Leading Up to a Stunt: LEGENDS OF TOMORROW

Legends is a stunt- and fight- heavy show, and we’ve talked about it making giant CGI gorillas on a budget and using super-meta filmmaking. Amongst spaceships exploding, medieval knights shattering lances, and aforementioned rampaging gorillas, are many smaller physical stunts, which balance ‘ooh, bodyslam!’ impact with comedy and/or exposition and/or character moments.

How does one make a smaller stunt interjection work?

Like so!

Setup

You don’t need backstory to follow this scene, but long story short: the timeline is in peril, Rasputin (yes, that one) is alive, and everything is chaos, so it’s the perfect time for Ava (Jes Macallan) and Sara (Caity Lotz) to work through relationship issues.

Wardrobe helps by dressing Sara in all-black and Ava in all-white, a choice which . . . actually nevermind (unless you really want to dive down a rabbit hole).

Point is, contrasting outfits help differentiate them in overall chaos and this quick-cutting scene where both throw Cossacks around.

Patter and Rule of Threes

Why do magicians talk all the time? To keep your brain occupied with something besides just the effects you’re watching. Asking a question like at the start of this paragraph also helps.

The same principle applies especially to smaller stunts: characters delivering banter or exposition or even LOOK OUT! helps the scene flow, and gives the audience something interesting and/or funny and/or plot-relevant to concentrate on, which means we’re not analysing every frame for ‘did that punch actually connect’ or ‘is that a stunt double?’

for the record, Caity Lotz is a martial artist and does many of her own stunts.

Legends is (often, mostly) a comedy, and this scene uses the Rule of Three.

One / Two: Ava and Sara each get a “behind you!” and short sharp takedown; thus using “two similar instances to establish a pattern.”

Then a third baddie comes running to help subvert the pattern created: there’s no “behind you,” instead Ava and Sara combine for the Big Payoff, a more elaborate stunt which also symbolises how they are in harmony again.

Motion and Edit

The first two stunts are simple punches, and the edit cuts on the movement.

I assure you there's no way to freeze-frame quick action so it looks pretty and charming, but it does look badass.

The third stunt is exaggerated-and-totally-situationally-unnecessary-but-super-fucking-cool, but same as the simple punches it also cuts on movement.

Also note once Sara begins the stunt by pulling Ava towards her, both the camera and Ava/Sara are moving left-to-right, which helps it run smoothly when pieced together.

In this video I’ve slowed down the sequence and paused around each cut point, then below break down the action around each cut point.

1. Sara turns to Ava, takes her hand, and pulls Ava towards her; cut on the motion of Ava beginning to spin.

2. Ava spins into Sara, wraps her arm over Sara’s shoulder, and begins a jump; cut on the motion of the jump. (So far we can see both Caity’s and Jes’s faces.)

3. Ava jumps, connects with the baddie’s head, kicks her other leg up and over to his other shoulder, and uses her legs to take him down. (Note the baddie using his arms to ‘struggle’ which actually helps hold the legs around his own neck; very helpful!)
   Connection and takedown are in one motion, because cutting midway through a takedown would make us feel like it’s cheating. Cut once they’ve all hit the floor, because getting three people to land in an interesting-looking pile is not going to happen, and because you can swap stunties out.

4. Ava sits up, continuing motion into the frame; this is the perfect place to continue a scene with dialogue, zinger, a kiss, etc.

Note: I’d usually complain about a kiss and especially a queer kiss being interrupted, but Legends has them in spades elsewhere including this episode, so they get away with it this one time.

Takeaways

From the writing through to the blocking and performing, consider where you’re going to have dialogue; witty quips, brazen challenges, verbal foreplay, anything interesting!

For the stunts themselves, consider how the camera and action work together and where you need to change angles to enable the stunt to be performed safely while ‘selling’ the impact.

In post, cut on motion, make liberal use of sound and music, and voila!