Media Studies: Fight scene research

In our Short Film, We want to implement a short fight scene that depicts the tension between two of our main characters. Including a high paced, high intensity fight scene should have an impact on our audience however we need it to look realistic and of good quality for this impact to be a positive one. Therefore our group decided to examine the style of fighting used from a Thriller film and whether or not we can implement this into our own short.

Jack Reacher (2012) 

START AT 2:20

The fight scene in Jack Reacher epitomises what fight scenes in action thriller films are like, fast paced professional fighting styles with the lead character leaving the situation without a scratch. However the fight itself is anticlimactic, it fails to produce any thriller aspects, it can be seen through the dialogue used before the fight itself which character has won, Tom Cruise wins both 'battle of the mind' and the fight itself. Compared to what we want in our film this fight is too one sided, we want our film to reflect realism and our character is no ex marine or undercover agent and this needs to be shown by the fighting used in 'Pot Luck'.

Sound

In fight sequences it can be noted that there are various diegetic sound is used, this is to make the fighting in films seem more dramatic and to make the fight itself seem more powerful in terms of the action on screen, a powerful sounding punches will make the overall fight scene better. This can be evidently seen in 'fight films' such as Enter the Dragon, with Bruce Lee. 

However, the style of fighting as well as the sound used is rather excessive compared to what we wanting our sequence. We would like to use sound effects in 'Pot Luck' albeit in a more subtle way.

Conclusion

In short films, the action must be kept to short periods of time due to the lack of screen time however this can serve as an advantage as then we can implement more time and effort as there isn't as much to do and so this will result in 'Pot Luck' being a more professional short. Not only this we want to adapt the fighting styles we have seen in these two examples and 'lighten' these slightly as in to fit into a domestic fight scene, which will be a more realistic fight scene containing less violence than the examples shown above.

The following article from Wiki How demonstrates how to stage and shoot a fight scene from a film, this will come useful for our filming day.