It’s been pointed out to me recently that an awesome lady by the name of Samantha Swords was kind enough to give my previous work a shout-out and then rebut a few of my points in the last part of this article.

(Incidentally, if you haven’t heard of her, you should. Among other things, she’s the 2013 longsword champion at the Harcourt Park World Invitational Jousting Tournament.)

Anyways, got a break in work, so I’ll take the chance to respond as best I can.

Sam says,

“Rashes are usually measured in days, not decades.”

I have no idea what I was going for when I said “Rash.” I was definitely looking for a plural noun of some sort. Damn you autocorrect, maybe? I don’t even know what a collective noun would be for multiple armored lady fighters. A Fury?

“A Fury of armored women strode onto the field.”

Works for me. Anyways…

Sam Says,

“I understand Jay’s point, it’s relatively a larger group of reasonably-attired women on film than the female-fighter-in-media cliche suggests.
Yay for us having role models! I want to be clear that it’s still not *nearly* enough.

The fact Jay calls it a “relative non issue” should show just how bad the situation really is for want of strong, capable, feminine, not-overly-sexualised female role models.”

Damn right it’s not enough. It’s an improvement over history, that’s for sure. And a thankfully growing trend. Without going into several pages on the history of women in action cinema, I’ll just leave it by saying there’s a LOT of catching up to do, despite serious progress.

“Relative non-issue” was probably a poor choice of words. Seeing in the 2010′s multiple well-armored female fighters in a single year on the big screen is something we never would have seen just a few decades ago. (And it’s a damn sight better to what I’ve glanced at in the comic book and video game industries).

But significant improvements don’t mean the issue doesn’t still exist. I concede the point.

Sam Says,

“Any lady who has trained wearing the plastic version of the Double Domes of Wonder should be able to confirm the design isn’t suited to deflect thrusting weapons, which rules out usefulness for practicing historically-accurate fencing styles.”

Not a lady, haven’t worn it, but I agree, if deflection is a key component of the armor style you’re looking for, I wouldn’t go with Double Domes of Wonder either.
(I do like the term though.)

Previously, I said,

“Surprisingly, this is not that big a deal. One reason is that inside shots are rare and easy to defend. Most attacks against an armored opponent come from the outside, and often at an angle.”

Then Sam Says,

“I don’t know what Jay is talking about, but it’s not Western or Historical European Martial Arts. Possibly SCA heavy fighting, or medieval reenactment, or HEMA synthetic longsword competitions, or Battle of Nations, or something that doesn’t involve working from the bind?”

None of the above, actually. I’m a fight choreographer and a stunty. All of my work with a sword is fake fakeity fake fake fake. Having a battle make tactical and martial sense is about third on my priority list of any given work, after “keeping my people out of the hospital,” and “telling the story well.”

That said, (And this is the part where I may upset people), I consider there to be a big difference between Western/Historical European Martial Arts and Western/Historical European Combat. To me, actual sword-on-sword combat is something nobody alive today knows for sure. There’s the occasional sword-related assault or murder, but sword-on-sword combat in the truest sense of the term no longer exists today.

What does exist is W/HEMA and the like, which are sports wrapped around a series of educated guesses and sprinkled with concessions to the safety of the participants. They can tell us a great deal about W/HE Combat, but will always (thankfully) fall short of reality.

(I could write a book alone on the “Is it real?” debate in regards to swords and swordplay, but that’s for another tangent and even I can only digress so much).

As a parallel, I’ll posit this:

Quite a few people out there can tell you what fighting a real gunbattle is like. Thanks to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I’m one of them. In recent years, a trend that popped up for training professional trigger pullers is a technology called simunition. Essentially, it turns duty weapons into high-tech gunpowder-propelled paintball weapons. Training scenarios are set up (including antagonists), and the shooters are sent through the scenario in real-time, reacting and shooting as they would in a real gunbattle.

Do a lot of real-world shooting and modern combat techniques come into play during these scenarios? Absolutely.

But something is always held back. In a dozen tiny ways, no training scenario yet designed truly replicates what one has to see and do in an actual combat. It’s subtle in a lot of ways, but more than enough to make differences. It’s a highly specific martial tool. But it’s not combat.

When I claimed a center thrust to be a stupid move, I spoke of what I would deduce would be in a combat situation, not a martial arts move. Not knowing the specifics of Sam’s fighting style, I’ll concede it’s entirely possible to be a very wise move within those confines. It’s just not something I’d use with that type of weapon, against that type of armor, if my life was on the line.

…Unless of course I was up to something and a centerline thrust was part of it, but I’m sneaky that way.

Anyways, my thanks to Ms. Swords, both for the shoutout and rebuttal.

Certa Bonum Certamen,

~Jay

So, there’s been a lot of talk over the nets of late on something close to both my heart and my workbench, female armor.

There’s the one-tumblr crusade against the chainmail bikini called Women fighters in reasonable armor.

And the even more popular “Women’s armor sucks”

In case most of you haven’t noticed, I’m a guy. But since I A) make women’s (and men’s) armor as a side business, B) have worn armor in both actual wars and in choreographed fight sequences, I figure I have enough cred to add my $.02 to the discussion.

I’ll start off by admitting openly that I love women’s fantasy armor from an aesthetic perspective. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t go into the pain-in-the-ass effort of making it. And I’ll also admit that, upon seeing Return of the Jedi in theaters, leia’s metal bikini single-handedly drop-kicked me out of the cooties stage at the tender age of five.

That said, having married a lady Barbarian who hits people with plumbing supplies in the woods on a regular basis, and some of my nearest and dearest being stuntwomen, I have a vested interest in seeing the armor that I make hold up to snuff. I’ve made works going from a B cup to an I (yes, I. It’s not a typo). I have yet to work in boobplate, but I have made chain and scale.

For the lady Barbarian, I even made a leather curiasse designed to be worn with one of her chain tops as a composite piece.

There appears to be two big points (shut up, peanut gallery!) of contention, so I shall answer them separately: the chainmail bikini and boobplate.

The chainmail bikini is a staple of sword-and-sorcery fantasy convention, and was designed as pure fanservice from the ground up.

The reasons for it don’t really exist in early examples, mostly because it never needed justification. It was there for fanservice and everyone knew it.

After a while the big point that comes up (usually on the spur of the moment from some drooling fanboy who is, shock of shockers, actually asked why the young lady in question isn’t wearing something more *ahem* “substantial,”) the usual excuse is “less protection equals more mobility.”

And the crazy thing is, that’s partially a legitimate excuse. It happens (in much less exciting form) in Afghanistan today, when the merits of the OTV vest vs. plate carriers are debated.

When I think of the possible tactical uses for this sort of thing, what comes to mind is this:

The Retiarius gladiator. The guy’s got one arm armored and a loincloth. That’s it. And they face off against the Secutor, who’s much more heavily armored, but slower.

Now take a look at Sonja here.

Of course, if we’re going to go with the “sacrifice protection for mobility” argument, you may claim that you might as well go naked. Which is entirely possible, and even has precedent. The Ancient Greek language has a term for this, “gymnos,” which literally means “naked,” but holds connotations relating to exercise and speed. Yes, it’s where we get the word “gymnasium.” Ponder that the next time you’re bitching about what other people wear when they lift.

However, this poses the practical problem of running afoul of public nudity laws in between adventures, not to mention where to put your keys. Oh, and content creators may have some complaining editorial types. Chainmail bikinis let you go down to the minimum possible coverage while keeping the local public decency authorities off your back. And if you’re wearing that little, you might as well armor it up. In the unlikely event that someone did tag Sonja in the boob, she’s at least got a shot at it sliding off the scales.

Then there’s the distraction factor (which I remember at least one comic having Sonja claim it helped). Hell, if you keep it shiny, a little tassel-twirling technique can have you bouncing sunlight in an opponent’s face with minimal effort.

Am I reaching? Maybe. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong. If you’re going to go for the bikini, just have some tactical sense in mind as well as aesthetic sense is all I’m really asking.

Now we get into boobplate. Never made it personally, but I’ve worn plenty of guyplate (pecplate?) between historical plate armor and modern body armor vests, so I can speak with some distinction on this.

Ironically, boobplate has been a relative non-issue in live performance, looking at the rash of armored women over the last few decades.

I’m not much of a comic book or video game guy, so I can only assume it gets to be more of an issue over there.

But as an armorer, I take a certain amount of umbrage at some recent posts on the topic.

Here’s “An armorer’s take on boobplate”

And here’s the boobplate in question:

I’ll admit right now that I don’t know Mr. Jabberwock, and I don’t know what he makes armor for (the article only explains, “I make actual armor that people wear when they hit each other with swords.” I’m guessing some sort of WMA, but can’t make any real calls one way or another).

The two big objections (I said shut up, peanut gallery!), seem to be:

- That blows to the torso will fall into the center of the chest by sliding along the inside of the breast cups, and

- That a strong enough blow or a forward fall will crack the sternum.

“I worry constantly that she’s going to fall hard and it will crack her sternum, even with the padding. Note also that it seems almost perfectly designed to guide sword points and arrows into her heart. They still have to penetrate the armor but, honestly, that’s a design flaw.”

Excuse me, what the fuck?

So she trips and falls, and lands boob-first. Obviously, the breast cups aren’t going to compress or absorb. This transfers the force to the sternum through the padding…. And to the entire rib cage, in the case of this piece, which results in spreading the force throughout the torso. You know, the exact same thing that an unarmored fall would do? Or even a fall in a non-boobed plate would do?

But no, it’s “oh me, oh my, she’ll fall and hurt herself.” Does this sound insulting to anyone else?

For a guy who makes women’s armor, he doesn’t seem to think outside the boob too much.

As far as guiding blows inside, it might. But it’s unlikely. Attacks landing on the outside line will slide off the outside line, not inside.

If an attack comes inboard from the nipples, then for the same reasons it probably will slide down into the crease between the cups. So, an attack that comes to the inside line makes an impact.

Surprisingly, this is not that big a deal. One reason is that inside shots are rare and easy to defend. Most attacks against an armored opponent come from the outside, and often at an angle

Another reason is that a penetrating thrust to the center of a plate-armored torso is a stupid move, because few medieval weapons could actually penetrate it. A warhammer? Maybe. A sword? Not happening.

So, why boobplate and not the “bind-and-stuff-in-men’s armor” popularized by Joan, Brienne, and others above?

Because (holy shit!) women have, in general, a wider range of torso shapes than guys do. Armor has, from the dawn of time, been designed for men almost exclusively. A vest made of tough stuff does a pretty good job of protecting the vitals on a guy, with minimal adjustment for sizes without having to do trig. Guy’s armor often has (although hasn’t always) been a case of “adjust various rectangles as needed.”

Women add more curves to the mix, to varying degrees. And in some cases it’s easier (certainly less expensive in-universe, given what it takes to make custom armor in that era/the fantasy equivalent) to go the bind-and-stuff route. Apparently this was the worthwhile case with Joan, and there’s a couple of canon paragraphs about Brienne of Tarth’s suitability for wearing a man’s armor.

But for some, that ain’t an option. I have one friend with a 39″ bust and 30″ ribs. Binding ain’t gonna work because, in her words, “all that has to go somewhere.” Simply padding out the gambeson with additional padding to make it fit a guy’s armor is equally ridiculous (how ridiculous? Take 2 beer cans and put them end-to-end. From where the first can becomes it’s widest to the other end is about 9″. That’s how much padding would be needed, were anyone crazy enough to try that method).

If I was faced with that sort of challenge, I’d probably make a solid frontal arc instead of individual cups, and empire waist the gambeson while I was at it. But that’s just me.

Like the chainmail bikini, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it so long as it makes sense in universe.

Which means there are good ways to do boobplate…

…aaand some not so good ways.

~Jay

P.S. due credit and thanks must go to my colleague and friend Rob Dehoff, for his tactical input in an earlier discussion that led to this article.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I’m a geek. What’s slightly less known is that before Peter Jackson came along, I was much more of a Hobbit geek than a LOTR one. A slight distinction to be sure, but an honest one. To the grade-schooler I was on discovering the books, the story of a short and quiet everyman caught up in someone else’s adventure was much more resonant than the long, wordy epic going into the backstory of everyone and their grandparents. The Hobbit‘s emphasis on music helped as well (I’m a musician’s son), as Ralph Bakshi’s animated take on the Hobbit is more musical, more coherent, and more fun than the mess the animated take on LOTR was. Growing up in the 80′s, it was hard to read the book in the middle of the night and not hear the bass-heavy goblin chants, or the dwarven choir. And no kid who hated doing the dishes didn’t like the celebrating-a-mess of “that’s what Bilbo Baggins hates.”

Jackson’s take on LotR may not have satisfied purists, but it’s one of the better-crafted adaptations of all time, and he’s given The Hobbit much the same treatment. How much is going to remain true through the next two films remains to be seen, but for now it’s a rich, well-told story. The take on the music is incredible (the soundtrack’s already on my list), the characters are deeper than I thought they would be, and I can’t wait for the next one.

For you technical geeks, I have no idea if the screening I was at was in 24fps or 48fps, so don’t ask, I wouldn’t know how they compare.

Fight folk: This film is awesome. Dwarves mean impact weapons reign. Sword & shield the way it was meant to be, impact weapons that have impact, and polearms that actually use the reach. There’s also some interesting applications of the Romeo Paradox (which I’ll address in another post). But overall, the fights are incredible.

Now we get to the changes and spoilers. I’ll let you leave now.
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No, seriously, SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!
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OK, you’ve been warned, here we go.

As I said before, there’s been some adaptations and additions. I’ll go with them somewhat stream-of-consciousness, and some compare and contrast with the Bakshi version.

Characters:

Bilbo is one of those characters that’s really easy to make annoying if you don’t do it right (kinda like D’Artangan). It would be easy to fall into the “everyman dragged around and whining” trap that touched the Bakshi version. Thankfully, Freeman’s Bilbo gives us more of the kindhearted if put-upon Bilbo as a willing participant. Instead of being badgered off of the breakfast table by Gandalf, Bilbo finds himself alone before grabbing the contract and running. That one small change told us that we’re definitely dealing with Belladonna Took’s son, even if he doesn’t quite realize it yet.

Thorin: Both he and the story benefit the most from the changes. Bakshi’s version had Thorin as an aging, greedy prick. Armitage’s Thorin is given a prologue showing the fall of Erebor, and the fates of Thrain and Thror. Armitage’s Thorin is much more prince-in-exile than treasure hunter, with going home being a much more firm foundation for the quest than the waiting gold.

The Dwarves: To be fair, these guys weren’t given much characterization in the novel, and Bakshi boiled it down to “Thorin’s in charge, Bombur’s fat, and everyone else has names.” While Jackson hasn’t given them all their chances to shine yet, they’ve already grown much from the novel, and I can’t wait to see some of the others. While fat jokes at Bombur’s expense are still there (and be honest, did you think they’d be left out?), we also see Balin falling into the advisory role we know we’ll see him in later. Fili and Kili have their young, cute and impulsive moments. A lovely touch is in the first distinct words out of Gloin’s mouth. You can so see his son Gimli in them.

Gandalf: What a difference 60 years will make. He’s still the powerful wizard and chessmaster, but not quite yet the magnificent bastard we’ll see in LotR. Seeing Gandalf have his early “oh shit” moments does a lot to humanize him.

Now we’re getting into story parts. As before, I’m not a Tolkien purist, and I found a lot of these changes enhanced the story for me. Most of them are relatively minor, too.

- Setup of Old Bilbo writing his memoirs (and trying to hide from Eleventy-First Birthday well-wishers)

- A prologue comes in detailing the rise of Erebor, the discovery of the Arkenstone, and Smaug’s arrival at the lonely mountain.

- Bilbo’s impulsive move detailed above

- Azog comes into play with a serious hate-on for Thorin, actively pursuing the company.

- A story by Balin detailing events at Moria.

- Radagast the Brown makes an appearance, both drawing more threads into LotR and bringing the Necromancer into the story. Both characters were only mentioned by Gandalf in the book.

- The entire party doesn’t discover the trolls. Fili and Kili notice them after screwing up their pony-watching duty, and shanghai Bilbo into his burglaring.

- Politicking in Rivendell, mostly between Elrond, Galadriel, Gandalf and Saruman.

- The dwarves lose their ponies before escaping to Rivendell, and do not get fresh mounts there. I’m guessing this was to make a sequence involving the storm giants easier to do.

I’m probably missing a few. I’ll just have to go and see it again to be sure! (I know, twist my arm, right?)

Watching an onstage (or onscreen) gunfight happening can get very frustrating, very fast. Ask just about any operator, and they can probably name a film where they saw a gunfight and their response was a variation on the tune of “fucking bullshit! That never fucking happens in real life!”

I’ll admit to being annoyed at an action movie using the “have a star shoot a few blanks, have a few stunties fall down, instant badass” formula. It has a time and place, I’ll admit, but it just feels lazy.

The unfortunate fly in that jam is that it’s all too often not a case of impossibility, but (occasionally ridiculously) high improbability.

Bullets can (and occasionally do) go damn near anywhere. The axiom that covers this is as follows:

“Firearms are precision instruments by design. Humans are not precision shooters by design.”

There are exceptions, but overall, this applies. The action of a firing gun and the travel of a bullet to the target is a known, quantifiable, and trackable phenomenon that lies well within the boundaries of Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. Then you put humans into the mix and the fucking quantum shows up.

(I realize most of my work is aimed at actors, and I’m bringing in math and science. I’ll try to make it as painless as possible here)

The basic idea of that is that a firearm is designed to send a tiny projectile in a specific path in a specific way, and every variable that a shooter, a target, and the environment brings into the mix affects that path.

Take a laser pointer. Aim it at a spot on the wall. Now see how small a movement it takes to move the dot a foot to one side. Multiply that by all the excitement happening in a gunfight.

(And people don’t believe me when I say pistol shooting is a lot like smallsword)

There is training that compensates for this. But even that only goes so far.

So, getting back to the title of the piece, how this affects performing a theatrical or cinematic gunbattle. There’s a multitude of ways gunshot wounds (hereafter GSW’s) can occur and effect. But for acting purposes, we can distill these down into 5 categories. Organized by severity.

Instant Kill: This is one of the most debatable kinds of GSW’s, mostly for arguments over the definitions of “Death,” “life,” and “instant.” Truly “instant” death for purposes of this category involves massive trauma to the brain stem upon impact of the projectile. In short, the bullet hits a plum-sized target inside the skull, and everything stops.

Instant Shock: Often mistaken for an instant kill, Instant Shock in this case is a GSW that causes enough damage on impact to cause instantaneous loss of consciousness. Short version: getting shot causes enough damage for the victim to pass out instantly and die soon after.

Disabling wound: A wound that causes the loss of use of an extremity or mobility. Major joints and the spinal column are all targets that can result in a disabling wound. Short version: a GSW that renders a limb (or more than one limb) unusable.

Noticed wound: A wound that doesn’t cause loss of consciousness or use of an extremity, but does cause trauma, blood loss, ect. The most “playable” of GSW’s, as the victim is able to continue the scene with the widest range of possible choices, but still noticeably reacts to the wound as it occurs and through the remainder of the scene.

Unnoticed wound: The wound occurs, but is not visibly reacted to by the victim. This may be the result of adrenaline, shock, a supernatural nature to the character, or other reasons. The audience may see the shot occur, or it may be a reveal later in the scene.

As with anything involving firearms, introducing one rule will summon a legion of exceptions, but I’d like to think this at least provides some sort of broad, useable generalization.

Let’s get a few things straight first.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a United States Navy SEAL. Take that for what you will.

I am, however, a United States Marine, a former infantryman, and a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Take that for what you will.

More recently, I left the warrior’s life and took up that of the storyteller. Fight choreographer, actor, weapons specialist, armorer, author, critic, probably a handful more I’m not thinking of right now. Nowadays, and likely for the rest of my days, I tell stories on a computer screen, a video camera, or onstage. Take that for.. you get the fucking point.

Act of Valor is, at least in my experience, a rather unique critter in the cinema world. It’s not the fun-loving early Michael Bay recruiting ad of Top Gun. And it definitely isn’t the sniveling bullshit of a recent Hollywood output that couldn’t put anyone in a modern American uniform without making them a PTSD-riddled victim of the Big Bad Bush or a sadistic baby-eating multiple rapist villain (or both).

Act of Valor‘s story is relatively straightforward: following an element of SEAL Team 7 along the course of a mission to stop a heavy-duty terrorism plot. I’d go so far as to say that the mission, rather than the SEALS, is the main character of the film. To call the SEALS characters may in itself be something of a misnomer: they are portrayed by active-duty SEALS, referred to and credited only by first names (which may or may not be their own. For the record, I personally don’t know, care less, and mildly doubt). We can see their faces, but watching them fade into their roles as part of a single unit is watching them as they are.

These SEALS aren’t actors. And they’re not (insofar as I can see) attempting to play themselves. They do more playing archetypes: members of a SEAL Team rather than any members in specific. This helps from the opening, as we’re spared the action movie cliches of being introduced to the team hillbilly, the team geek, and the other stock characters found in a military-based action film. There’s little to see of a three-act structure, the most bare-bones exposition and mercifully no author avatar-ish speeches on the nature of the world or some such bullshit.

The story moves from action point to action point, pausing only briefly to explain why, and always on the move. The camerawork on the fight scenes gives just enough disorientation to keep the audience unsettled, but never descending into the overedited mess that plagues so many fight sequences in recent films. What struck me was how much it did resonate with actual firefights: the audience knowing just barely enough of what the fuck was going on to keep up with the fighters. Odd angles, bad lighting, gunfire and explosions obscuring dialogue, all of it resonant with actual combat.

If I had to give a glaring exception to these scenes, it would be the soundtrack. The music distracted and took me out of the fights. Just in case anyone was wondering: up-tempo and heavy bass orchestral music doesn’t play during firefights, and that faux-Enya flute-heavy bullshit doesn’t drown out all ambient noise when people you care about die.

The film was made with the full backing of the Department of the Navy, which had final cut privileges of the film itself, and authorized showing the faces of active duty SEALS. (For the curious, this has never happened before. A SEAL’s identity revealed usually means that they’ve either left the teams or are dead). As far as OPSEC goes, the movie neither shows nor discusses actual operations. And with the Navy’s heavy oversight, I doubt classified SEAL tactics were shown. Might deliberate changes have been made? Probably. I’m not going to point any out for you.

Filming the various action scenes involved the SEALS involved planning attack scenarios, with the cameras following them, often in live-fire conditions. I’ve read at least one account of a Canon EOS 5 outfitted with an armor plating over the data card, for the express purpose of a SEAL shooting the camera in the course of a scene, leaving the footage intact.

As I write this, critics are panning Act of Valor across the country. Rotten Tomatoes currently calls the acting “stilted.”

Ahem.

THEY’RE NOT FUCKING ACTORS, YOU MISERABLE FLAMING BAG OF FUCKING DICKS! THEY’RE THE REAL MOTHERFUCKING MCCOY! GROW A FUCKING GENDER-IDENTIFIABLY APROPOS SET OF FUCKING GONADS AND MOTHERFUCKING RECOGNIZE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!

*cough*

Some particular acts of dumbassery below, with responses.

“Employing Navy troops as stars is a clever idea for an action thriller. But the soldiers’ awkward line readings are glaring enough to distract from the potency of the story.” – Claudia Puig, USA TODAY

They’re sailors, not soldiers. Since you’ve ignored that little detail, I’m not surprised you haven’t figured out that they’re not actors.

Roger Ebert spent a paragraph bitching about how he can’t tell performers from characters. The grand high pooh-bah of film criticism, completely missing the point. Stellar.

If I had nothing else good to say about this film, I would praise it for simply allowing modern-day warriors to BE fucking heroes, even though they’d likely kick the ass of anyone who called them such to their faces. The Rotten tomatoes consensus did the most to piss me off, claiming that “a jingoistic attitude that ignores the complexities of war.”

Well, fuck me, RT. But forgive me for reading “ignoring complexities of war” as “not having U.S. service members snivel in their skivvies the way my latte-sipping wannabe intellectual self does at the very fucking thought of coming close to having to do what they do on a regular basis.” Blow me.

I was asked when I came back from the theater how close the battle scenes were to actual firefights. Shy of the music, I’d have to say pretty damn close. Not in the exact details of tactics or sound or movements, but in little details that I can best describe as “could have been.” Little details like gloves chosen and worn by personal preference. One character, in a single shot, had a twitch in their cheek. I remember having an identical one. The little things resonated heavily.

But then again, I’m not a regular audience member. I’m part of the .45% (look it the fuck up). I’m someone in the industry who is sick and fucking tired of being shown on-screen as a monster or a helpless victim time and fucking time again.

In an ideal world, something like Act of Valor might open some eyes. I’m a bit more cynical than that. I saw this film in a packed house opening night, with applause at the end. The spell was broken by some young punks taking a few chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and some shit-talk about Obama (I wanted to get through the day without hearing about his sorry ass. Oh fucking well). I watched the silhouettes of the punks walking by, one of them with an empty Gatorade bottle…

..And my mind’s eye saw another group of lanky young men with short hair, laughing at some stupid shit or another before business had to be gotten down to.

I can dream of an ideal world, can’t I?

So yesterday I had the afternoon free, moseyed on over to a multiplex and sat down to watch Step Up 3.  This naturally means that the first question coming to mind is “Jay, you’re a sex-crazed adrenaline junkie who concentrates on action movies, what in the blue fuck were you doing seeing a cheesy dance movie sequel?  Did you just need somewhere to cry over the lost potential of The Expendables?”

Valid question.  The answer being that SU3D is the first movie to come out recently that was A) shot in 3D instead of converted, B) has a lot of body movement throughout by the performers, and C) isn’t a CGI-laden effects fest.  That made it a workable (I refuse to use the term ideal) platform to see how modern 3D shows the way human bodies move.  Kind of important for one who does a lot of work with fight scenes, no?

Not to say that I haven’t seen 3D fight scenes lately.  Beowulf back in 2007, Avatar last year, and the crappy 3-D add-ons of Clash of The Titans this spring all had their share of combat.  But they also were loaded with CGI effects in the process.  No real way to tell what was a human in front of a 3D camera and what was a tennis ball on a stick slathered in CGI that never saw a 3D camera.  Here I was reasonably sure I was watching human beings.

Early on I started noticing a particular kind of “body blur” during certain movements.  At first I thought it was related to performance speed, but it would happen regardless of whether the move was done at Western or Eastern combat speed.

(Once again I start making up words and have to explain myself.  Pre-The Matrix, fight scenes in western movies usually were performed about 3/4 to 4/5ths the speed of fight scenes in an Asian film.  The whys and wherefores are enough for a book, let alone another article.  Bottom line: it’s my term for the speed of fight scenes.  Eastern is a bit faster than Western.  Good to go?  Roger.)

Anyways, speed wasn’t the sole culprit of the 3D body blur I was seeing in various dance sequences.  But the more I watched, the more I saw it was a combination of speed and crossing planes.

And once again I have to explain what the hell I’m talking about.  Fuck the ellipses, I’ll just keep going.  I’ve never gotten to see any of the early 3D movies from the 50′s, and was really too young to catch much, if any of the big 3D features in the 80′s when I was a kid, so I can’t speak from experience.  But in a nutshell, 3D works on showing different planes.  Early or crappy 3D mostly just differentiates between foreground and background.  A picture of 3 people in front of a wall would only show distinction between 2 planes: the wall (Background) and the people (foreground).  As 3D gets better, it establishes more planes.

What modern 3D appears to be coming close to doing is establishing a plane for each and every object on screen, making the illusion of depth greater.  (I’m far too lazy to look up tech releases, but this is what I’m seeing and guessing).  Which means for the picture I mentioned earlier, each person would have their own plane.  3D body blur happens when somebody moves at speed and either crosses different planes, or occupies more than one plane at once.  This is most striking with the money shots that try to make people or things jump out into the audience.  A body moving perpendicular to the camera (towards the audience) can have their hands, arms, head, torso, and legs all occupying different and/or multiple planes.  It’s between these planes that 3D body blur kicks in.  Human eyes aren’t fooled by the multiple planes, and don’t “fill in the gaps” missing in the image.

I’m wildly guessing here, but I believe that this doesn’t affect CGI objects as much as it does real objects because modern CGI designs are rendered 3-dimensionally as a matter of course.  Because it begins and ends as an image, CGI winds up being more adaptable than flesh-and-blood performers when it comes to such effects. 

I don’t doubt that camera techs are already coming up with new ideas to compensate.  Off the top of my head I’m theorizing some sort of dish-shaped image collector to get the POV of every point in the theater where an audience member can be.  But that leaves the question of how to choreograph fights for 3D in the meantime?

Since I don’t have anything resembling the equipment for trial and error, I can only speculate, but here goes:

- Avoid Bourne Editing (excessively rapid cuts during a scene) at all costs.  Fortunately this is now common knowledge among directors and editors, as it has a habit of causing nausea and headaches in viewers.

- Keep the framing of fights as lateral as possible, moving across the camera’s POV rather than toward or away from it.

- Save perpendicular action (toward or away from the camera) for “Money shots.”

That’s about all I have for now on the topic.  It does mean I’ll be keeping my eye out for upcoming 3D releases.  Particularly ones that put the emphasis on real-world movement than CGI.

Oh Gods, did I just come up with a good reason to see Jackass 3D?  Help.

So I’m doing utility stunts on this little indie movie, and it’s a fairly standard scene: our hero takes on a half-dozen walking pieces of sword fodder and proceeds to kick six kinds of ass. Your truly is goon #5. And on one particular take, the young lady playing goon #4 is either repositioned or didn’t clear the space quickly enough or any of a dozen other things, but the end result of which is the back of my noggin impacting directly with her tailbone. The first words out of my mouth when the director yelled “cut” is the title of today’s episode.

One of the most significant bits of news coming in lately was The Rolling Stone article featuring General Stanley McChrystal and his staff and the subsequent media and political shitstorm that ensued, resulting in General McChrystal resigning his command over U.S. forces in Afghanistan. General David Patreus is stepping down as commander of U.S. Central command to replace McChrystal.

I’ll admit I’ve steered somewhat away from this topic, as it relates to real-world combat and not to stage or screen, but an event like this that lit up the international media is definitely worth noting on here. So I’ll leave my commentary at this: However much of an incredible warrior and commander General McChrystal is, and how much his strategies have aided U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, he still serves at the pleasure of the President. And the President wasn’t pleased. For me to go into further detail would devolve this blog into the ramblings of yet another disgruntled veteran who needs to get more comfortable on his barstool.

The U.S. Supreme court has now ruled that the second amendment is a fundamental right by a 5-4 majority. This comes on the heels of a ruling 2 years ago that stuck down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. The gun law that kicked off this decision was a similar ban on handguns held by Chicago and one of its suburbs. This is pretty much guaranteed to fire off a typhoon of litigation across the U.S. as different states, cities and counties determine how much regulation individual firearm use can be made, and for what reason.

Why is this a big deal? Because for those of us who make action art, restrictions on the ability to own and use weapons has major repercussions on what we can create. Look at the website of any weapons vendor online, and you’ll see a list of “cannot ship to” areas. And on each and every one of these sites, the same names crop up over and over: California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts. All states with restrictive weapons laws, whether on firearms, blades, or even imitation weapons like Airsoft. And all too often I find that the biggest hurdle between independent action artists and the tools they use to do the job isn’t their status as mental patients, convicted felons, or any of the “common sense” restrictions involved in some of the more sane gun control laws.

Instead, it’s money. Pure and simple. Liscences and fees and permits that will let someone cut through the red tape to have a blank-fire pistol on their stage or on their set. Doesn’t leave a whole lotta room for the would-be Robert Rodriguezes of the world with barely enough change in their pocket for film and blanks. Going over the pros and cons of heading out to L.A. or NY with my fellow actors, I pointed out that in my niche, I benefit from living in the south, with their more relaxed weapons laws.

I’m hoping that the recent SCOTUS decision will result in more thoughtful and reasonable weapons laws as opposed to simple blanket bans. Wishful thinking, I’ll admit, but it’s nice to imagine.

I’ll leave you with some more fun from the rockbox. A crossdressing Taliban commanderwas killed by ISAF forces in Afghanistan when he attacked troops.

Popping smoke,

~J~