Yuku free message boards

stuntpeople wrote:

---

Decent fight but I like your other stuff way more. Hope the feature film goes through!

HA! I had a feeling somebody would say that.

Okay! I'm back from a long day of Lion Dances, time to finish what I needed to say!

Why was it so short? As mentioned before, me and Chen basically did everything ourselves but he was in Perth for a very limited time. In fact we're both running riot getting things organised for this film. I've been holding audition sessions and we're getting a variety of actors together. We planned 3 nights to film and booked lights for 3 nights. After night 1 we realised it was going to be very tough to get the whole thing done working with a skeleton crew and a camera man who has very little training in that work (my buddy Mark).

But hey, I've done full fight scenes in 3 hours before! The difference here was Chen's style of directing and getting all the required footage. I like the style but it was maybe a little much for me. Again, if we had more time while he was here we would have blocked out the entire fight in our rehersal session and known the exact camera angles we wanted. Then on night 2 we broke one of our lights and had no replacement. So night 3 was basically a wrap up session so get some more footage.

So anyway, yes this fight is extremely traditional. We're throwing in a lot of Hung Gar, Choy Lay Fut and Tai Chi style stuff in there with only a fraction of the old style boxing and kicking you've all seen me doing. The majority of the fight was actually choreographed by Robert Chen rather then me, Rob Popiel. We choreographed a fight which would have lasted about 2 minutes I'd guess which was overall very traditional due to both of us loving classic Kung Fu films.

Our feature film will however be very modern action (so you won't see so much classic kung in our fighting) and WILL BE DONE ON A BUDGET. Not a huge budget but a budget none the less. I think as we do it I'll end up choreographing much more then I did here but you are going to see more different stuff. For one thing, from now on I'll be using much more of the Buk Sing Choy Lay Fut I'm learning but there will always be a big influence of TKD style kicking. Since I'm the new comer who's getting an opportunity and this is Chen's film I will follow his lead. But hey, the fact that he wants a guy who only started making films last December working on a make-or-break feature film with him says a lot.

Now, lastly, overall I am upset and feel the whole fight was a little under-performed. I think if me and Chen got to do another of these right now (which won't happen as he's in Sydney and then back in Hong Kong until the feature begins) that we'd do something much tighter.

Okay, thanks for watching guys. Enough talking from me about this feature film and I'll keep you guys updated when we begin doing it! You can all expect a new short film from me coming out probably about August 21st. It's a collaboration between me and the guy who played Detectuve Anderson in SCARFOOT. He wrote it and I'm designing all the fights and taking the lead.

p.s The fight is in black and white because my color-correction kung fu lacks foundation.