We put a master swordsman
in front of a table full of blades.
This is what a character might do with these weapons.
This is Meldof’s hammer.
Yes
Welcome back to a special episode of Punch 4 Punch.
You guys at home and Netflix seem to like us. So?
We’re back!
And we're back to talk about Blood Origin, The New Witcher series coming up.
It has cool sword fights and axe fights and dagger fights.
We want to figure out
what's the magic sauce to make the stuff look good on screen.
So we invited our friend Luke La Fontaine, expert swordsman choreographer,
to join us.
And we put a master swordsman in front of a table full of blades.
There's some weapons here that are similar to the weapons in the show.
Why don't we get right to it, pick them up and start using them?
Well, actually,
before we get right to it, I know this is a special Punch 4 Punch episode.
But you got to start off with the right tone.
Hit em with it!
Hey, what's up, guys?
So we are going to be taking a look
at some of the fight scenes here from Blood, Origin and Luke.
You know everything there is to know about swords, right?
Maybe, yeah.
Especially when it comes like filming it.
So I want to get your break down on all this.
Absolutely. I can't wait to watch it.
Luke real quick, tell us a little about yourself.
Ever since I was about seven years old, I was obsessed with swords.
It took me to Japan, it took me to Europe.
I was fortunate enough to study with a number of different masters.
16 years old, I did my first film, which was the original Karate Kid.
That was my first experience into the world of stunts.
I decided I was going to come out to California and become a stunt man.
And here we are, 39 years later to enable me to be here with you guys today.
And, you know,
I always cherish being able to talk about what I love with good friends.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, let's jump into a scene.
Fight as a clan.
We may just make it out
alive.
Right off the bat.
I love what they're doing with this.
It makes brilliant sense in terms of the people
with the larger weapons and the shields are at the front of the line defending
and the elf that's got the doubled smaller daggers is behind doing cleanup.
This is very, very realistic combat.
And I like it.
They're actually literally tactically doing things that would make sense.
They're throwing spears, daggers.
The sword strikes are for vulnerable parts.
There was a guy on top of that table, Michelle Yeoh cut his legs out, boom.
He hit that guy in the neck.
Why? There's a gap in the neck, right where the axe would be able to go.
They also start with sword and shield.
They don't end with sword and shield. Exactly.
There's an evolution to the characters and it just adds more
drama and makes us care about these characters.
The story of the fight goes somewhere, right?
And the audience gets to go there with you, which is awesome.
You've gotten rusty.
Have I?
Fights like this are so much harder to do.
Oh, yeah.
You're dealing with so many elements at the same time.
How do I make this look believable between three people?
And everybody is getting the right amount of time
so that somebody is not left out.
I have to admit, I would have been intimidated
and gone “uhh” scratching my head going, okay,
Michelle, I'm going to need your help on this a lot.
Right.
Out of the three of them, she is probably the most skilled,
not only as an actress performer, but as the character that she's portraying.
So therefore, it shows that she's constantly controlling,
still moving everybody around her and keeping everybody safe
while still proving her dominance over them.
She's using their hot headedness against them.
And what's great is that's being very clearly told.
You got to love when like somebody does.
The typical master thing like, I'mma beat you with a sheath or twig
against your blades.
That’s a bold choice to start with,
boom again, really smart.
Look at the armor design.
Look at the placement of her blades.
She's cutting people where the armor isn't.
She's moving.
Yeah, she's not staying stationary.
She's getting out of the way of these characters.
Getting a lot of the actress herself actually doing moves too.
It's great using doubles when you can, but like you need an element of the actor
being physical and getting in there just to earn the character.
Every time you see an actor or an actress put that work in, it's besides it
being believable in the storyline, you wind up respecting
and defending that actor because you know that actor put that extra work in.
Oh, look at that guy, huh?
You did some flourishes Okay. Yeah.
What did we do? Somebody’s been paying attention.
What did we do in To The Death and what do we see?
I'm going to do a bunch of sword flourishes.
I'm going to wind up paying for it because he wasn't having it.
So we looked at all the choreography, the tactics, techniques here,
but we didn't talk about the weapons themselves.
Luckily, we have the master armor, Nick Jeffries, to teach all of us
exactly what was his process in making these amazing weapons
that we see being swung around in this amazing show?
Let's go talk to him and learn about why he made the decision.
Oh, yeah, I'm dying to see that.
So we are on the line with Nick Jeffries here.
Nick, thanks for joining us.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Yeah, sure. My name's Nick Jeffries.
And I'm the master armor for The Witcher and its spinoffs.
What a cool job title.
Can you tell me a little bit about what you did on Blood Origin here?
Did you make the weapons?
Did you help conceptualize them?
Every stage is mine.
I read the script, write down who needs the weapon, and then we come up
with the finished item.
We have the hero weapon that's real.
So if it’s stationary, lying on the table, holding it.
If it's really close up, we use the real one.
In all other situations we use rubber.
What was the inspiration behind the weapon designs that you did for Blood Origin?
What I did with Blood Origin was push back into more ancient swords from Bronze
Age weapons, but we have used steel because they have that technology.
This is actually the Soul Reaver, the Holy Weapon that the quest is for.
This actually has a bronze core in it, but it has a steel outter.
But the bronze is a direct connection with the bronze in the blade Any body
you kill, you have a direct connection in the bronze to them.
I love that.
That's cool. Yeah, that's super cool. All that worldbuilding.
Wow. That's a sick axe.
Yeah, that's Fjall’s big axe. Now that,
as you can probably hear, is hollow.
It doesn't look like it's hollow, but it's made out three mil plate.
If we made this solid, you can imagine.
It would be like 14 pounds.
Plus being steel.
It lets me get some proper looking age to it.
I would like to claim this stuff.
It's not in a museum because nobody's found it yet.
But if we made it really rusty and put it in a hole in the ground.
They’d go “Oh, fantastic!”
What I want to show you next actually
is the only dedicated Dwarven weapon.
So this, is Meldorf’s hammer.
It's called Gwen, which is Meldorf’s murdered girlfriend.
She talks to this.
These things here, that actually says GWEN on the side.
So we've made it like they’re both screw caps
and it's hollow inside and it contains the ashes.
Oh, wow.
Everything is perfect in my mind for her.
Perfect person playing the perfect role.
And then we managed to give them the perfect weapon.
So I'm really happy with how that came out.
All the different weapons you
have in there from Blood Origin, if you were in that world
and you had to go into battle, which weapon would you take with you?
I like the daggers that were Éile’s because they have this ring on the end.
Yeah.
And once you have a ring, you can do so much more with that.
If you can use something for real it would probably be this dagger,
of everything we made.
Well well, Nick, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Like every time you would step away
and bring out another blade, we’d always be like “Yes, yes, yes”.
That's so true.
See, this is the thing about armory and the way we do it, really.
You've just had a little insight into our unusual world.
I love it. Yeah.
Thank you. Yeah, that's amazing.
You're welcome. It's a pleasure. All right.
We learned about these weapons.
Now, Luke, will you show us how to make them look good on camera?
Absolutely will, let's go have some fun.
Luke, on this table in front of you.
I have three weapons,
weapons that are close approximations to what are in the show
because the actual weapons are often anglon.
So we've got the closest thing we could,
but I was hoping you could show us how to make these look cool on camera.
Let's unveil the first pair.
under the red veil.
We have daggers.
Not a problem.
Boom. Here we go.
We've got a pair.
Not exactly matched of Kukris.
If we're talking about practicality in terms of combat,
both forward is the most practical way to use these weapons,
but it's a fantasy show, so screw that, we aren’t doing that.
My cutting patterns.
X’s, Horizontal cuts, upward cuts.
If I make a combination where I cut down, I cut across, I cut up, I cut down,
I can come up with any kind of pattern I want to come through here
and cut somebody. And stab.
There's no limit on how they can be used.
In terms of a fantasy piece.
I might be able to demo a little bit further
if I have another weapon for these to go against.
Luckily, under the yellow cloth we have...
broadsword. Is this called a broadsword?
Yeah, technically, that is a Chinese Dao or Chinese broadsword.
This is very, very typically a military weapon in ancient China.
And for the show it's very similar to Michelle Yeoh's character sword.
You notice that's a steel sword.
Yeah, it's a Wushu practice sword, which means it's not sharp,
but it's still steel and it's got a thin edge.
So we're going to be careful in how we use it.
Here in the States, we're a little bit more on that cowboy edge.
We will mix materials where in England they won't.
But I believe as part of the Declaration of Independence, it said...
“But we also want to be able to use metal weapons in our martial arts scene.”
So yeah, right, right.
And that's written in there somewhere, you know, it absolutely is.
So we have a dance partner here for Luke
because Gui and I we're just going to be watching and talking.
So Stephen Dunford, if you can join us,
you guys have watched the To the Death short film on the Corridor Channel.
Steve is one of the guys with the energy swords
And that's why he's here today to put his hands on that sword,
because I trust Stephen Dunford not to split my head open.
Okay, so this is what a character might do with these weapons.
He cuts vertically at my head, bang.
Now I'm doing what's called an X block.
When I oppose with both weapons, I'm scissoring the blade in between
both blades.
So there's nowhere for the blade to slide off to.
I want to take advantage of this and use one weapon to attack
and one weapon to defend.
So I use my right hand to slide the weapon off out of my trajectory
and make a cut on him where he's going to take a diagonal cut down at me
and we both miss he makes a horizontal cut.
I can parry double
which puts a wall of steel in between me and the other blade.
I can also do the exact same x block if I choose to
and deliver a fatal blow.
Okay, so you showed us some cool moves with daggers.
So now we're looking at this blade here.
You know,
this is basically the equivalent of the sword that Michelle Yeoh
is using in Blood Origin.
How would you amp this up and make it stylistically look good on camera?
If I was going to draw this weapon, I want to present the sword.
Once I draw the sword,
the sword wraps around my body.
Chinese Daos are about keeping the sword moving,
mainly because in a lot of instances, military combat.
You're not fighting one on one.
You're in a battle with hundreds of people.
If I keep the sword tight to myself, I can parry
and keep myself wrapped in steel while I stab and cut other people.
It's a light, agile weapon with a broad blade that's really sharp.
So you showed me how to use this weapon kind of in a personal way,
but I'd love to see
this used cinematically in a fight, even just like a five or six demonstration.
You got to oppose this with something.
Let's use something we haven't seen. Well, perfect.
Because under the blue cloth, we have.
Oh, boy. Ooh. That one's mine, right?
Yes. You can have that one.
Oh, wow. This actually has a lot of weight to it.
Yeah, that's a steel axe. Well, here you go, sir.
This character swords already in the sheath hasn't been drawn out yet.
This character doesn't know that this person is going to attack them.
And the fight starts and he decides to thrust the axe forward at me.
I block
with the sword still in the scabbard and shoved the blade down.
He decides to cut up.
I evade backwards.
He cuts diagonally.
I decide that it's time to use the sword.
Now I pull the sword out, bind the sword, hit him in the back with the sheath
and prepare for a fight.
So I can't help but notice that you guys have a certain body language
where it's like.
It's almost like
you just telegraphed things a little bit with your shoulders, with your hands.
My body movements match the movements of the sword, but also I'm telling a story.
Stylistically, I could do all the same movements that I did without that,
and it would look very boring.
Everything would be very square.
I'd pull the sword out and kind of just stand back and be ready to fight.
So the idea is if you've got a performer who is amazingly physically capable
and is comfortable with a weapon, let them rock and roll a little bit.
Then you can develop it, then you can mold it, then you can say, Hey, I love that.
More, more, more
or less, less, less here and there.
All right.
So you made that sword look really cool, but what about this axe?
Let's take this axe and let's make this our primary weapon.
How do you make an axe look good on screen.
Whenever you see a big, giant axe like this in movies or television,
you always see this big kind of brutish-
I'm going to take this huge swing and cleave you in half.
Axes weren't actually used that way.
This isn't a super fast weapon to recover.
You can kill me.
Now, now, now, now, now, now.
Maybe now I have a chance, right?
The idea is this is a bullying weapon.
I stay what's called in my box.
So as a martial artist, I stay in the confines of my body.
I harass, I can move the weapon around, I can hook, I can stab.
And these points are called the horns.
So a lot of times you'll see axes where on this axe, it's almost symmetrical.
I use that to poke into your face and you don't like it very much.
The other thing about an axe is, look how wide the head is.
So when I'm standing here defending myself,
I've got all the steel in front of me
to pick up other people's weapons and keep you from hacking me in half.
So let's do a short demo between
that sword and this axe to give you an idea.
Good luck, Steven.
We're rooting for you, buddy.
Stephen does a vertical cut.
Boom.
I dispel that. Stephen does a diagonal cut.
I get the hell out of the way now.
Same thing.
He makes a flat, horizontal cut at me. Bang!
That's what this weapon is great for.
I have the advantage.
I can do all kinds of nasty things
to Stephen as a reply with this weapon.
And you saw it in some of the footage we watched.
He's not taking these giant swings.
When he takes some of those guys out, he goes, bang, he takes that guy's leg
and just yanks him and he drops to the floor because economy of movement.
If you're utilizing an axe in the way it's supposed to be used
and now you're doing it on film in order to make that feel interesting, is it a lot
about showing the unique traits of that weapon in your opinion? Yes.
This weapon served a purpose and it's got its own style in terms of how it's used.
Again, in fantasy, we can do whatever we want,
but the idea is you've got all these pointy bits,
you're going to use all of them and you're going to train to use all of them.
So we’ve taken a look at daggers
and taken a look at a broadsword, taken a look at a war axe,
all inspired from Witcher: Blood Origin, which is out now on Netflix.
Make sure you go check it out.
There’s some really cool fight scenes in it.
Stephen, Luke, thank you so much for joining us
and showing us how to use these weapons cinematically on screen.
Thanks again. It's always a pleasure.
I always have a good time with you guys. Heck yeah. Same here.
And you know, I'm curious, you know, to all of you watching,
if you had to go into battle, which one of these three would you pick?
Daggers, Broadsword, or war axe.
Let us know in the comments below
and see you maybe in another Punch 4 Punch at some point.
You like. us! Yeah.
Maybe leave some comments about that too.
All right. So long, everybody.
Happy holidays.