“DIE FIGHTING” INTROS NEW BREED OF MARTIAL ARTS STARS MINUS CAMERA TRICKS
The
latest breed of action talents following years of training in various martial
arts star in the highly-kinetic film “Die Fighting.”
The
movie starts with four friends known as the Z-Team, Shaolin-forged
martial artists who have just won the top award at a Film Festival. Fabien,
Lohan, Didier and Jess immediately set their sights for Hollywood, but from
within the shadows emerges a new challenge: the four find themselves in front
of the seemingly inescapable eye of a mysterious director who forces them to
“act” in his own brutal reality film, with the lives of their loved ones at
stake. Their every move watched through hidden cameras like mice in a maze, the
Z-Team are forced to run a gamut through the seedy underbelly of LA – from
robbing an armored truck, encountering a rug Lord, breaking an entire dojo of
BLACKBELTS, evading a SWAT team, surviving a blazing gunfight…and it’s all a part
of the Director’s script. A dark filmmaker’s game culminating into a shocking
ending which reveals just how high the price of success is.
As
producer and lead actor Laurent Buson noted, “A lot of the punches and kicks
have to be real in order to be believable” to the audience. And no doubles were
used; the actors are the fighters. With
“Die Fighting,” as with Z Team’s many short films, the battles play out with
hardly any obtrusive camera tricks. The Z Team ethic mandates that the full
range of martial art techniques be filmed without the choppy editing utilized
in so many other action movies.
Director
Fabien Garcia shot the movie like a Hong Kong action flick “because it is easy
to understand what is happening” on-screen, whereas “American films are the opposite”
of this visual aesthetic. Using three high-end digital cameras, including a Red
One (Mysterium-X), the cast and crew filmed the meticulously-crafted action
scenes with some notable influences in mind. The script even makes a few direct
references to the movie heroes from the Z Team’s youthful years who themselves
have undergone martial arts training since they were young. Without sacrificing
originality, homage was made each to Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon,” Jackie
Chan’s “Drunken Master 2,” and Chow-Yun Fat’s “Hard Boiled.”
During
the epic showdown between best friends turned savage by the manipulations of
the Director, Laurent insisted that Fabien kick him particularly hard for a
realistic effect. The result was Laurent having to fight with a broken rib for
9 of the 10 days in the warehouse finale. Yet and still, director Fabien was
meticulous about getting enough footage to pull the best takes from his
actors/fighters. Similarly in post-production, Fabien was a painstaking editor
who took a year and a half to cut together the rough assembly. That’s the true
meaning of “kung fu”—working skillfully toward a particular endeavor.
“Die
Fighting” opens July 15 in cinemas nationwide from Crystalsky Multimedia.
Post a Comment