--Hello? This is Jackie speaking.
Hi my name is Tony and this is Every Frame a Painting.
Some filmmakers can do action. Others can do comedy.
But for 40 years, the master of combining them has been Jackie Chan.
These days, there's a lot of movies that combine funny scenes
with fight scenes. But even when the movie’s good
the comedy and action seem to be two directors and two different styles.
And that’s why Jackie’s so interesting.
In his style, action IS comedy.
And his work shows that the same filmmaking principles apply
whether you’re trying to be funny or kick ass.
So let’s dive in. If you’d like to see the names of the films
as I’m talking, press the CC button below.
Ready? Let’s go.
So how does Jackie create action that is also funny?
First off, he gives himself a disadvantage.
No matter what film, Jackie always starts beneath his opponents.
He has no shoes. He’s handcuffed.
He has a bomb in his mouth.
From this point, he has to fight his way back to the top.
Each action creates a logical reaction.
And by following the logic...
we get a joke.
In movies, this comedic style goes back to the silent clowns
like Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton.
But I think Jackie has distilled it down to one line of dialogue:
--Please! I said I don't want trouble!
Because he’s the underdog, Jackie has to get creative
which brings us to point number two: he uses anything around him.
This is the most famous aspect of his style.
take something familiar, do something unfamiliar.
I’ve seen him fight with chairs
dresses
chopsticks
keyboards
Legos
refrigerators
and of course:
Not only does this make each fight organic and grounded
it also gives us jokes that couldn’t happen anywhere else.
Number 3: Jackie likes clarity.
He doesn’t do dark scenes where everything is color corrected blue.
If his opponent wears black, he wears white.
And if his opponent’s in white, then he’s stylin'
His framing's so clear that in each shot he’s setting up the next bit of action.
Here, even though we’re watching the stuntman,
two-thirds of frame is the staircase. A few seconds later, we see why
He keeps things clear by rarely using handheld or dolly moves.
--Like American movies, there’s a lotta movement. When the camera angle moves
--that means the actors, they don’t know how to fight.
In slow-motion you can see how the camera operator swings around
to make the hits seem more violent.
But since Jackie CAN fight...
--I never move my camera. Always steady. Wide-angle.
--Let him see I jumping down, I do the flip, I do the fall
When you shoot this way, everything looks more impressive because
action and reaction are in the same frame.
Notice how you can always see Jackie, the car and the wall at the same time.
But a similar stunt from Rush Hour 3
never includes all the elements in the same shot, and it doesn’t work.
The same principle applies to comedy.
This shot, directed by Sammo Hung, shows us
the punch, the bad guy’s face and Jackie’s face all in one.
Now check out the same gag in Shanghai Noon.
Here, action and reaction are separate shots.
It kinda works, but not nearly as well.
Why don’t more directors do this?
Because of number 5: they don’t have enough time.
Jackie is perfectionist willing to do as many takes as necessary to get it right
And in Hong Kong, he’s supported by the studio
which gives him months to shoot a fight.
--And the most difficult thing is when I throw the fan and it comes back.
More than 120 takes. Those kind of scenes, you say "Oh, Jackie's good."
It's not good. You can do it. Except do you have the patience or not?
When I rewatch his work, these little things
are the ones I’m most impressed by.
He doesn’t need to do them, and they eat into his budget.
But he still does them because he wants to.
And it’s that “going above and beyond” that I respect and admire.
--But in America, they don’t allow you to do that.
You know, because money.
And his American work is missing something else:
--And there’s a rhythm also, to the way that the shots are performed
and also the way they’re edited, and Jackie said something very interesting
that the audience don’t know the rhythm’s there until it’s NOT there.
Jackie’s fight scenes have a distinct musical rhythm,
a timing he works out on set with the performers.
--Ready, action. Stay where you are!
Stay where you are, don't chase me.
See? Everybody looks good.
Even experienced martial artists have trouble with it.
In his earliest films, you see him learning the timing from Yuan Heping
and it’s very much like Chinese opera.
But by the mid-1980s, working with his own stunt team
He had something totally unique.
In America, many directors and editors don’t understand this timing.
And they ruin it by cutting on every single hit.
By in Hong Kong, directors hold their shots long enough
for the audience to feel the rhythm.
--The most important part is the editing.
Most directors, they don’t know how to edit.
Even the stunt coordinators, they don’t know how to edit.
Hong Kong directors like Jackie and Sammo cut a particular way.
In the first shot, you hit your opponent in the wide.
In the second shot, you get a nice close-up.
But when you cut the shots together, you DON'T match continuity.
At the end of shot 1, the elbow is here.
At the beginning of shot 2, it's all the way back here.
These 3 frames are for the audience’s eyes to register the new shot.
And they make all the difference.
--I start from here, then here, But two shots, combined
That's power.
In other words, show it TWICE and the audience's mind will make it
one hit that’s stronger.
By contrast, modern American editing doesn't show the hit at all.
At the end of shot 1, the leg is here.
At the beginning of shot 2, it’s in the same place, going backwards.
But because they cut at the exact frame of the hit
it doesn’t feel like a hit.
A lot of people think this is because of the PG-13 rating
but even R-rated films do this now
It looks like a bunch of people flailing around
instead of a bunch of people getting hurt.
Ouch.
Which brings us to number 8: pain.
Unlike a lot of action stars, who try to look invincible
Jackie gets hurt.
A lot.
Half the fun of his work is that not only are the stunts impressive
There’s always room for a joke.
Pain humanizes him. Because no matter how skilled he is
He still gets smacked in the face.
In fact, Jackie’s face may actually be his greatest asset
Many times the look he gives is all it takes to sell a joke.
Like when he does an entire fight holding a chicken.
Or dressed as Chun-li
And last, Jackie’s style always ends with a real payoff for the audience.
By fighting his way from the bottom, he earns the right to a spectacular finish.
He doesnt win cause hes a better fighter He wins because he doesn’t give up
This relentlessness makes his finales really impressive and really funny
And it’s in direct contrast to a lot of his American work
where bad guys are defeated because someone shoots them
COME ON.
But most of all, I think Jackie’s style proves something:
action and comedy aren’t that different.
In both genres, we want to see our best performers
And I think a lot of modern action directors are failing completely.
These actors are skilled artists, some of the best in the world.
Why are the directors so unskilled?
Why am I paying money to NOT see the action?
--Whatever you do, do the best you can because the film lives forever.
"No, because that day it was raining and the actor don't have time."
I said, would you go to every theater to tell the audience? No.
The audience sits in the theater: good movie, bad movie that’s all
Exactly. This work will last.
And on that note, I leave you with
the greatest death scene in film history.