i'm going to admit my bias right up front here i don't
really like the one move one shot style of fight editing but
if you're going to have it you should at least make like wonder woman and ensure
that it serves the themes of the story my name is jill bearup and stage combat
or theatrical violence or that fake fighting stuff you see in
movies is a hobby of mine because who wouldn't want to look heroic and dashing
while swinging a sword around best hobby ever as long as you don't
mind the bruises and today we're talking about wonder woman which is a film i
enjoyed very much and also a film with a very specific
fight scene style which progresses in a very specific way over the run time
spoilers by the way but only for the first one because i haven't seen the
second one yet but then again if it's the first two weeks after this
video's release probably neither have you. wonder woman's fight scene editing
can be summed up roughly thus more doubting equals more cutting i'm
not a big fan of very fast fight editing for all of the advantages that it has
for filmmakers but i do think they chose to do it
deliberately here and i think that it mostly works allow
me to demonstrate what i mean by more doubts equals more cuts little
diana princess of the amazons is super confident that she can be the best
warrior that themyscira has ever seen and she's gonna do it
regardless of what her mother thinks we cut away from her not exactly a kata
about half a dozen moves in but only so that we can see other
characters and their reactions to her now of course this is easier to make
good than an actual fight you can punch the air very
enthusiastically on your own and it will probably look fine but this hold on her
face and her movements for a significant period of time
underlines we diana's certainty in herself
when she starts training in secret with antiope there is a moment where we get
something similar where the camera holds on both of them
albeit from quite a distance away while they perform several moves in a row but
generally diana on themyscira has a very
specific and different style of fight editing one move
one shot sometimes one move will be cut across two shots
sometimes you get two moves in the same shot but minimal variation here the
three ages of diana on themyscira are intercut with longer shots of her mother
looking on and being concerned and her mother telling her stories and
her mother finding out about adolescent diana's clandestine training
and her mother showing up and being a distraction at adult diana's sparring
session and it's a montage so it works fine in a typical fight scene
you do need to slow down and have longer shots from further away with more moves
in them just to vary the pacing so that
everything doesn't get really really bewildering but in this
case it works okay because we're intercutting
with these longer takes of diana's mum hippolyta doing other
stuff one move one cut does look very dynamic
and it will definitely keep your audience awake
but it is absolutely bewildering if you do it for too long and not only
bewildering it also looks like you lack confidence in your actor's ability to
sell a fight or like you lack confidence in your audience's attention span but
who knows you may be right on that one one move one shot provides maximum
flexibility when you're editing because you can just take the best cuts from
the best takes and combine them all together in one beautiful flowing
display of skill you can make it look coherent even if your actors aren't very
good at fighting or you had to change up the choreography at the last minute or
you need to fudge one piece of the choreography into another for pacing's
sake. the thing is if you overuse it then people might start to wonder if your
actors are so bad at throwing punches that you need to constantly shift
perspective so that they look badass and your editor has to be a proper
stickler for continuity otherwise it's just going to be a mess the thing is
i think the cut heavy style in the first part of the movie is deliberate because
it's very dynamic but it doesn't seem confident and that's
just very thematically appropriate the first
montages are all you keep doubting yourself diane and the
editing reflects that it's not unclear it's not badly paced but it is kind of
skittish jumpy the slow motion sections are worked in with the intent of showing
off diana's grace and power but she keeps looking for approval from her
mother and so sometimes she takes her eye off the ball sword opponent
whatever diana is headstrong enough even as a child to defy hippolyta and
train in secret but well we all want our parents to love
us right and we underline that uncertainty in her
with this use of the very fast editing style
adult diana's fight with antiope when she's told "you're stronger than this Diana!"
is where we start to see a little bit
more of a rhythm. look at this more than one move
multiple moves in one shot, appropriate distance so we can see what's going
on i mean it doesn't last long because that whole 'shoot i just threw my aunt
across the training ground with the power of i don't even know'
shakes diana up a bit but it's a hint of things to come the fight on the beach is
very much one move one cut with minor variations
and then sometimes we do slow motion to show you something really cool
but just wait because things are gonna change the thing is the fight on the
beach is not solely about diana and so there's a greater point to be made about
the cost of war and the confusion and the pain
and the skill of the amazons there are lots of slowed down sections both to
emphasize how diana sees the world that is to say as someone with literally
inhuman reflexes and also because gosh darn it we've got
all these women learning cool tricks and stunts and wire work and archery and you
will appreciate them darn it and i do the emotional turning
points for diana are meeting steve and fighting the germans and hearing about
the war to end all wars and deciding that she needs to amazon up and go beat
aries which means that she needs to
effectively break steve out of jail i think
the first physical turning point is not the crossed wrists it's the long jump
and not just the long jump but the long jump and the dangle from the tar
and then discovering that hey i can put a hole in
stone with my bare hands the wrist crossing kablam thing is accidental and
she doesn't yet know how to use it but her discovery of how physically strong
she is is fairly pivotal and then we echo that
with the emotional strength that it takes to openly defy her mother and her
mother's acceptance and the headband and all that jazz
you're on your way diana which means that the next fight looks a
bit more confident when we reach the secret german agents in london we
dizzyingly decide that a single kick into a wall needs three separate shots
because reasons but we also get this fabulous looking shot from above from a
choreography perspective you get to show diana taking down multiple opponents
with very little effort that hold on one perspective underlines her growing
confidence hat plus updo plus lots of clothes plus
angle means that we can get the stunt performer in there
and so it's gonna look really smooth and really nice to borrow from morpheus
she's beginning to believe and then there's no man's land this is not what
we came here to do no but it's what i'm going to do
dramatic music slow motion walking bullet deflecting
running jumping smashing things and then we start to follow her in earnest. there
are far fewer cuts and less slow motion and the editing overall suggests
that she is far more sure of herself contrast this fight with basically every
fight that occurs before it the previous ones have been
very quick very fast-paced lots of cutting but that makes them look
a little bit uncertain but here well i'm not going to tell you that everything is
now matrix style long sequences with minimal editing
but it's markedly different this is where diana becomes wonder woman and
from here on out the editing is much more typical of an action movie where
everybody knows what they're doing rather than an action movie where
they're trying to hide that their actress can't punch or to put it another
way the editing changes from emphasizing
diana's uncertainty and bewilderment to emphasizing diana's confidence in her
mission that isn't to say there's none of the one move one cut style of editing
going on but there's less of it it's part of a
balanced diet instead of the whole meal this is true
in veldt it's true in her fight with general ludendorff
though they are in a small room so it makes sense that that one is cut in
closer and it's true in her fight with aries the further into the film we get
the more confident diana is in herself the longer we hold on her
during fight scenes it's one of the ways we visually read the change
in her as she goes through her hero's journey now having a lot of cutting in
fight scenes is disadvantageous in several ways
it can be hard to follow it can be difficult to maintain continuity
it's lots more work for the editor but it also feels
lazier when watching it even though it's more work that just seems like the worst
of all possible worlds but i do see the advantage of having a really staccato
editing style particularly if you're going to move
from that into a smoother style as the film progresses
in order to make a thematic point longer takes make it harder to hide stunt
performers longer takes make it more difficult to
make everything look perfect but they also let you connect with what's
happening much better they immerse you more thoroughly in the
world and they connect you emotionally like nothing else
it's a balance right i think overall i'd have preferred fewer shots where we have
the same move from four different angles because
eh but as a concept more editing to less
editing as a style choice is something I feel I can get behind.