Below is my favorite chessboard fight from the three I did in college. Feel free to just watch the video, or to also read up a bit more about it below.
Elysse, Tom and I were scripted to fight each other on the chessboard my junior year (Elysse's senior year, Tom's sophomore...spanning the generations, ah yeah). The script/notes for the chessboard said "TOM and ELYSSE fight. SPROFFEE wins." I loved it.
The backstory of our characters were that Elysse and I were sisters. She was a wealthy merchant and I was a fletcher (arrow maker). During the Crusades, since a lot of the towns men were at war, the duchess of Ravensburg (the town we were set in) had some women dress up as men and learn how to fight to protect that town. I was one of them, therefore Josephine became Jose'sph. Tom was one of the soldiers that came with a pompous lord to try and marry the duke and duchess's daughter and take over the town. Elysse was on the side of the chessboard with the duke's son (really their daughter in disguise) and Tom was fighting for the lord. When they ended up fighting on the chessboard, my character jumps in as the overly protective sibling to try and stop them, which is where the video picks up.
It is hard to make any stage combat look really good, and it is harder when you are trying to convey something other than just "I am trying to hit you with my weapon!". In our fight I was trying to just keep Elysse/Julia from fighting to keep her safe and actually hit Tom/the soldier, whereas both of them were just trying to kill each other and me if I got in the way. I hope that comes across.
On top of all that, a three person fight is trickier still. How many times have you seen a group fight in a movie, one of those unrealistic scenes were the angry evil hordes are facing your one hero and you can't help but think "why are they fighting him one on one and not all rushing him at the same time?" (At least that's what I'm thinking...I focus more on combat scenes in movies and TV shows since I started learning stage combat.) We tried to make the fight seem realistic in that no one was ever just waiting for their turn. We had a lot of moments where all three of us are actively moving/fighting/interacting, and any time where it was just two fighting we tried to make sure the third was doing something like recovering from a blow or retrieving a weapon. At one point I actually wrote us up a spreadsheet to show what each person was doing at any point in time.
As with any fight we practiced until we got it down cold. You always want to make sure you know exactly when to expect that great big piece of metal to be swinging at your head. I remember one rehearsal where Tom had to miss it but the chessboard head has Elysse and I run the fight without him. It was a bit like the two of us were fighting a ghost. I wish I had a video of that rehearsal.
Just as one last geeky note when it comes to this fight. I mentioned before this month what a nerd I am about Wheel of Time. There is a moment in one of the books (maybe book 3? I forget) where a character called Mat fights two people at once. He uses a quarterstaff and both of the others use swords. I love that moment in the books and have reread that scene constantly. When I realized I was going to be fighting both Tom and Elysse I wanted to recreate that moment, if possible. I know we do a lot of weapon switching, especially towards the beginning, but I was adamant that at some point I got to fight using a quarterstaff while they both had swords. My favorite quick succession of moves in the fight is probably from about 2:10 to 2:25.
Alright, that's all for now. Please excuse this post if its a bit crap. I don't really have time to review/edit as I'm a bit behind!
Showing posts with label sword fighting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sword fighting. Show all posts
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Saturday, 5 November 2011
NaNoBlogMo 5 - Senior Year Chessboard Fight
So after my very wordy post from Friday, I figured a nice video would be a good break on a Saturday. In my post yesterday, I mentioned that in my senior year medieval festival I played "Bobo", a depressed drunken jester. At that same event, I fought on the chessboard against the gypsy Nicu (aka my friend Tom). If you want to just watch the video, go ahead, if you want to know a bit more back story, just read below.
I didn't fight on the chessboard my freshman year, something that I regret now. I had done boffer fighting a bit, but it didn't catch my interest, and I thought that stage combat would be similar. I was ON the chessboard and participated in the melee at the end (mostly shouting nonsense and trying to kick my friend Zach), but that was it.
Sophomore year I was required to fight. I had the final (winning) fight against Tom; pirate whore against gallant knight. I threw myself into learning stage combat 100%. Sure, I thought it was something I wouldn't enjoy, but if I was going to do the damn thing I was going to do it RIGHT.
I LOVED IT. It had the violence and deadly grace of martial arts with the choreography and showmanship of dance...my two biggest hobbies back in high school. And I was so lucky to have Tom as my fight partner, someone else who was experienced in sparring, not afraid to take a hit and willing to put in the crazy amount of extra hours of practice we did. In my three remaining years of college medieval reenactment, I always fought him (although one year I fought him AND my friend Elysse, a video and story I will probably post later this month). The video above is actually from my least favorite fight of ours, but since I was just talking about my character from that year, I thought this would be a nice transition.
For people who haven't done stage combat before, a lot of it comes down to trust (well, probably 2 parts insanity and 3 parts trust). In the video above, at about 2:30 in, Tom swings his shield mere inches from my face two times in quick succession. In a bar fight we did the year before he lifted me up by the throat and slammed me into a table. Sure, we did get scraped up quite a bit over the years, but I never felt like I was in danger and I was always having fun.
For this fight in particular it was a bit of a challenge for us. Neither of our characters should really know how to fight, so we were trying to fight but also look like we didn't know how to fight. It was a very odd experience. Plus, to add humor and to fit my character I was supposed to be getting progressively drunker as the fight went on. I think my favorite part of the fight is actually all the stuff that happens once we get rid of the swords: me hitting him with the flask, him slapping/punching me, our dialogue.
It is a dream of mine to do reenactment again, and largely because I want to do stage combat again. I have two lovely stage combat swords just aching to be used. I know for a fact that if Tom lived closer we would probably choreograph random fights for the hell of it, but alas. Hopefully next year I will be able to fit working in a Renn Faire in my schedule and will have more insane stage combat stories to write about.
I didn't fight on the chessboard my freshman year, something that I regret now. I had done boffer fighting a bit, but it didn't catch my interest, and I thought that stage combat would be similar. I was ON the chessboard and participated in the melee at the end (mostly shouting nonsense and trying to kick my friend Zach), but that was it.
Sophomore year I was required to fight. I had the final (winning) fight against Tom; pirate whore against gallant knight. I threw myself into learning stage combat 100%. Sure, I thought it was something I wouldn't enjoy, but if I was going to do the damn thing I was going to do it RIGHT.
I LOVED IT. It had the violence and deadly grace of martial arts with the choreography and showmanship of dance...my two biggest hobbies back in high school. And I was so lucky to have Tom as my fight partner, someone else who was experienced in sparring, not afraid to take a hit and willing to put in the crazy amount of extra hours of practice we did. In my three remaining years of college medieval reenactment, I always fought him (although one year I fought him AND my friend Elysse, a video and story I will probably post later this month). The video above is actually from my least favorite fight of ours, but since I was just talking about my character from that year, I thought this would be a nice transition.
For people who haven't done stage combat before, a lot of it comes down to trust (well, probably 2 parts insanity and 3 parts trust). In the video above, at about 2:30 in, Tom swings his shield mere inches from my face two times in quick succession. In a bar fight we did the year before he lifted me up by the throat and slammed me into a table. Sure, we did get scraped up quite a bit over the years, but I never felt like I was in danger and I was always having fun.
For this fight in particular it was a bit of a challenge for us. Neither of our characters should really know how to fight, so we were trying to fight but also look like we didn't know how to fight. It was a very odd experience. Plus, to add humor and to fit my character I was supposed to be getting progressively drunker as the fight went on. I think my favorite part of the fight is actually all the stuff that happens once we get rid of the swords: me hitting him with the flask, him slapping/punching me, our dialogue.
It is a dream of mine to do reenactment again, and largely because I want to do stage combat again. I have two lovely stage combat swords just aching to be used. I know for a fact that if Tom lived closer we would probably choreograph random fights for the hell of it, but alas. Hopefully next year I will be able to fit working in a Renn Faire in my schedule and will have more insane stage combat stories to write about.
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