Hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop here and i'm back with Nick Jeffries Head of
Department of the armory on Netflix's The Witcher
and we're back to talk about the fight scene in Blavikan now
Netflix themselves have done a fantastic sort of extra film
about that talking about the effects and and henry talking about the fighting and
everything else great little watch, go watch that, but
this is really talking about the weapons from Nick and I's point of view, so Nick
if you want to take it away with the Meteor sword
and we'll start looking at that. Okay so we're obviously
for that fight we're using the anti-person sword
yeah um it's a little bit strange because you can you can see her as part
monster but she's not that kind of monster
so we're using the incredibly sharp meteorite sword
and then i mean what i found interesting about this is the grip form on it so
yeah i mean originally i made uh this one here which is a very typically
uh sort of 14th and 15th century grip so that's where
the sword started and then it changed it did change well it
it it changes and then changes back again
so that is the sword that's the hero sword
that's the grip profile but we what we also have
which is we call the fighting sword his hands fit this he can manipulate a
smaller handle quicker because it is smaller so we made
a smaller handle for him to bow to do that so when you say smaller even
thinner not shorter thinner thinner it's lengthwise absolutely identical the
sword is the same size the only thing that we don't have is
this width here simply so he can run his hands around it
quicker so that grip change was that stunts, was that you, was
that Henry's request, where did where did that come from?
it came from a discussion with myself and Henry
a couple of issues arising was there anything that could be done and I said
yeah I watched a couple of fights he was
having and he stopped at some points and showed me
where his hands were then in that part of the fight
and so i went away, to you, and we made another grip
cast again as another mold and made some fighting variants and we were there
yeah i mean it's a simple fix that but that's the sort of thing that
it just keeps people happy absolutely and it's an integral
hidden part of what we do. If that helps Henry do the fights, if it helps stunts
make them look better, I think for a little bit of time and
expense of changing the handle there's there's no issue, we will make
that as easy for him as possible. Because we future-proof things we are
thinking ahead yes the whole assembly is screwed together
so because it's screwed together it unscrews and then we can change bits
out as we need we can we can take the pommel off the rivet as
you well know is only a fake rivet so that just spins down locks us in
place and that screwing together aspect is
also useful because i'm going to jump ahead now
but at the end of the Blavikan fight of course he kills Renfri and he takes her
broach and that becomes sort of emblematic
part of the sword it gets built into the sword what that entails is not complete
rebuild of a prop it's a rebuild of the cross guard
that's it and it goes on to the the old prop so
this we first see somewhere in in episode four i think i believe
my memory serves me ran for his broach incorporated into his cross guard now we
took that opportunity um on another discussion with Henry the
issue he was having was occasionally he found that the
straight cross guard would catch his hands as they came round
so i made a mock-up for him of uh some cross guards
at different degree settings and the one we settled on
that we were both happy with was the 20 degree
cross guard it worked for him and it still worked for me so i was happy
we made a change and it's incorporated in the change when he went to
an Armorer outside of Blaviken or wherever it was
back at Kaer Morhen or wherever, he had
the crossguard changed at the same time so we did that work
yeah and he now has a slightly different sword such as this
and so now i have the brooch sword. But actually what's interesting there again
is do you remember in in our first chat we talked about the
boot dagger and how it had the little blade catcher on the side
this serves exactly the same purpose so i'll just pick up this dagger here
so as an example now if i go in for a thrust
and it comes here and it now catches between the blade and the brooch
and now Nick has control of my blade and he can
drag the blade out of my hand simply by doing that or twisting his grip
and it's gone and so these sort of things are very real features of
medieval weapons absolutely and just because it's a
fantasy program doesn't mean we can't introduce these
very real things and it shows i think that
when these opportunities come up we fully discuss
where we can go with it so the more that it
encompasses the better yeah and i mean that's an interesting point
because that comes full square back to Renfri's sword here because
you know as you can see this is a short blade it's
21 inches 53 centimeters i think so it's small
i mean to be fair it's sort of gladius sized so
we all know romans were pretty good at fighting and they did quite well so just
because it's a small sword doesn't make it ineffective and she's
not a big lady you know she's small and she's slight
so you make a weapon that suits for her suits the stunts that she's going to
work with and perhaps even suits her backstory you
know we don't know where she came from i mean
you love that aspect. Whenever i come up
with an idea for a weapon you have to look at the person
and you have to go, especially in this world, they might be seriously old
so for example if you said well this person is 200 years old
then we could say well they had their first sword when they were 18.
so they've owned this sword for 182 years well it's obviously broken
at that point but they've had their new sword made in the shape of their old one
so it has more of a medieval style but it may be harks back to an earlier
sword and so on and we see that a few times in the whole
program that there is elements in things from older people
that they really like and they've had that reproduced in their new weapon and
that might be design elements it might be scale it might be proportion
it might be material choice absolutely so we we have to look
at that backstory maybe even invent a little bit of a backstory of our own
to get there to the history of that weapon
they are not brand new weapons they didn't just get them that day
they have a story to tell themselves and if they don't tell a story
well they're not doing our jobs yeah they just don't work so
i feel that works because it tells a hidden story
whatever that story is people have to i know what it is but people
have to use their imagination to what it is and i suppose ultimately that
it's a bit like reading a book isn't it that your your picture of what happens
on those words is different to my picture and it's the same that you have
a vision of what this is about yes that may or may not be the same as
somebody absolutely strangely her dagger was first so her dagger was
first a 10 inch bladed dagger a 10 inch stabbing blade like that is
capable of killing anybody with the gem at the top
that was the lead into it and the sword i then designed
with similar look into the sword so what i did was and funnily enough
probably the most trivial bit on the sword was i took the most time thinking
about so you have that hole but you also have
a corresponding hole in the scabbard that's it so you can see
it it's got a red backing in it the colour of
the red backing to get the shade right took me about
four days with about 15 colour swatches just on
the top of my desk as i worked just to look at as i did it before i
went that's the one sometimes it's the little things that
take the longest to get your head round yeah i mean this whole piece actually i
particularly like and for the sword geeks out there this
is a type 14. so this blade shape is a known blade
shape it's a historical blade shape a little bit shorter but even the
originals were all only ever short swords
they were never big whopping swords you know two handers they were small
single-handed swords often called riding swords for you know you you pack them on
your horse you move from a to b and you don't want your big sort of war
you want something handy to get you out of trouble
and that's exactly what this is the cut out there well that is to be fair a
fantasy of ours it's not something that was ever historically
done but it is nice and it does work well
it does i know what you're saying but i believe it's totally acceptable
just because there's not one in a museum just means we haven't found that one yet
there is a lot of truth in that yeah just because it's we haven't seen it
doesn't it didn't exist i'm actually also i'm going to take back
the words that i've just said because actually of course
you go into the 16th century and 17th century and there were piercing blades
all over the place on daggers so actually what i've just said was
completely rubbish but in in swords i'd say a big hole like that
is not been seen but i would also say we did have exactly that conversation
and that's why it doesn't run right up into the hillt so it doesn't go close to
the tang, so structurally it doesn't really make
much difference yeah i i just think it's a nice thing it's a
nice difference and it looks great with the scabbard it's good
and it stands it out yeah it shows there's a little bit of thought in the
manufacture so when she went and had a sword made there's a little bit of
thought in it i think the other good thing to say
about what you've got there is Henry does all his own stunts so we
don't need stunt swords we don't need another
complete set for stuntman which is fitted up for that stuff
exactly but here you can see two scabbards now we have
an actress and we have stuntwoman they both need a scabbard
but actually what they both need is two scabbards because as you can see
that illustrates before the fight and after the fight
so we need to have enough stuff that's clean or dirty
to be able to drop back into that point of fight
and able to carry on with it so as soon as we get to
most people fighting there's a lot more equipment because we have to cover
their stunt people for henry because he does everything himself
we just need a set for him Geralt's blade is 27.5 inches
opposed to 21 they can easily still fight each other
the action is all in there for our little bit of contribution to it
i feel that the weapons are the basic enabler
i think they are and i mean from my point of view i thought the whole fight
scene was as i've just said really really well
done and that's obviously you know that is the
culmination of all the departments that allow something like that to happen and
for it to work it's it's nice when it all comes
together like that yeah absolutely so that's it you know we've talked about
Blaviken and and the weapons uh Renfri' sword the Meteor Sword but also
i referred earlier on to the film that netflix had done the little extras film
about the blavikan fight scenes and stunts and so on
really go watch that it's it's a great little film eight ten minutes long
something like that but Nick, thank you once again for coming
and bringing all this stuff and we'll come on to do some more films
you're welcome i hope it interests people
yeah well it interests me. I mean i love going back this is a while in my past
now this is a year and a half ago yeah i mean you live in it day to day but uh
but time still flies yeah it does thank you very much
thank you
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