you shouldn't actually punch people in the face on movie sets unless you really know what you're
doing and if you do it by accident you're probably going to need another take because
reality for reasons we're about to get into is sometimes unrealistic my name is Jill Bearup i
love fake fighting for stage and screen and today we're going on an adventure with indiana jones to
discover why you shouldn't bring a real punch to a fake fight this video is part of the director
project a youtube playlist collaboration where a whole bunch of youtubers make a video about a
particular director this month is steven spielberg and so i decided to join in with punching as is my
wont and i brought a friend so let's get set up the plot of indiana jones and the temple of doom
goeth thusly dr jones who by means of escaping a crime boss in shanghai ends up traveling with
nightclub singer willie scott and by means of the need for a cute child sidekick ends up with short
round in tow as well unceremoniously arrives in india by way of a crashed plane he ends up in
a village which has had both its sankhara stone and all its kids stolen so he goes to investigate
after shenanigans turns out the children are being held as slaves by baddies who are forcing
them to mine for gemstones and search for the two remaining sankara stones indiana retrieves the
stones rescues the children and then our dynamic trio end up in a minecart chase that was just
begging to be made into a disney ride it is at this point that willie steps up to the plate and
does one of the three ish useful things that she actually does in this film the script and fight
choreography call for her to slug a bad guy right in the face knocking him off the cart causing the
cart behind them to crash hooray you did something good in the face of the traumatic nightmare that
has been your movie experience thus far this did not go quite as planned when they were shooting
and to tell you why i'll let laura take up the story hi what's up i'm laura crone i'm a fellow
youtuber and amateur stunt performer and today i'm here to introduce vic armstrong a good old
english horse boy turned stunt legend who you probably do not in fact recognize as james bond
superman and the man of the hour indiana jones now by the time temple of doom rolled around armstrong
was not only doubling harrison ford but was also working as the stunt arranger also often known
as the stunt coordinator so it was his job to figure out how to do all of the fights and other
dangerous stuff in a way that was safe enough to be repeatable while still looking convincing
and cool on camera like in this shot where kate capshaw as willie scott needs to defend herself
from a baddie who has just gently whack-a-moled indie into submission i guess and she does so by
means of a big old right cross to the face now this is a tricky shot for a couple of reasons
we're at super close quarters the cart is moving the camera is moving and we are staring kate
capshaw right in the face so there is no chance of swapping her out for her double incidentally
wendy leach who you may not in fact recognize as stunt C3po and real life spouse of vic armstrong
and like every tricky shot ever captured in the history of film this one was apparently running
right over and into lunchtime now for those of you who may be new around here when a punch is filmed
on camera especially this kind of absolute walloping directly to the face there is not
supposed to be any actual physical contact it's an illusion created by aligning the fist the face and
the lens of the camera just right to make it look like a hit and if you don't have years and years
of experience developing a sixth sense for where exactly the straight line connecting those three
points exists in space especially with a dynamic camera and a dynamic set and a shot so close your
audience can see the difference between a punch to the nose and a punch to the teeth with total
clarity you might not know it until you see it nowadays it's a quick walk over to video village
and there you go but if it's 1984 and film has to be developed into dailies for you to see the
footage you just shot it's up to vic armstrong to play the role of chief rainer-on of parades
and tell your tired sweaty and very hungry crew that you've gotta go back for one more because
you're increasingly under pressure leading lady missed again and it was under these conditions
that on one fatal take the lovely kate capshaw finally popped her burly fight partner smack
in the mouth hard enough to give him a fat lip spielberg and the rest of the crew were
overjoyed ready to finally get out of this godforsaken mine shaft but armstrong insisted
that they still didn't quite have it see capshaw did what most humans do when they hit
another human without intending to she weinered it the second she realized she'd made contact
so what armstrong was able to see was that even though she had actually hit the guy hard enough to
do obvious physical damage it would look weaksauce in the shot because there was no follow through
my first week of stage combat i smacked my partner right in the jaw sorry again max luckily i'm not
very good at punching he's a big guy and like kid capture as soon as i actually made contact i
immediately stopped trying to follow through still nothing makes you conscious of keeping
your distance like assaulting your partner by accident on-screen punches look convincing if a
as laura already mentioned you line up the camera and actors correctly but also b the person doing
the punching follows through and looks convincing and c the person being punched reacts properly
we'll come back to this one so even if a we've got everything lined up correctly because
we actually made contact we're still going to be short on b because kate capshaw was not intending
to hit this dude in the face and so there'd be a weak or non-existent follow-through the shot that
made it into the film is a really solid example of the full body involvement it takes to sell a
punch you can see her make a fist in the bottom of the frame twist her whole torso to c.ock it back
and initiate the punching action way down in her hips there's plenty of time given to each of these
steps so you can really see the physicality of her decision to punch him plus she's got her best mean
face on to sell the aggression theoretically to level this punch up you'd want some action in the
offhand but bracing on the cart like she's doing is probably necessary for the actress and makes
sense for the character the follow through after the hit connects is the one little tell that this
isn't her area of expertise typically you're going to tell a stronger physical story by following the
action all the way through rather than leaving the fist hanging out there if you don't have a
follow through you only have half a punch and vic armstrong not gonna let that go it's a credit to
spielberg though that for all he grumbled about it at least according to armstrong's account of
events he still called for one more take which capshaw nailed and armstrong signed off on
and which he was super thankful to have when he eventually got to see how weak that
real punch looked in the dailies the other problem i mentioned is when you're doing a punch like this
even if you've lined everything up correctly and even if after accidentally making contact the
actor stays in character and follows through you might still not have a shot because by
actually making physical contact with them you've just made the stunt performer's job
unexpectedly much harder for a reaction like this where there's not supposed to be
any physical contact the performer getting hit is totally in control of their own body
they take their timing off of the person hitting them but they generate all of the action of the
head snapping back the rest of the body following and falling down to the ground on their own and
in a shot this tight and dynamic there's not a lot of wiggle room on marks which is the name for the
precise spots where the performers need to be in order to make sure that the shot looks good as a
whole so actually getting hit has the potential to throw two particular wrenches into the works first
is the surprise factor similar to what we talked about with capshaw wimping out there's no way to
really predict how a person is going to respond to an unexpected face full of pain and second there's
the pure physicality of it even a real weiner of a punch carries at least some force with it and you
don't know exactly what that's gonna do to your momentum until it happens and adjusting on the fly
may or may not work out the way you need it to moral of the story real isn't always or even
usually better so don't bring a real punch to a fake fight i made a video a while back about
tom hiddleston being repeatedly punched by natalie portman in thor the dark world
and all the reasons why you shouldn't do it that i said in there still apply there are examples of
real injuries making it into movies poor old viggo kicks an orc helmet breaks his toe in screams and
aragorn screaming in frustration makes it into the movie but if there's a primary moral to the story
is this don't expect real violence to necessarily look more convincing than fake violence the whole
point of fake violence is to look as convincing as possible while not landing anyone in the hospital
after all secondary moral you're paying your coordinator good money freaking listen to them
to bring it back to the director for a moment steven spielberg had the good sense to listen
to the expert he had paid a good chunk of money to hire if you're stunt coordinator says do it this
way you should default to doing it that way i mean now that we're all on digital they can just play
it back to you and show you why it's not working but in general you hire your stunt arranger