I didn’t intend this to be a martial arts movie, any more than Lethal Weapon is considered a martial arts movie, but I knew that martial arts would play a huge part in it. I wanted the four women to kick ass so I knew there would be lots of fighting. I consider it more of a twisted adventure, with martial arts as one aspect.
Today we began fight choreography. The girls of Emma's Revenge have been training since March but we brought in some of our villains today to beat on. So today marks the first time that we are actually planning how the fights will play out. We got some great local talent, such as Jason Borneman, Charles Hubbell, John Cromwell and Matt Kaeder. We still need many others but this was a good start. If you’re reading this and want to be in a movie, send me an email. We’ve been working with Stacy Noyes, Joe Madrid, Rudy Rogers, Fabio Morescalchi and myself for fight training and choreography. We are all martial art instructors and are affiliated with the Minnesota Kali Group, the gym we are training at.
As martial art instructors, we pull from the arts we know. We are using the Filipino Martial Arts (weapons and empty-hand such as Kali, Panantukan, and Silat), Muay Thai, various grappling arts, Jun Fan martial arts (Bruce Lee’s martial art), and whatever miscellaneous dirty street fighting tricks we can come up with.
My goal is to create fights that are in the Bourne Identity style, having come from the same lineage of instructors that choreographed those films, such as Guro Dan Inosanto (whom I am an instructor under), David Leitch and Jeff Imada. We want the fights to be realistic but still have flash for the screen. Some films like to do quick cuts and edits to create fast action. I hope to use some of those techniques but I want to mainly rely on just plain fast action. I want the audience to see the moves as opposed to only wondering what the hell just happened.
After watching some of the work done at the gym today, I am excited about shooting this on location. The logistics of pulling that off will be a whole other blog in itself. Keeping people safe yet portraying the action as ferociously intense will be the challenge.
