Blade Edge

So for the past three years (or so) my stunt buddy Dizzle and I have been working together on and off to film a short action movie. A lot of the starting and stopping was due to the fact that Dizzle was tied to another production (still is, actually) during the majority of the time and I just have commitment issues 😛 So either I would be off doing other stuff when he was available to rehearse, or he was working choreo or filming when I was available to rehearse. That, and the location we chose to shoot it at was really only available to us one night a week during the last year and a half. Our friend who worked there was under increasing pressure from his bosses until the point where they finally let him go, which completely ruined our hopes of ever filming there (we honestly don’t expect the business to last much longer either and have no wish to approach the current owners for filming permission).

So, that’s pretty much what you get for dicking around for 3 years (or so).

However it wasn’t a total loss – we made sure to record every bit of choreography we developed, so we have materiel to bring with us to the new location, which is the gym that I work at. It’s not as great a location as the gym we originally planned to shoot at and required a substantial rewrite of the script, but the major fight and plot elements are still there at least. Now, if we can stick to our guns and shoot it this summer as planned, we should have a pretty awesome flick on our hands by Sept/Oct. Here’s hoping!

Speaking of that footage though, I’ve cut it all together and did a voice commentary on it so you can check out what we had planned. To set the stage, I arrive on my motorcycle to meet with someone, but it’s really an ambush set up by some mysterious guy out to get me. I get whacked walking in the door and the fight proceeds from there as Dizzle does his best to beat the living shit out of me – but not kill me (hence the use of non-lethal weapons). The non-killing just makes it easier to drag out the fight 🙂 Also saves on make up, which I didn’t want to bother with anyways.

So, what you just saw is actually only half of the entire film. From the last scene, we do some more fighting around and up the stairway. At one point I get kicked down the second flight of stairs. We wind up on the 2nd floor balcony and jump around over tables, do in-close hand-to-hand and even a little Jackie Chan stuff as Dizzle works me out of my jacket (which until then has armored me against total defeat). Eventually I get kicked off the 2nd floor and fall to the floor in a heap. Dizzle comes down to check on me and I sucker punch him and make my escape (in short).

So the main elements that will be transferred to the new location are: ambush at the start, use of the bike jacket as armor, complicated hand-to-hand choreo, a sword fight using shinais, and a fall off a balcony. We’ll also be fighting amongst beams instead of bars, and on trampolines instead of a spring floor.

Once I’m done traveling so often for game development conferences at the end of May, we plan to hunker down and bang this sucker out from June – August, shoot no later than September and have the final cut ready by October.

Hopefully.