[Door opening]
"Baby, just a sec.
Hold on, I gotta run.
Nah, it's cool. It's just a client.
So sorry, we close at six."
"Oh really? Shit."
My name is Naledi Jackson, and
I'm the writer and director of The Drop In.
I had written a script and had always in mind
to make a kung-fu film or a martial arts–driven film.
"I heard rumours the best braider
in town works here. Is that you?"
"Where'd you hear this?"
[Jackson] I had no idea how the hell
I was going to pull off a fight scene.
I had never done any action choreography.
You sat down with me and I had already —
in my head, I thought, "No problem.
I know this is gonna work out well.
In fact, I know who I'm gonna bring in
to make this vision a reality."
[Jackson] The pre-vis element really helped so much.
You can make decisions based on
what you've seen and tried and tested.
[Gosbee] It creates a common vocabulary
that everybody on set understands:
"Okay, this is what we're going for."
[Intense music]
[Jackson] You guys asked me for references.
I kind of had an idea of how I wanted
it to look and flow in my head.
There was movies that I love. The Matrix is one of them.
I also brought The Grandmaster to you guys.
That was... that was a big reference.
[Intense music]
I remember thinking to myself,
"There's no way I'm gonna be able to do all of that."
Like, just shaking in my boots.
- Oh, we thought that too.
[Group laughs]
"So, what do you want to do?"
"I just wanna get on with my life."
"Then I'm afraid you give me no choice, my dear."
[Grunting, fighting]
[Rapovski] One of the things that we, as a team
and as a group, always are challenged with
is, "Who am I gonna get to double our performers?"
Because this community, as you know,
does not have a large selection.
[Adeliyi] It's tough to find another Black woman that's gonna do it.
[Rapovski] We needed to train you girls,
because it had to alleviate the stress of doubles.
[Daniel] I can tell you that the first day we got in,
we left, and I was super excited to meet you guys,
and then I collapsed on my couch for two hours
going, "Oh, my goodness, how the hell are we gonna do this?"
[Group laughs] Because you guys wanted it so badly,
but you weren't there. You weren't ready to do it.
And then we're gonna have a fight that looks like this,
with a foot, and then like this,
and then some hair, and then it's over!
But it's — no! So I just sat there
just trying to figure out what we were gonna do.
Then I remember calling Jay right after that,
going, "Jay, I don't know what we're gonna do.
It's gonna look great if Dennis and I do it.
Can we get wigs?" Like, "What are we gonna do?"
Action.
We had two months, roughly, to train you girls
and you put in so much of your time to do it.
[Jackson] When it was on, I was like, "You're game, right?
Like, all the way?" And you were.
And then when I met you, that was one of the things
that had to be really clear from the beginning,
was how challenging it was gonna be,
and I needed to know that you were—
[Traore] I didn't have it. I was like, "Oh, I can do it,"
I didn't think it would be eight hours a day...
- Three, four days a week for two months.
[Jackson] Nor did I, initially.
[Energetic music]
- We did boxing drills— - Tae kwon do—
- Tae kwon do, Muay Thai drills, Kali drills with them,
which is a Filipino martial art. - We did boxing.
- We're not just putting in moves
for the sake of putting in moves.
We didn't have you just high blocking, low blocking,
high blocking, low blocking because we need
to take up 30 seconds. It's because we're
trying to get you from this point
in the story to this point in the story.
And once your dialogue stops, we're still continuing
to tell the story that we were given inside of the fight.
So you can still read and see what's happening there.
By the time we get to the end, we've taken you
on another piece of the narrative journey.
[Dramatic music]
- It was really important for me to give our actresses
that kung-fu feeling when their doing they're training.
I wanted the stances right, your poses right,
so that's what I had in my mind. I'm like, "Okay.
Your hand was low, no, no, no, no,
get it up higher, and I want that intent,
like you want to kill her
and you wanted to survive.
- Move, step forward like this? - Yes.
- Ooohh, okay. - Ready?
- Yeah. - And pirouette.
[Adeliyi] Remember how nervous I was about doing that?
I was like, "What if my knee pops?"
[Rapovski] When you look at the way, the speed
in that pirouette, when you turn, - [Adeliyi] So good!
and you continue fighting, it was the right decision.
- That's my favourite move.
[Jackson] There was a million things going through my head.
To have the stunt team tracking the quality of the fight,
and being there as a resource to be like, "You know what,
that's too tight, or too weird,
or I'm not convinced by her punch," or whatever it is...
I love that. I love the collaboration,
and I think it only makes the work stronger.
[Galvez] We had three days to shoot the entire thing.
Because of location limitations, they had to be overnights.
- How many times were we yelling at you while we were filming?
[Adeliyi] How many chocolate bars were we eating, Snickers?
- So that the energy level stayed up here, right,
at three o'clock in the morning
and the energy level's still here?
That comes from you girls wanting it.
[Dramatic music]
- The table smash, although you were gung-ho,
I couldn't let you do it.
- Dae did the table smash. That was a very dangerous stunt.
We didn't want these guys to do it.
Am I correct, that was your first stunt?
- Yeah, yeah. [Laughing]
The training for it was uncomfortable,
'cause I didn't know what I was doing,
and Paul helped me through it.
He warmed me up on the eight-inchers,
and then we went down to two-inchers,
and then we went to the floor.
And I didn't feel anything, so I was like, "Oh."
I didn't even know when we started, when we finished.
I was like, "Wait a minute, did I just do that?
I just went through this table."
[Table smashing]
- It seems that everything here was passion-driven.
With passion, you can't go wrong.
And having the talent that's excited to do that
was very rare in our case. I mean,
it doesn't come along every day.
- I wanted to make a movie that I've been longing to watch
but never could because I just haven't seen it yet.
- I can let my daughters watch this,
and then say, "This. Strong Black women,
not just elegant-looking, kicking ass — you can do it all.
You can do whatever you want to do in life."
And that's a great thing to look up to.
I can prove, I can convey that to my daughters.
So thank you very much.
"Oh, I'm just closing up the shop.
Well, I'm wearing sweatpants.
Of course I'm wearing sweatpants. What else would I wear?
You're — no.
Nah, nothing too crazy.
How 'bout you, how's the hotel?"
[Door opens]