3, 2, 1, go!
No!
John Koyama is an amazing stunt and fight choreographer.
He's just-- I mean, we've leaned so heavily on him,
and he is a director.
He has a cast of stuntmen:
a Jesse, a Cassidy, a DeBlanc and Fiore, a Tulip.
And he stages these fights.
John Koyama makes little movies of it
that we discuss and go over together,
and he pitches shots to us, and stunts.
And by the end, yeah, we've worked together,
and we know exactly what we're filming
by the time we shoot the fight.
And your face moving up, boom!
And you both drop.
As a team, we R&D it and choreograph it,
and then we run it, run it, run it. We shoot it.
And then we show it to Sam, Seth, and Evan.
They make their notes,
we go back and forth a few times before we lock something in.
It's kind of one of my favorite parts
because you got all the stunt guys acting,
and the acting doesn't matter, so they kind of blow through it.
Doesn't make sense.
We usually go with screaming and graphic violence.
- Yeah. - Yeah, that's the easiest.
- Aah! - That's the easiest.
Make it look gnarly.
Once we lock something in,
we'll show the actors, train the actors
and teach them the fight.
And while they're putting the flavor on it,
the doubles are there watching.
So they have to match their style.
It's one thing to do it with our team
and then another thing when the actors come in,
because they bring the characters with them.
You roll up on these fight scenes, man.
And they're fucking so complicated, huh?
They look really bloody complicated.
This is the thing. They're so complicated,
but you learn them quickly and they make sense.
Then do they make sense
when you do those big fight sequences that don't matter,
just putting in moves for no reason?
It honestly has been incredible.
John and the stunt team are insane.
They're amazing.
- Your fight in the pilot-- - Yeah.
Unbelievable.
Karate kicks, coming into that,
binding through that glass tunnel there.
It will be all right... That felt hard.
You know in every fight scene there's at least one person
- who just won't down. - Yes.
Most irritating man in the world.
Shooting action is uniquely different,
so it oftentimes helps the cinematography department
because then they kind of have an idea
of what angles you're going to show to stunt best.
There's a nice mix of comedy and genuine like,
"Aw, it was awesome, man."
And it's the least likely, but it's my favorite scenario:
you're a Jedi.
Jesse practicing and trying out the power
that he has on his friend Cassidy,
but it's going to become chaotic.
Hop!
Box!
I can't do it without John. It's not me that designs the stunt.
It's the stunt coordinator.
When he says fly, no hesitation, just get up.
He's out to bounce off this trampoline.
Action.
That's first man into a wall, nailed it.
Fly!
Whoa!
It makes me look really cool and brave.
So I've been training with John Koyama
and he's been teaching me how to use a baton lethally.
The scene where I get very, very angry
about what's happened to one of the girls
who works in Taiwan, is a case of mistaken identity.
You know, if you don't have that energy,
you don't bring that fire, you don't bring that intensity,
then it's not believable.
He'll get the pull back, he won't get the--
He'll get the...
They built a deck underneath,
so it's actually only going to be about a 5 and a half, 6-foot drop
out the window.
To me only thing that makes it gnarly
is that I have no pants on.
Very tender spots exposed to large amounts of candy glass.
I'd love to go through the fucking window,
but they won't let me do it.
We have about seven scenes with DeBlanc and Fiore. This is the first
time we kind of introduce
the actual regeneration of these characters,
how they're able to do it.
He died?
I'm sorry, man.
Grab a weapon, watch out, she'll be back.
The clown fight:
it is one of the maddest things I've ever done.
The whole experience was exciting.
We had a lot of different fight sequences to learn.
We take the knife, we do a little switch of the knife.
So it is very technical,
but one thing that Koyama has told me to do,
the more kind of crazy it can look, the better.
Whenever I fight taller people,
I got to move extra forward, and I got to punch up.
It's almost a non-choreographed fight.
Of course, you have to have a choreography or else,
you know, it'll be nothing,
and it's a safety issue as well. It looks sloppy.
I talked to Seth, Evans, Sam,
and of course, the director, Guillermo
about the concepts and the ideas and the style,
and it looks messy, it looks dirty.
Oh!
Fuck!
He remains blocking, and we add more bodies and shit.
Mm-hmm.
And then he unblocks and they come up continuous
and now it's a mountain of things and...
They really wanted to concentrate on the bodies piling up
and how those would be obstacles,
almost like if you're in a war in a trench.
- Real, real, real. - Real, real.
Yeah.
Honestly, like, whoever has to clean that fucking set up,
I just feel so sorry for.
- Do one more, Rich. - Yes sir.
Today, we had Dominic Cooper
hanging out of the side of the building.
This door that just opens, we didn't build that, we didn't design that,
that was just there in that location.
We had a crane to bring him from the top, hanging him,
because he's supposed to be frozen.
Our next setup was Rich King actually doing the drop.
And on action, we get to quick release him.
He drops straight out.
The believability comes across with the choreography
as well as what the actors bring to it.
The pilot of Preacher
was the first time we did the fight scenes
where I was like, "Those are pretty dark fight scenes
on the grand scale of fight scenes."
And we used to go into places and say,
"Okay, here's what's going to happen."
We roughly know and we've realized that's absurd.
You should plan things out in great detail.
Every shot.