The searing heat wave in NYC continues.  It’s supposed to hit 100 today.  We went over mid falls again, and did a short fight scene on the bridge, ending with a header fall.  Then also practiced the other falls.  Filming really helps you to see what you’re doing wrong and correct it.  I have to make sure I don’t stop flailing too soon on the falls.

Then Kofi and I cleaned up the martial arts fight scene that we worked on yesterday.  With a day’s rest (and being not quite as exhausted), we were a lot sharper and smoother.  We learned that getting the moves very clean and defined is more important than pure speed – they often speed up the cameras anyway, but sloppy moves would still be sloppy.  After a few takes (including one where we forgot to reset the props, and we had to improvise), we got a good, clean take that we were all pretty happy with.

Then we started with the guns – pistols today.  We took the prop guns, and practiced walking with the pistol pointing forward.  Then we did shoulder rolls with the pistol, coming back up with ready.  We finished up with a 3-person fight scene, incorporating the pistols.  We had a couple of sloppy takes, we’ll take it up again tomorrow morning.

We picked up where we left off yesterday – with a fight up on the bridge, ending in a header fall.  We’re getting smoother now with more practice.  It’s HOT up there on the bridge – hot air rises, plus we’re away from the fans.

Since we had a little time before lunch, we did a short session on trampoline.  We started with basics such as controlling your jump, half turns and full turns, seat drops, and table drops.  I hadn’t really done table drops before – took some practice and adjusting, so that I’m not landing face first or legs first – everything should land flat at the same time.

After lunch, we did some independent practice – I worked on kips.  It’s still a little inconsistent, but at least I can get up now.

Then we set up the mats, for a fight scene heavy on the martial arts.  Kofi and I worked out the fight scene (with Aaron critiquing and adding his suggestions), and started running through it.  We learned how to a throw into a wall, and also used some props such as a foam barrel, and a foam rock.

We went through it a few times, and started to film it, but we were just so dead tired (it’s HOT and HUMID this week).  So we’ll start with this tomorrow and hopefully get a few good takes.

After a quick warm-up, we went back to mid-falls off the bridge.  We were feeling a little more comfortable with it this time.  Today we added some flailing on the way down – a few arm waves and legs kicking.  Less is more – so that we don’t look like we’re doing doggie paddles or something.

Then we also worked on knife fights.  The basic strikes and footwork are similar to what we did for sword yesterday.  We worked on a short knife fight scene, to get the timing and distance right.  Filmed a few takes to see what it looks like on camera.

Now it’s time to put it together.  We went up onto the bridge to finish the last half of the knife fight, with a header fall.  We had to take into account where the camera is (down on the ground), and adjust our strikes accordingly for it to look right.  The end results looked decent!

After resting all weekend, I’m probably back around 90%.  I probably could’ve used another day or so to fully recover, but this is good enough.  All of us looked more energetic in the morning warmup.

This week we’re starting weapons.  Today was basic fencing drills – footwork, strikes, parries.  With my fencing experience, this was pretty straightforward.  The one difference with the footwork is that you can step through with the left foot – and so you have to maintain proper parry and striking form even on the opposite side. We did solo drills (with combinations of advances, retreats, step through, pass back, and various strikes and parries).  And then we partnered up to do strikes and parries back and forth.  We were using both bokken (Japanese wooden katana), padded katana, and fencing foils.  We were going fairly slowly, which is good – want to make sure we have good control before we go faster, especially using foils with no mask.

We also started doing falls off the bridge – the same falls we started learning last week off the mini-tramp.  A 10-foot platform isn’t THAT high, but still takes some getting used to.  After we got comfortable with headers, we partnered up and “threw” each other off the bridge into a header.  The guy falling is doing all the work, the other guy just follows along and acts as if he really pushed/threw someone off the bridge.  The suicides, headers, and back falls were fine, but I’m still having trouble with the face-offs – not quite falling flat, or not twisting quick enough to fall onto my back.  Bob said that I’m too stiff right now – like a “wooden soldier”. Gotta work on that.