Lost Art of Filmmaking represents my attempt to highlight examples of film language that no longer seems to appear on the radar of a majority of working filmmakers. Each column, I’ll choose a clip from a movie that demonstrates a ‘lost art’ of some sort, ask you to watch it, and then go into detail about why this particular slice of movie is worth bringing back into focus.

Explosions are fun.

So are guns with limitless ammo, acrobatic action heroes, and excessive amounts of carnage.

Carnage may appear to be chaotic, but that which seems to occur naturally and of the moment often belies the amount of preparation and timing and rehearsal involved to fulfill the illusion. Carnage is not chaotic – at least on film.

Carnage is careful. Carnage is coordinated.

Take John Woo’s HARD-BOILED.

If you have not seen this movie, I encourage you to slap yourself in the face right now and call yourself impotent.

Rambo aspires to the body count accumulated in this film. John Matrix wishes he had this amount of ammo to use when he went after Alyssa Milano pre-boob job and body issues.

This is a movie that wears its’ balls on its’ sleeve, only because its’ balls are too big to fit in its’ pants.

As I said, in order for carnage to appear chaotic and random often involves careful planning and coordination. Squibs must explode with the proper timing. Bullets tearing into debris and blowing sparks out of the walls take time to set up and practice the timing. Stuntmen must know their moves, the order in which they’ll ‘fall dead,’ and at the same time fire dangerous blanks toward each other in close proximity. There’s a reason they say action scenes must be safely choreographed.

Focus on that word. Choreographed. Like a dance.

John Woo’s changed action filmmaking forever by saying he sees his action setpieces in almost balletic way. Hollywood offerings like FACE-OFF, BROKEN ARROW, and (my personal favorite) HARD TARGET show off his dance moves, but rarely have the heart and honesty of his Hong Kong efforts.

Take this fluid shot during the climactic hospital battle at the end. Nearly three minutes long of carefully planned moves, gunfire, squib hits, practical effects, and dozens of stuntmen hitting their mark as Chow Yun-Fat (Tequila) and Tony Leung (Alan) work their way deeper into the hospital after the Triad bad guys. Right in the midst of battle, with gunfire coming at them from 360 degrees and possible death at every turn, Alan accidentally shoots and kills a cop – one of his own. Tequila pulls Alan into an elevator, and tries to keep him on point.

Until then, Alan’s razor-sharp reflexes and focus have helped keep him alive, but killing a fellow officer threatens to destroy that edge. Tequila knows how Alan feels (earlier in the picture, he also killed a cop by mistake in a shootout) but now’s not the time for self-doubt or pity – he needs Alan to have his back. Tequila shakes him out of his funk, and they resume their advance into the hospital.

Woo chose to play out a moment of character regret and despair in the middle of the climactic third act – and he chose to do it in between long sequences of gunfire and in real time. Big. Ass. Balls. That’s directing.

Any one thing can go wrong which would require them to yell cut and start over. But starting the shot over would require the prop master checking the guns for safety and reloading them with blanks. You’d have to reset all the squib hits and broken windows and put out the fires and reset them and clean up all the debris from the ‘gunfire’ – AND on two different floors of a set (remember the elevator?)

Even if all the practical effects and stunts occurred perfectly… what if Chow Yun-Fat and Tony Leung didn’t pull of that heart-to-heart in the middle of the shot? All that choreography to learn… and to be in the moment… nicely done, fellas.

In order to keep the integrity of the moment, I’ve left in little ‘bookends’ for the shot so the action doesn’t end quite so suddenly – nothing worse than ‘action film blueballs.’ And yes, I left in the cheesy English dubbing… mainly because I’d like you to focus on the shot and not the dialogue.

I hope you like the shot – and see if you can count how many extras meet their bloody doom in this shot. I think I got around fifty… but you be the judge. Check it out below:

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I’ve got some ideas for future fluid shots… but I’d love to hear any suggestions y’all might have. I’m sure there are many more examples out there that I haven’t thought of or haven’t seen… it might be fun for me to discover a new gem for myself… so throw them at me!

This is Chow saying PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END can suck his balls.

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