he's working there. That's going to do more for
him than bench-pressing wheels. You can use stretchy
bands, things like that. That sort of builds up
muscles and whatnot. See, I want to give it a really low score, but I like the working out with the ropes. So I'm going to push it up. I'm going to give it a 4. She's using sound to make a deer move into a more accessible shot, which is fine, but I would imagine a deer would have just
bolted at that stage. From my experience, they're
pretty skittish things. Gale: What are going to do
with that when you kill it? I like it, personally.
When you're at full draw, you come to anchor, and you're there. If you're doing all this, the shot's gone. You need to have focus. She actually has beautiful
form in this film. And she was coached by an Olympic archer called Khatuna Lorig, an
American Olympic archer. Again, a fantastic archer. So her form is an Olympic form, which is fantastic for target archery. Now, she's in a hunting scenario. That type of archery isn't
necessarily going to work fantastically well in
this sort of scenario. There's so many variables. You're uphill, you're downhill, you're waiting at full draw for
something to come into shot. She was doing a bit of
wing shooting there. She was shooting a bird. Shooting a moving target
is also difficult. And you wouldn't be able to use an Olympic style of shooting to shoot a moving target. Now, they look like huge plastic feathers, and she's shooting off the shelf. That's not necessarily
going to work out too well. The sort of bow she's got there is not a million miles
away from this type of bow. That's called a shelf. So
the arrow sits on there. And as the arrow passes over, the reason why traditional
archers use feathers is because they compress and they don't really
cause too much of an issue. Where if you're shooting
plastic feathers, like those, they're not going to compress
like a feather would, and that's going to cause
some fouling on the shelf. Shooting a broadhead,
which is a hunting arrow. It's a two-bladed broadhead, and it stuck into the
target quite realistically. That's kind of how a broadhead would stick into a hard target. Even a light-poundage bow
would probably do that. It's not hardwired into the
pig's mouth or anything, it was just resting there. So I don't think it
would take a huge amount. I mean, I've tried to shoot apples before, and what tends to happen is the arrow just goes
straight through the apple. So you knock it off
whatever you're shooting. But I've yet to pin one to a wall. The type of archery I do, it's
called instinctive archery. I don't use a sight, and I let my mind and my brain and my muscle memory work subconsciously to let me know where to shoot. That's what she's doing
there. I would imagine she is. Although she's got a very Olympic style, where she's looking at
something and she's just, bang. And she nailed it. I've always got a soft spot
for "The Hunger Games." I'm going to give it a 7. A whole battery of archers is going to really mess some orcs up, which is what's happening there. I can't see the types of
arrow points they're using, but I see in a lot of films people using broadheads
and shooting armor, and that wouldn't work. There were certain arrow points that were designed to go
straight through armor, like a bodkin. It's pointy, but it's bulbous, and it's stiffer, and it was designed to kind
of punch through armor. His elbow is a bit high, but, yeah, I'll give him that. When you got some big orc dude
with a stick coming at you, you're not always going to get a chance to set and make the perfect shot. But in order to speed-shoot
to that kind of level, you'd need a pretty light-poundage bow. I'm going to go 4, but it's cool. This is more of an Eastern style. His arrow is really short, and it's actually got, like, a piece of bamboo on the arrow attached to the bow where the short arrow will [whistles]. 'Cause obviously the longer
the arrow, the heavier. The shorter the arrow, the lighter. The lighter something is,
the further it's going to go, the faster it's going to go. So it means you can pull
the bow back all the way and put maximum, maximum
juice into that little arrow. He's using his thumb. Typically you overdraw
with that style of archery and relax the hand and
come away from the thumb and let the string [whistles]. You can see the focus in his face. Breathing is a weird one. Some people hold their breath, some people breathe through the shot. If you're hunting and
you're waiting for a deer to sort of come into view, you could be holding for
a good 10, 15, 20 seconds. Olympic archers tend to
hold for a lot longer. Some people are even quicker. Some people come to full
draw and then make the shot. Guess if you can't drop him straight away, you can wound him. And then you can chase him down and poke him with something else. Obviously, if there was a barb on it, you couldn't pull it out. You'd kind of have to pull it through, which, I mean, would be agony. That to me looked like a sharpened stick. So, yeah, you could
probably pull that out. Medieval archers used to do, when they put their arrow points on, they would put them on with wax. If they hit you, you'd pull it out, the
point's still in you. Or if you missed, it landed on the floor, the point would come off, so it couldn't be shot back at you. But, weirdly, archers
nowadays are more likely to be injured by the nock
end than the pointy end. Because when that's in the target, people walk up and stumble and things, and that can be quite sharp. I'm going to give that one 9. Thank you for watching. If you enjoyed that video, then click up there and
watch the one above.
How could he not analyze anything from Arrow? I was waiting for it haha.
I love this stuff. There was a similar one with a professional locksmith on safe cracking movies.
Hawkeye has the worst fucking bow pulls, so obvious there's 0 tension.
Ooh, love these expert reviews! Here is a good one on sword fights in TV and movies, I especially loved his review of the Obi-Wan/Darth Maul scene in Rebels.