At Conflux this year I attended a two-hour workshop with the Sydney Stage Combat School, primarily to get an idea of how their style differs from ours, and to see what I could bring back to improve our display fighting.

This school conducts choreographed combat for movies and theatre, and they put on public demonstrations. Their fighting style is flashy and spectacular, as befits an organisation that focuses on choreographed fighting for display.

I worked with Kyle Rowling and Michael Byrne, who worked on the fight sequences for the last two Star Wars movies (among other things). Kyle was the stunt double for Christopher Lee, and was Eric Bana's personal weapons trainer for Troy (full bios are available here). They explained the principles and ideas behind what they do. The workshop was structured this way:

Familiarisation: We started by familiarising ourselves with the weapons - sword twirling, basically. Nice fun flashy moulinettes that don't actually achieve much in a real fight but look great and are fun to do. It's not something that I personally had any trouble with, since I am familiar and comfortable with swords, but a number of people had initial difficulties. I did dig the crossguard of my longsword waster into my wrist a few times until I worked out the subtle twist required to avoid this.

I think it would be worth doing a little bit of this with new recruits, simply to accustom them to the weight and balance of a weapon, as part of their initial basic training. Although it is not a combat technique, and thus not very useful when doing competetive combat, it looks good and can be used to "fill a gap" in a display fight.

As an exercise, we were shown the twirl that was developed as a "signature move" for Anakin in the last two Star Wars movies. It's a triple moulinet (twice on the right and once on the left) with a twist of the hips on the second to avoid cutting your arm off at the shoulder. I can, and probably will, demonstrate this at training to anyone who wants to see it. Kyle did it with two swords, and I can't demonstrate that.

Blocking: From there we moved onto blocking (parrying - there were no shields). We did not work with partners at this stage. They explained that they work with a total of five strikes, similar to our Figure Eight. The repertoire consists of attacks to the left leg, right leg, left arm, right arm and head. Essentially it doesn't matter how the blow gets there (see Distance and Striking below), because the important thing is that the recipient knows where to block. A left arm blow can come up, go down or come in straight, but because the strike is cued, and the combatants (actors) are outside striking distance, there is virtually no danger of delivering a bad blow. You know that your partner is striking for your left arm, so you put your block there. There was also a bit of a discussion of timing the block, because it is almost always faster to block than to strike, and you don't want to make the block the moment the strike is cued, or it looks like you're reading your opponent's mind. We concentrate on the direction and approach to the strike, because we actually want to safely make contact with our opponent.

We went through five basic blocks, in each direction. This was later used when practicing strikes as well. The sequence began and ended in the basic longsword "plow" stance (Pflug). More advanced techniques (like Obi-Wan's down-the-back "drop six" parry that my 10-year-old son is so fond of) can be easily developed from these five simple techniques once the choreography gets going.

Distance: From there we took partners and started working on distance. All combat in this school takes place outside striking distance, which is in contrast to the way we do it.

Camera angles can cover a multitude of sins. The combatants of this school stay a certain distance away, even at full extension. Where we would strike to touch, they strike to miss. We did exercises where we approached our partners at a walk, then at a run, and aimed to stop at the correct distance. By maintaining our position with our partners, even if everything else went horribly wrong, there was no chance of accidentally hitting them.

If the script calls for a hit, you still stay outside distance, and simulate the hit with acting and with camera angles. With detailed choreography, of course, draw cuts and similar contacts can be simulated, but this was not covered in this basic workshop.

Maintaining eye contact with your partner is essential. They spent some time emphasising this. By maintaining eye contact constantly, it is much easier to communicate your intentions and coordinate your movements. In theory, in a fully choreographed fight, both actors should be able to fight blindfolded, but this is practically impossible in practice. Communication between the partners is essential in movie fighting just as much as it is for our own display fighting.

Striking: Once we had blocking and distance, we were able to move on to striking. The important point that was covered here is that every attack is "cued", or telegraphed. If I prepare my attack by taking it to my left hip, you know that I am about to attack your right leg, and you know what block you need to use - before I start my attack. That is your "cue". If I cue to my left shoulder, I don't suddenly change my mind and strike for your leg. My cue is your guarantee that you will be able to block my attack.

We do a little bit of this in display fighting. They take it as a fundamental principle. You always cue your shot, otherwise your partner doesn't know what you are doing. If one partner forgets the choreography, the fight can still continue by simply following the cues.

They mentioned another principle, that we have not focused on at all. When conducting a stage fight, your primary concern (after safety, of course) is to make your partner look good. I think that if we keep this principle in mind when we do display fights, then our fights will look better.

Posing: Then we went though a few of the guard positions and "poses" from both Eastern and Western martial arts. These were purely historical. They explained that when developing their combat styles and techniques, they draw upon both Eastern and Western martial arts traditions, mash it all together, pick out the bits that they like, and make up the rest. I can imagine that if they are working on a historical movie they might primarily draw upon styles and techniques from that period, but for fantasy swordfests like Star Wars or Lord Of The Rings, almost anything goes. Essentially they mine the historical sources for good ideas.

Envelopments: Lastly we worked on a few envelopments. After practicing the technique a little, this was the first and only point when we were permitted to improvise. The idea was that I would cue up an attack and make it, you would block it and do a circular envelopment to the ground, using a half, full or double circle. That concluded the main part of the workshop. It was followed by a question and answer session, during which I realised just how Eurocentric my martial arts knowledge is.

It must be remembered that movie and stage fights are fully choreographed, unlike our fights which are totally freeform. Every step, every attack and every block is carefully worked out beforehand and rehearsed over and over again. I imagine that they are horrified that we both improvise our fights and attack to hit our opponents.

I had a lot of difficulty with some points, because of my previous training in reenactment. For example, they wanted me to work in a square-on stance, with both shoulders forward. Presumaby this was so that they didn't have to worry about teaching us footwork. I naturally fell into a fighting stance with one shoulder forward. This affected my distance.

Once I had this worked out, I didn't have much of a problem with distance, interestingly, even though they work at a wider distance than we normally do. I believe the reason for that is that we always start outside striking distance, and move forward when we launch an attack, whereas they remain outside striking distance. The result for the purposes of the exercise was about the same. My main problem was that I had to curb my tendency to step forward into my attacks.

Presumably, when working on a movie fight scene, they will start off with an actor who has never done anything like this before, run them through these principles of familiarisation, blocking, distance, cueing your strikes and so on, and then work further with them to develop an exciting fight scene. Since it was only a two hour workshop, we didn't go as far as working out an actual fight.

The reason for choreographing a movie fight is that a real, historical duel would usually last a few seconds at most. We have been studying George Silver, Royal Armouries Ms. I.33 and others, and it is quite clear that the purpose of these styles is to bring the fight to a swift end. But that's actually pretty boring. I can imagine a fight scene in a movie where a swordsman using I.33 technique scythes through attacker after attacker, using perfect technique and taking each one out in a single strike, but in the end he would have to fight the head villain. If this final fight lasted as long as the previous ones, it would be a massive anticlimax. You need to make it last, to maintain the audience's interest. You don't want them to feel let down.

The same principle applies to our display fights. The difference is that we don't start out by knowing who needs to win. In a movie, the winner of a fight is dictated by the needs of the script. Every move is carefully considered and designed, and everyone knows exactly where they need to be. The fight lasts exactly so long, and has exactly so many scenes. We don't have that luxury.

We can't do what they do. And they can't do what we do. They have a completely different focus to us, and not everything that was covered in the workshop is directly relevant to what we do. But I think that there are some things that we can learn from them. Familiarisation, eye contact, cueing your strikes, making your partner look good, stringing out the fight to make it exciting. These are bread and butter for the Sydney Stage Combat School, and we can use these principles to improve our own display fighting technique. I would love to do some more work with these people. They run regular workshops and weekend masterclasses, so I may just get the opportunity sometime.

After a most interesting and entertaining two hours, the workshop ended with a motto that I think everyone needs to keep in mind:

"All for fun, and fun for all!"

Further Reading

Stage Fighting vs. Real Fighting