Line #29 Analysis/Flynning


1	!Why Flynning is The Norm
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3	Flynning exists, in live-action at least, so that non-expert actors can put on an entertaining show without causing RealLife injuries. The first problem is that most actors aren't trained fencers, and most fencers aren't trained actors. Neither skill is something you can teach someone to do well in a short amount of time, and average audiences are more likely to recognize (and be bothered by) wooden acting than unconvincing swordplay, so in most cases choreographers have to work with people who have studied acting all their lives, but know next to nothing about sword fighting. The fight director will rarely get as much time as they would like to put the actors through "boot camp" or rehearsals; usually the actors have to learn the sequence of movements in a fight by rote, since there isn't enough time to properly teach them the underlying principles of sword combat. Even if the fight director plans out what they think is a great fight and the actors are perfectly rehearsed, any number of problems such as equipment failure, bad weather, or last-minute rewrites can force the choreography to be thrown out and replaced with crude improvisation. (Note, many college theatre/drama programs do encourage students to take fencing as their PE option.)
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5	This leads into the second problem: most stage and screen fights are done without hand or face protection, and the risk of accidents is compounded when everyone is an amateur. This is a big reason for SliceAndDiceSwordsmanship, since there is greater risk of accidental injury when thrusting is involved. Actors depend on their bodies to make a living, and any kind of disabling or disfiguring injury can be ruinous for their careers. The more famous a star, the more expensive they are to insure, and both the insurance companies and the actors' managers will throw a fit if you let them do something they consider too dangerous. There are stunt doubles for productions that can afford it, but with the amount of dialogue and acting that go into these swordfight scenes, any shots where you can clearly see the characters' faces will still have to use their real actors. Live theater presents the most chances for injury, since unlike in recorded performances the actors can't rest between takes, switch with stunt doubles, or use camera trickery to fake things. And unlike in film or television where the end of filming means that fight's in the bag, on stage the whole fight is reproduced live every night with all its chances for something to go wrong. With all of these things in mind, and since hardly anybody in the audience will know or care about the difference, it's all too understandable that choreographers would use less realistic choreography in order to minimize the risk of injury. Aside from safety, there are various other problems. If a key actor has an injury or disability that prevents them from doing certain things, or if unforeseen difficulties arise from certain props or costumes, then the fight director has no choice but to plan the action around those constraints.
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7	Even when you factor out the problems of live actors, Flynning still has its uses. Real combat involving swords tended to be gory and violent, usually resulting in nasty bloody wounds and body parts being chopped off.[[note]] Even BloodlessCarnage, while a handy compromise in some cases, still has to avoid showing moves that would logically result in dismemberment or risk SpecialEffectsFailure, and doesn't help if a work needs to avoid having characters die at all.[[/note]] That isn't gonna fly with the {{Media Watchdog}}s and Network Censors, [[ThinkOfTheChildren especially in the case of works geared toward children]], so you end up with fights where swords clash but nobody dies. Another issue is that the goal of practical swordsmanship is to take the shortest possible sequence of moves that leads to your opponent being dead or incapacitated and you being unharmed, and it doesn't necessarily have to look impressive as long as it works. In contrast, a choreographer often has to contrive various ways for a fight to be as drawn out and flashy as possible, all while keeping the action comprehensible to the audience. Many highly effective real life techniques are either BoringButPractical, so subtle or quick that average audience members [[ViewersAreGeniuses wouldn't be able to understand]] [[RuleOfPerception what they were seeing]] without heavy {{exposition}}, or so direct and effective that they would make a hyped-up fight scene end in a premature {{anticlimax}} if they were actually employed in the appropriate situation. We also can't ignore the fact that a lot of cartoons and {{anime}} depend on LimitedAnimation so they can be produced quickly and cheaply, and it's much easier to put together a repetitive loop of two characters whacking their blades against each other than to fully animate a sequence of unique attacks and counters. Finally, there is simply the fact that most writers, artists, and animators don't know how to fence, and if they do seek out advice it will often be from the same choreographers and stuntpersons who serve theater, film, and television. Thus, the same Flynning moves tend to show up across all kinds of media.
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9	!!Hold the Poses
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11	An important choreography trick to help an audience follow a fight is for the fighters to pause in a recognizable pose at the completion of each technique. Cool poses look good to the audience, and if you show them the poses at the beginning and at the end of a movement, they can generally figure out what just happened even if the in-between motion was too fast for them to see. This "hold a pose" thing just happens naturally in comics and animation, since these key poses are the first part to be created in animation and are the ''entire point'' in comics. The problem with a fight in real life is that people don’t stop for long enough at the end of a movement that the average person would have time to "grab" the image, meaning that an exchange can be pretty confusing without the help of a slow-motion replay. Therefore, in live-action choreography or animation using motion capture of live actors, the performers need to deliberately pause between moves in order to hit those poses.
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13	!!It's all been done before.
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15	What makes the push for accurate swordsmanship so neglected is... It's a moot point, as film has had reality-inspired sword fighting since its inception. Go watch an old Steve Reeves movie. Parries, blocks, punches, kicks, tackling, one-hit-kill blows, draw cuts, kneeing, grappling, shield bashing, disarms, and every other sword technique are portrayed onscreen in his B movies. As early as ''Film/TheBirthOfANation1915'' which featured accurate cavalry sword techniques, effort was being made to incorporate elements of realism. Any major Roman-era, Medieval, or Renaissance film from the Golden Age of Hollywood will show recognizable fencing techniques, together with unarmed styles such as wrestling and pugilism. Even by the 80s, flicks like ''Film/ConanTheBarbarian1982'' and the 1982 ''Literature/{{Ivanhoe}}'' movies still show dodging and kneeing, etc.
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Context Analysis / Flynning