If your actors aren’t comfortable moving a lot, you can still give them smaller parts in the fight. It will make your job much harder, however. Fake fighting is closer to dancing than actual brawling, and requires a similar level of coordination and athleticism. [1] X Research source
How does each fighter behave? A noble warrior, for example, will fight very differently from a scoundrel pirate. Do you want gritty, realistic violence or something more fun and cartoonish? How serious is this fight? If you’re not making the movie alone, show your cast and crew fight scenes from 3-4 movies you want your scene to look like. This helps everyone get on the same page. [2] X Research source
A third method is to let Ron dodge the blow, which is much easier to shoot than fake contact because you don’t need to “cheat” the impact of the kick. [3] X Research source
Let each blow land where an actor just was for the best results. If Kim throws a punch, have Ron back up as he reacts to it, helping sell the movement. [4] X Research source
Say Kim grabs Ron’s hand and breaks his arm at the elbow. All Kim should do is grab the hand, letting Ron move himself to the floor as she follows him down. If Kim needs to slam Ron’s head against the wall, Ron should throw his head within six inches of the wall and fake the bounce back up. She simply follows his head with her hand.
You can purchase realistic foam baseball bats, swords, nunchucks, and much more online from movie prop websites. Prop knives should be retractable, meaning they hide when you “stab” someone. Guns, even rubber ones, should be covered with a bright muzzle indicating that they are fake whenever they are not in use.
Make sure you rehearse in costume as well. Actors need to practice in the clothes they will actually have to fight in. [5] X Research source
Safety is paramount when staging fake fights– while there should be no actual contact, there is a real chance of injury if someone misses a cue or maneuver. [6] X Research source
If in a public place, consider sticking someone on the street to intercept and warn passerby. If the police show up, do not try to convince them the weapon is fake immediately. Drop the weapon, put your hands up, and explain once you are asked.
Alternatively, put the camera behind Kim’s shoulder. This way she can throw the hook in front of Ron’s nose without anyone noticing she never actually hit him. [7] X Research source
Make sure these marks don’t let the actors get blinded by lights or, even worse, put them in a place to slip on fake blood or something else on set. If you need to shoot down low and can see the floor, use the marks for rehearsal and only remove them once you’re ready to shoot.
This allows the editor to cut from Kim’s punch to Ron’s stumble backwards, helping hide the fact that Kim never actually hits Ron at all. [8] X Research source
Good chances to go wide are choreographed bits where no one actually gets hit – such as sections where both fighters dodge several blows in a row.
If a character slams into a wall, shoot from behind them so that the actor’s body hides the safety pad. For the throw, a common choice is to shoot up at the person, so they fall towards the camera and land out of frame below it. [10] X Research source
Don’t be surprised, in a busy action scene, if many of your cuts are 2-3 second or shorter. You can go too fast, which makes a scene too confusing to follow. Find ways to slow the scene down occasionally, like using a long cut of a character catching their breath before jumping back into the fray.
For really incredible scenes, you’ll need to do “foley. " This is when you record and create all the sound effects yourself, such as watching the scene and stomping in time with the action to create perfectly timed footsteps. [11] X Research source
You can make these noises yourself, but it is always better when the actual actors voice their own sound effects.
Jackie Chan solved this problem by staging simple, clear fight scenes then speeding them up very slightly during editing. The result is a coherent fight with long cuts that is also high-energy. [12] X Research source
