How Martial Arts Fight Scenes are Made

What comes into your mind when you hear someone utter names such as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Jet Li, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Wesley Snipes? Most likely, you will recognise them as professional fighters in action and martial arts movies. Time and time again, we enjoy watching them triumph over bad guys with flying kicks and fast punches.

Martial arts film is a sub-genre of the action film. This kind of movie generally features extensive, artistic, and lengthy fight scenes which involve one or more types of martial arts. The scenes are typically the film's main entertainment value and primary appeal. In fact, in many motion pictures of this kind, fight scenes are employed as a method of storytelling and character expression and development. For example, the fights may be featured in the protagonist's training, his painful rise to the top, and the climactic encounter with the primary antagonist. As moviemaking technology advanced and became safer, the fights become more complex and artistic, often mixed with stunts, gunfights, or chases.

Fight scenes are often very complex to execute. First, the producers as well as the actors plan out and decide how the scene goes. Then the actors, together with a trainer, prepare themselves by doing countless rehearsals. Trainers find ways for the actors to fight in a way that looks authentic yet safe enough to reduce the likelihood of serious injuries. For exaggerated movements, props are used; for example, trampolines and springboards are utilised for extremely high jumps.

Finally, the film crew, with the guidance of the director, adds cinema magic to improve fight scenes. Thus, they use unusual camera angles, undercranking, editing, computer-generated imagery and other techniques to make the fight scenes breathtaking and suspenseful.