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VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION – Movie sword training course tip two. What are some good two-handed long sword grips and stances. That’s what we’ll answer in today’s video. Hi, my name is Dillon Wilson with CBT Stunt Alliance. Train hard, perform easy. We help actors stunt performers and filmmakers learn professional stunt training for use in film tv and live action entertainment.
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Before we get underway, if you’d like to add two-handed long-story movie sword fighting training to your current acting or stunt performer skill set, check out our highly popular master course at www.MovieSwordFighting.com or click on the link below this video. You can learn sword attacks sword counter attacks cinematic sword draws a sword choreography you know sort reactions, how to market your career more, go to www.MovieSwordFighting.com for more information. You can sign up now and start training now.
Okay so we get a lot of questions about movie sword fighting techniques and tips so we’re going to share a few things with you. Now I’m actually an experienced stunt coordinator turned full-time director. This is something I planned from the beginning of my career up to and including attending and graduating film school as a director. Along my journey, I learned that being a stunt coordinator made me a better director and being a director made me a better stunt coordinator. Now how this benefits you is that I can share with you insights and experience from both sides of the camera as well as through all phases of production
When we thought about what would benefit you the most. We decided to do a six-part free video series that will teach you some of the basics so you learn enough about uh movie sword fighting to put together choreography for your real for upcoming auditions and even your own content for actual performances and highly competitive auditions you need more training like what we provide in our movie sword fighting master course. Why does this work? Because for self tapes and many sword auditions and performances, you only have to look like you know how to use a long sword right if you’re not the lead or a featured fighter you’re going to launch anywhere from zero to two moves and then you get killed. Check out this clip for the movie the lord of the rings.
Now how many strikes did each performer get to throw in that action sequence? Exactly. So in this video, we’re going to cover good two-handed long sword grips and stances so pick up your practice long sword and if you don’t have one, watch our previous video that shows you some options on how to get one, even on how to get some for free. All right, so let’s get underway. Now we teach from the martial art known as CBT which is a very combative art within the art. There is a theatrical portion so we used to do live action entertainment. These are there were techniques that we use for for audiences that were not in the combative system because again if the mission is to entertain people then it’s you know we we wanted to entertain them so the the things that you’re going to learn are from uh theatrical CBT that are they’re still combat sound and combat effective. Yet they’re designed to get the audience like really you know pumped up and hyped up and sitting on the edges of their seat.
Movie Sword Training Basics Tip 1: The 3 Sword Grips
Alright. So the first thing we’re going to cover is how to actually grip the sword because what you don’t want to do is look like a noob with a sword. You’re up there on you know camera you know movies or something and they can tell you don’t know anything about uh holding a sword, even gripping a sword. So there are actually three ways of gripping a sword. I’m going to cover all three now so we’re going to use the two-handed long story double-edged sword and the first way is called the hammer grip. It’s just like if you had a hammer in your hand you’re about to hammer in a nail right, so what you do is we’ll say your lead hand and we’re going to say if I’m in a right lead which means my right foot is forward my right hand is forward that’s going to be the hand I put right there, right below the the cross guard. Okay and if you notice it’s just like holding a hammer so if I if there was a nail right here I’d be hammering this thing just like that. Now the other hand goes on the bottom the support hand goes on the bottom and with this one you can actually you always want to have some kind of space there for the most part there are times when some people don’t use different theories on it, yet for the most part on camera keep some space between it so the hand can be like this. movie sword training basics, Movie Sword Master, Movie Sword Expert.
This portion is called the pommel, so the hand can be grabbing right there on the pommel because we actually do use that as a weapon or you can have the pommel in the center of this palm like that see that and you can use it like that too. So either way is fine. Here, where some of the pommel is exposed or here where the pommel is grabbed in the middle of your hand this is the hammer grip the bottom hand is always the same it’s either going to be like this or like this the top hand is what changes so this is the hammer grip all right now grip number two is the relaxed hammer grip why why is there a relaxed hammer grip the hammer grip is good for film is fine yet for actual combat you give up some range because you see how I can’t really straighten it out right I actually give up some power too so what I can do is I can use something called the relaxed hammer grip and watch what happens to the sword when I just kind of relax the hand see that all I did was relax my hand and you see I got more range with the sword this is the hammer grip you see where it is right the only way I can get that type of range is to do this with my wrist which is not good I can dislocate my wrist there’s already a lot of pressure on my wrist anyway I want my wrist strong so hammers like this relax.
Hammers like this and all you’re doing is relaxing your hand the bottom hand is still on the bottom either with the palm exposed or again with the pommel in the middle and this is correct and notice the position of the thumb again just like a hammer if you notice one of the things we always emphasize is training on both sides so we’re in whenever you know we teach people we teach them the ambidextrous if you’re a stunt performer you may be called upon it’s not double someone and guess what that actor may be left-handed it happens and if you’re only training right side you know that that may cost you the gig so make sure you train ambidextrously you also learn faster that way so again hammer relax hammer hammer relax hammers all right so that’s grip number two the third grip is a grip that we call the uh the thumb grip and this is why I’m using this sword in particular just so you can see it because there are single edged long swords uh with the thumb grip the support hand is still doing the same thing it never changes if you notice my thumb is now in the center of the blade see how it looks it’s almost like if this were a long dagger movie sword training basics, Movie Sword Master, Movie Sword Expert.
If I had a dagger you know my thumb is going to be in the middle of that dagger just like it is here and what this does is even in certain positions it gives me more leverage you know with the sword as opposed to the thumb wasn’t there I don’t have as much you know leverage or structure beneath the sword and enables me to do things that I wouldn’t normally be able to do the sword is also positioned like this with the hammer grip and with the thumb grip yourselves kind of turn to the side right and this is how the thumb grip looks some people hold it like this we in CBT we just do it like this one of the reasons is because if your opponent’s sword if you hold it like this and your opponent’s sword slides down what happened to the tip of your thumb he’s got a piece of it chopped off so if you keep it here and that happens you’re completely protected yet different systems have different theories for why they do things this is how we do it so this is the thumb grip again I’ll switch hands so you can see it the thumb grip is right there in the center see where my hand is and see how the sword is horizontal now it doesn’t have to stay that way yet it kind of naturally goes that way uh when you actually have the thumb grip and those are the uh the three grips so if you need to pause the video now and try uh going through each of those three grips. movie sword training basics.
Movie Sword Training Basics Tip 2: Sword Stances – Front and Side
Alright, so the second thing are stances now theatrical CBT we keep it simple there’s only two stances there’s front stance and side stance I’m going to show you an example of each now in the uh in the stance watch my feet the rear foot actually I’ll do a facing forward first the rear foot points towards the opponent towards the center line or actually towards the sideline of the opponent the lead foot is like this also pointing forward so both of our feet point forward and you kind of envision railroad tracks that we’re walking on see I’m, I’m walking on those railroad tracks I’m not crossing in front of my feet so I can I can tie my feet up so if I’m here and I step forward I’m still on that railroad track see that so our feet face forward with with front stance this foot face is directly forward and this uh foot face is forward now here’s the thing with the the weight distribution is percent on the rear leg and five percent on the front leg so we’re kind of like this.
I’m going to exaggerate it a bit so you can see it yet the lead heel is slightly elevated right not quite that high yet slightly off the ground your opponent won’t notice it so we’re like this and then we actually go to attack which we’re going to show in a another video how to actually launch the attacks leave the very next video we actually explode forward from that rear foot right so that’s how front stance looks once again you see it here I’m going to switch leads see that we’ll do it from this side I’m going to exaggerate it a bit you see how this knee is bent I’m is on the rear leg five percent on the front so I can switch very quickly I can move very agile with with the footwork now something to know is that other systems do it differently but give an example like uh kendo I trained in kendo for like a year their weight distribution on average is about where they’ll have percent of their weight on the lead leg and on the rear leg with their rear heel off the ground and other systems will have a right so if your character calls for that you need to know those things right yeah for right now just know for uh what we’re doing on the rear five percent the front and this is called front stance front stance is because both feet are actually moving forward now something to know what you can do is switch your transfer your weight from one foot to the other without moving your feet for dramatic effect.
So if I’m hearing natural posture right I’m at as you were. If I’m here in front stance and I have on the rear leg and I want to do something dramatic I can do this see now I’ve transferred to the front foot.
On the rear foot and I’ll come back see this now I can go forward again and just by doing these subtle motions all of a sudden looks very dramatic and all I’m doing is shifting the weight from one foot to the next the audience doesn’t know that you know they just know that you look pretty badass and I’m just doing some of the guards if you’re going to cover in the next video I’ll do the same thing from this side so you can see it all I’m doing is transferring the weight from one foot to the next percent of the rear of the front on the rear on the front right so those are the subtleties for uh for how to how to accomplish more by doing less now the second stance that we use is called side stance and side stance is exactly that it’s not really a stance that you come out and engage in combat with it’s a stance that maybe someone has attacked you in it and you just kind of find yourself there and it’s transitional so you don’t stay in side stance and what side stance is if we go from start from a front stance I’ll do front stance in my right lead is I’m just going to step across this foot here movie sword training basics, Movie Sword Master, Movie Sword Expert.
And if you notice I’m still on railroad tracks so there’s a railroad track here in a railroad track there so I could actually cross step and move very quickly because I’m still on those railroad tracks so as you’re as you’re in a side stance you don’t want to be like this right you don’t want to be like this once again you’re here on the rear leg and five percent on the front leg and it can be you know any type of posture that you’re in or or any type of guard that you’re in when you’re doing it get like this now what I’m going to do is I’m going to switch leads so you can see side stance from different angles so this is side stance right lead side stance left lead right side stands left lead I’m going to switch leads again side stance right lead and you see just this basic movement has a lot of uh drama and can build up tension you know if you’re if your character’s here and you’re closing in like this on a person you’re attacking you accomplish so much more remember it’s these what you’re doing these little moments that make all the difference so go ahead and pause the video now and practice doing the two stances front stance and side stance now as we mentioned earlier if you’re an actor or stunt performer you want to be aware of the style that your character is using in the film or tv project because it will determine everything you know if it’s a project that features say a lot of European fighters with European styles the movement is going to be different than say if it’s something that features features uh someone who’s using African martial arts right again it would be different someone who’s using Asian martial arts because the movements are going to be different there’s gonna be subtle subtle differences between each role and you want to be aware of that you know when you’re actually performing.
Let’s take a look at one, here the um this is a weapon shield hit four so we’ll take a look at this one and you see everything is broken down explained step by step demonstrated so you know exactly how it’s to look you know how it should flow now one of the many other cool things is that we include what we call live action video displays actually are clips from movies and tv shows so you actually can see you know what the karaoke could look like when it’s a movie so we’ll take a look at one here this is a clip from kingdom of heaven and you can see how it actually all comes together so the stuff that you’re learning you see it’s different than if you’re doing combat that we’re dividing because they’re going to shoot it differently they’re going to edit it differently and this helps you to really lock in your lessons here’s a one of the most popular courses of classes rather in this course is the two-handed sword drawing and re-sheathing clinic where you learn all sorts of ways of cinematically drawing the sword you know when you can do a cool sword draw they’re definitely going to be you know favoring you in the camera so let’s take a look at one of them here we’ll go with this with this one this is the sword in the earth position yes you can see what it kind of looks like and you see step by step broken down you showed exactly what to do how to do it over and over again so it doesn’t matter if you are a ranked beginner everything is broken down and explained to you so that you are clear on how to safely and effectively perform each of these these movie story sequences this one is our monthly sharpen and polished video conference lab each month we do this and it’s designed to actually help you with your career try it hours risk-free after reviewing the entire course if you don’t like what you see and it doesn’t work for you we’ll refund every penny who else lets you go through their movie sword training and then if you’re not happy after looking at all the training gives you a complete refund bottom line we’re passionate about making our customers happy and keeping them that way so well worth the investment if you’re serious about learning two-handed long-sword movie sword fighting. movie sword training basics, Movie Sword Master, Movie Sword Expert
Movie Sword Training Basics Tip 3: Video Record Your Performance
One last caveat, we always encourage actors and stunt performers to video record themselves with their camera phone so they can see how they actually look on camera. You want to know how you look on camera the camera doesn’t lie so whatever you see on your camera phone is how you’re most likely gonna look on the big screen.
So make sure you like this video and smash that subscribe button so you don’t miss out on video three of our six video series and our free movie sword fighting course. Also, sign up for our pro stunt tips email newsletter to get movie sword fighting tips in your inbox.
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https://cbtstunts.com/category/movie-sword-fighting-tips/
Lastly, if you like more information on our highly popular 2 handed long sword master course go to www.MovieSwordFighting.com or click on a link below this video. Prepare to have your mind blown. Again my name is Dillon Wilson with CBT Stunt Alliance. Train hard, perform easy. Don’t miss our next video where we share with you another movie sword fighting tip. See you next video.