Fight scene Choreography

[New Way]

Do you guys have any tips on how to make fight scenes that aren’t static or unoriginal?

[Selko]

Practice, practice and lastly practice.

That being said, look at a fight scene that you enjoy from a movie and freeze frame it at critical junctures. Then write the action that you see there for practice. In the future you will find it easier to write your own versions from your head.

By the way I am in no way advocating stealing a movies fight scenes.

[dano]

As an artist, I prefer to have the writer roughly construct a fight scene but allow me the freedom to elaborate or change as i see fit. But it really depends on how strict or elaborate your fighting is. Two dudes shooting energy beams is pretty simple, but if you're trying to describe hand-to-hand, it might be better to give an brief descr and outcome and trust your artist.
Proper safeguards applied, of course.

[DannoE]

Watch pro wrestling and remember that your job is to entertain and not to actually teach people how to kill each other. The psychology of a pro wrestling match will almost always work well in a comic story because pro wrestling matches ARE stories. What they are not is real fights. And neither are comic fight scenes.

Also to keep in mind while writing a fight scene:

1. What dramatic purpose does your fight serve?
2. How does it advance the plot?
3. What does it show us about the characters involved?

Once you know the story you're trying to tell, then find the reality that matches that story.

If all else fails:

1. The babyface gets in a good lick.
2. The heel counterpunches or "cheats" to get the upper hand.
3. The heel beats the hell out of the babyface via nefarious means.
4. The babyface does something out of desperation to try to save himself.
5. It either works or it doesn't, depending on the story you're trying to tell.

There are many variations, but that's the basic framework that is almost always at work in pro wrestling. Now check your favorite comics and see how many times you see it. For example, the end of The Dark Knight Returns:

1. Batman shoots Superman with missiles.
2. BM then tries to use the sonic, but Superman is, well, SUPER, and so that doesn't work.
3. Superman uses his powers to beat the holy Hell out of Batman.
4. In desperation, BM uses the City's power grid to fry SM's brains.
5. This buys him just enough time for Green Arrow to run in with a chair and send us to the screwjob finish. Bingo. No one loses.

[Buckyrig]

As an artist, I prefer to have the writer roughly construct a fight scene but allow me the freedom to elaborate or change as i see fit. But it really depends on how strict or elaborate your fighting is. Two dudes shooting energy beams is pretty simple, but if you're trying to describe hand-to-hand, it might be better to give an brief descr and outcome and trust your artist.
Proper safeguards applied, of course.

Gotta go with this. This is one of the biggest places where you need to trust the artist. Whatever specific things are important, I would mention. But the mechanics are better left to the artist in most cases.

Keep some common sense things in mind. If one character is 18 inches shorter than another, it's not so easy to punch someone in the face.

[Scribe]

When writing fight scenes two questions I always ask myself is "What haven't I seen/read before," and "What is this scene accomplishing." I think you should always be looking to give the reader a different persepective on an action scene and I am always against action for the sake of action.

Look at your character's motivations. If a guy is just despirate to kill his arch rival how does that affect his fighting style. An immortal fights differently than a mortal would. A guy with two young kids at home might be more defensive and calculating in his fighting style. If you can mesh your character's motivations and personalities into a fight I think you have a very good scene.

[Hammerix]

Writing a fight scene is fairly easy for some people, you know. All you need to see are the flying fists, flaring nostrils, bared-out teeths, and squashed up faces. This makes for a dramatic fight scene, but it still remains static as the paper its been drawn upon. The only thing that can make a fight scene really dynamic is ability to come up with a situation that challenges the character emotionally, something that makes you Captions speak in thoughts.
Then, you need a good artist to show the character's metamorphoses from an emotionally charged person to a physical one.
Finallyduring the fight scene, try capturing the fight from one or more character's perspective.

[daweir]

I tend to focus a lot on how the characters in the fight are interacting with their environment. I've noticed a tendency in some artists to not think about that at all, so I give them a little help. They're great with the "actors" but not the set.

So I include vitals from the set and let the artist fill in the blanks.

[Scribe]

I thought of something today that kind of sums up my theory about fight scenes.

In the Battlestar Galactica pilot there's this fight scene between Adama and a human cylon. In the commentary director Michael Rymer talks about how the chorograher put together a pretty standard fight scene he and Edward Olmos weren't happy with and Olmos said "Why don't I just beat the shit of him with my flashight?" and they filmed it that way.

I think thats a great example of how a fight scene showed us that it's not another space opera (Really can you see Kirk beating a Kiligon to death with a tri-corder?) and established a lot of Adama's character in a short peroid of time.

[nolanjwerner]

Get a really good art and let them do it.


Seriously...

Um...watch movies that have good fight scenes. I would recommend Wu Xia stuff.

Then look at how they do it.




Or, if you wanted to go a real world route, don't glamourize the violence at all. Show how terrible it really it.

[RichieD]

One of the best tips I've heard was from an article by Chuck Dixon (that I can't seem to find anywhere). Make the environment complicate the fight, and if possible, have the environment make the fight more dangerous.

Some good examples of this are the trailer fight from Kill Bill 2, the lava fight in Star Wars Episode 3, almost anything that Jackie Chan does.

Outside of that (and the good advice given already) my other piece of advice would be to give each fight an arc complete with introduction, escalation and resolution.

[daweir]

give each fight an arc complete with introduction, escalation and resolution.

Great advice! Way to say it.

[scherzo]

Without a doubt Katsuhiro Otomo's AKIRA has the finest action sequences I've ever seen in a comicbook. If you're interested in utilizing the surrounding environment and escalating tension, you'll never see a finer representation of this anywhere. Keep in mind...Otomo's a madman! AKIRA had a few action scenes that would go on for well over 50 pages. If you could strip his storytelling process down to something mere MORTALS could actually produce, you'll really be onto something.

-scherzo