Fight! Fight!

December 29, 2008 8:40 PM

How does an actor sell taking a punch?

I just watched Wanted, and am really curious about how movies can make hits look so realistic. Fast cuts, off-balance camera angles, artfully applied blood, and grunting do a lot, I'm sure, but in Wanted, James McAvoy's character gets beaten up an awful lot, with plenty of high-speed camera shots of his facial features being distorted by the impact (like these, only with more Angelina Jolie). How do they do that without actually hitting his pretty face? And how does Hollywood make fight scenes look realistic in general?

posted by peachfuzz to grab bag (10 comments total)

In the case of Wanted, I'd be amazed if it was anything but CGI for the 'money shot' of the punch.
posted by Tomorrowful at 9:07 PM on December 29, 2008

Someone told me recently that they stage it in reverse from the moment of impact and then play the film backward. Try it in the mirror, you'll see how it works.
posted by hermitosis at 9:18 PM on December 29, 2008 [1 favorite]

I know in Fight Club, the gunshot in the last scene was done using a compressed-air machine to get the face distortions. (Discussion is on one of the DVD extras.) That's probably cheaper and faster than CGI, although I don't know if it works as well for punches.
posted by restless_nomad at 9:26 PM on December 29, 2008 [1 favorite]

Bear in mind that stunt doubles are typically substituted for stars during fights. The fights are staged by stunt coordinators, then shot from a multitude of camera angles.

The director will often use Over the Shoulder shots to show the face of one fighter (actual actor) while obscuring the face of the other (stunt double). Sound effects of the fight (foley) are added during post-production.

Today, fight sequences also can be digitally altered to enhance facial distortion, as demonstrated in the first example of your link.
posted by terranova at 10:42 PM on December 29, 2008

there's a video on youtube of a guy who does a whole lot of kung fu stuff all over town and does an entire section of showing that he's really good at looking like he's getting beat up. in the end he does the "call me" hand motion.
posted by nadawi at 11:05 PM on December 29, 2008

Fights are heavily choregraphed. Heavily. For the reason that you don't want the actor to take a punch. It's like dancing, and yes, mistakes happen.

Camera angles improve the illusion. I can make it look like I'm punching you, and be six inches from your face. The more you're behind the puncher's back, the easier this effect can be produced.
posted by filmgeek at 6:22 AM on December 30, 2008

Bear in mind that stunt doubles are typically substituted for stars during fights.

I remember Harrison Ford - re one of the pre-fridge Indy films - correcting an interviewer that while he does his own "physical acting" (i.e. miming punches), he should not be credited with doing "stunts", which he apparently regarded as a separate and higher discipline.

"I do all my own whipping," he added slyly.
posted by Joe Beese at 6:55 AM on December 30, 2008 [1 favorite]

Behind-the-scenes stuff from the Buffy DVDs have a lot of good "here's how we do it" info. See, peachfuzz? When we told you to watch them this fall, it wasn't just for the hot vampire action. The stunt double for Sarah Michelle Gellar was actually in a lot of Hong Kong martial arts movies (her IMDB listing's full to the brim) before moving to the States, and has said on the making-of segments that sometimes a punch is actually a punch...there was one segment they showed where she had to change the way she was holding a sword because she'd broken her finger the previous day. So I imagine some of the violence is at least semi-realistic, but good special effects go a long way, too.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:33 AM on December 30, 2008

I took a bunch of stage combat, and basically, the way I learned to "sell" a hit is this:

First of all, if the audience sees a fist move fast towards a face, and hears an impact sound (called a "nap") at the right moment, their imagination does a lot of the hitting for them.

To make it even more real, the actor taking the hit needs to create the illusion of a realistic transfer of energy. They must take the hit in a way that suits the speed and windup behind the punch, as well as the characters' relative strengths. That stuff needs to be communicated in how the hit lands. If a toddler punched me, my head would rock slightly to the side- maybe. If Superman punched me, I would land across the room. Heck, if Superman accidentally brushed me with his finger I might end up across the room. So you need to understand the characters and their motivations to make sure your reaction fits the "size" of the energy transmitted in the hit.

It's also key that the energy moves in a straight line from the hit (ie, if you get hit on the right cheek, by an attacker standing on your right, the impact should make you move left, not straight backwards).

In stage combat, a realistic hit usually happens pretty fast. You almost want to blur the audience's understanding of what happened, especially because stage combat hits often don't make contact. So the hit happens fast, with a "nap" sound at the right moment (often made by slapping your thigh onstage, or, in film, added later by the foley department smacking a side of beef or something).

The receiver recoils with the right level of intensity and in the right direction, as fast as a given hit will allow. The receiver should use a little extra flailing to make it look more real- let limbs go a little squiggy and flaily, let the neck "wave" to emphasize the movement, and let hair or clothing bounce to put even more lines of movement into the hit and make it even more "action-packed". Keep all the "hit" related stuff FAST though.

And then the emotional reaction is SLOW because, that's what really matters about a hit. Did it hurt him? Is he pissed? What will he do now? That's where the story moves forward- on the reaction to the hit, not on the hit itself. And that's why there's that movie trope of a character being punched fast and knocked over or whatever. And then looking up slowly. Feeling their lip slowly. Looking at their fingers slowly. Realizing there's blood on their fingers. Looking up from that blood (slowly) to focus on the original attacker (slowly) with new intensity. And then they roar and counter-attack, which of course is usually FAST.

All that slow reaction stuff is what really helps you, the viewer, piece together what the content of the first hit was, even if it was too fast to see exactly what happened.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 4:48 PM on December 30, 2008 [3 favorites]

Watch Rocky IV (especially the first fight) if you want to see how important it is not to screw up the camera angles.
posted by originalname37 at 10:16 AM on January 22