Kung-fu wire work without the wires

[squall88uk]

Right I have various ideas for a kung-fu fight sequence. I've choreographed the basic groundwork, but want to incorporate some crazier stuff. The idea I had was to make a doll of one of the character with clothes stuffed with newspaper. Now as you may imagine, such a thing would look terrible.

The idea I had, was to bluescreen a photo or clip of the person's face onto this fake body in post-production, using after-effects.

Does this sound unreasonably hard? Anyone with experience in any of this stuff?

[2nd_Recon]

alright, I"m not sure I follow you. You are going to use manequins to do kung fu without wounding yourself? If so, how will you keep controll of the doll during the fight? I wouldn't worry so much about how to make the dolls faces realistic unless you have a way to make their actions realistic.

[squall88uk]

woops. I realise now how stupid that sounded. What i meant was...well...i'll give an example.

I plan for a shot where I punch my friend and he flies into a wall. I'd therefore film 3 shots. One shot of me punching him, one shot of the mannequin flying through the air, and one shot of my friend falling to the floor. In the mannequin shot i'd digitally add his face.

Do you think that would be effective for a very short, fast moving action shot? ie. would it be terribly noticeable?

The fight will all be done with people...it's just the "getting thrown into walls" and "flying through the air" shots that i was going to use mannequins, and they would be 1.5-2.0 seconds at max.

edit: and they would be cut between real shots for effect

anyone? opinions?

[squall88uk]

Update:

I've tested this technique using a static head on a static mannqeuin and it works. Anyone with the time to help me with this more (or even just lend opinions) please PM me or email me at: squall88_uk@hotmail.com

[the_satanic_COokie]

hmm this sounds like a terrible idea, but I cANT say that I dont wanna see the results.

Me and my friends used to just take the hits when we did stuff like that...sometimes you gotta hurt yourself to make a good film!...

that's horrible advice...stick with the dummies...

[squall88uk]

lol...

well i'd like to be able to throw my friend into a wall at 30mph...and i'm sure he'd take the hit if he could. I'm just worried by the boundaries imposed by the laws of physics and gravity....

[El Brenty]

Use close fast camera cuts and you can achieve miracles!

They didn't have CGI years ago, but managed quite well without it.

[britishbulldog]

yer use close camera angles and possibly get your actor to act the scene in slow motion and then speed it up so it looks like real time, i dont have much experience editing but surely you can do that