TMNT STUNTS and MARTIAL ARTS
 

Hank Amos ... stunt co-coordinator
Matt Emig ... stunt double: Master Splinter
Jonathan Eusebio ... fight coordinator
Jim Ford ... stunt double: The Shredder
Daniel Graham ... stunt double: Raphael
Brendon Huor ... stunt double: Master Splinter / stunts
Jeremy Marinas ... stunt double: Leonardo / stunt double: Michaelangelo
Kimmy Suzuki ... stunt double: Minae Noji
Don Thai Theerathada ... fight team
Luis Tolentino ... skateboard stunt double: Michelangelo
Jon Valera ... stunt double: Leonardo / stunt double: Michelangelo
Just to name a few
http://www.jimaford.com/stunts.php









For those who
Whatched this

The guy playing leo is one of the poeple working on THIS MOVIE

Great thread. Just want to throw that out there.
We should all aspire, myself included, to backing up our thread's with visual's/examples, when possible!

Interesting, Brendon Huor who plays Leo in that TMNT Style video is the stunt double for Splinter. I wonder how that works since Danny Woodburn played Splinter and he was short. Unless they scaled up the character so that he appears taller? He kind of looks Taller from the animated GIF

http://i.imgur.com/WcbShxB.gif

And also Splinter has two stunt doubles.

PLuss im not to sure that they are strictly set to those Characters, if you get what im saying?

Like if they need a Nunchaku guy chances are they're going to use the Nunchaku guy not someone who is subpar, the guy who plays leo the the human turtles is obviously a great swordsmen and martial artist, chances are they will use him when necessary.

As for the CGI and mocap, Think planet of the apes or gollum and Andy Serkis He plays an ape and while they are large they are not human size. They even use a special "Crutch" to use for when they Apes are walking on all Fours, but you cant tell that once you see the film, Mocap is just used to get a wire frame in which to animate from These thing could be scaled up down or made to look wider longer Etc think the turtle are mocaped Alan in 6'2" and raph is 6' give or take, but he looks wider and while Alan is ripped his not as large as raph.

The question is, How tall will Master Splinter actually look on the film. If he fights the Shredder, Hes gonna have to be tall enough to twirl that sword around.

true and yet from the trailer he looks much shorter

DAAUUMN !!! LMAO!! This just got me even more pumped for this!!!! Holy COW!!

thats what im saying

It's the wonders of CGI, just look at the guy playing Gimli on the lord of the rings, he's the tallest actor in the cast and play the shortest character, also, Andy Serkis played King Kong...

I think this is my favorite thread ever lol. These guys look pretty capable of pulling off some badass Fight sequences if you ask me lol. The thought of seeing our beloved fearsome four fighting with this much intensity makes me boil over inside. That first video of Splinters stunt double is my favorite! Thanks for posting dude

Your welcome Im just getting upset with all this Oh they wont even come close the this kind of stuff, the Evidence is right there. We just haven't seen it yet im sure we will. IM pretty sure the reasons we havent seen any yet are 1 Haven't finished CGI, and 2 want to save most of the action for the movie(which i think is smart)

Yea I agree.. I am hoping that we do see something along these lines in this new trailer next week. Even if its a small amount. I think we will : ) .. Bc I don't think anyone will feel better until they actually see the Turtles fighting like that and I could understand that. But the fact that they're hiring stunt doubles and fight choreographers / coordinators with that kind of talent is a good sign.

This is a great thread, but I recall some of these videos being posted a long time ago. Not saying anything about posting them again, I'm glad you did, but what I'm saying is that I don't understand why so many people on this forum insist that there will be no martial arts in this movie. Just HULK SMASH.

That is ridiculous. Having seen these and other videos long ago, it was pretty obvious that they will have some excellent martial arts fight scenes in this movie. I am extremely excited. This is going to be far more NINJA than the ninja turtles have ever been before

Amen to this ^. I think after seeing these doubles in action that we will see these turtles fight like they've never fought before. With great fury and intensity! I just don't see them hiring these guys just to stand around. Another thing I noticed was Mikey's skateboarding stunt double! O hell yea lol

Is anyone really insisting that? Nobody can know for sure until the movie's actually released. But all we've actually seen so far has been "Hulk Smash" kind of stuff, so it's pretty normal, and realistic, to base early judgments and speculation off of what we've actually been shown.

If there is some good martial arts action and fight choreography in this movie, then that's great! But if they would show a little of it in the previews -- and not even much, just a tiny bit -- people wouldn't have a reason to doubt that aspect of the it or get into negative speculation. The studio is the one marketing the movie - they're not entitled to the general public's good faith here, it's their job to sell us on it. The fact that so many people are so critical and doubtful of this movie says that they're not doing that job as well as they should.

I'm in the stoked crowd...but this point was well made. For all this talk about having faith in the film (which I still do), I didn't stop to think that the studio isn't entitled to it, from fanboys or the general public.

But to that end...in an effort to market to the general public, I think that's why we've seen the scenes we have because it worked for them marketing Transformers, so I betting they think why not go the same route with the Turtles...mind you, I'm not saying that's a good way to go, but just exploring a possibility.

I will also point out, TMNT is getting a lot of flack because Michael Bay is the producer, and his name is the one that keeps popping up, so I guess maybe the internet, magazines and critics tribute his name with the new movie, perhaps what brought people into see the Transformers was because it was being produced by long time beloved director Steven Spielberg. Granted, I am one of the general audience, and my ticket was bought at the thought of gigantic alien robots causing havok, but I'm pretty sure Spielberg's name was just the icing on the cake.

Those dudes have mad skills! I hope they can do some of those crazy flips with a motion capture shell on their back though, lol.

Since a Katana is scaled after a person's size, he should be able to wield a katana properly scaled for his size, ie twirl it like the gif. My sword instructor's sword is considerably shorter then the size I'd use, handling one of her older swords, it was about the same size as a short sword would be for me.

A katana should be the size of the arm + shoulder to shoulder for the person using the katana.

And if a katana properly sized to a four feet something humanoid rat is too far of a believable stretch, he could always just use a Wakizashi, or a Kodachi.

My vote would be he has a wakizashi that just looks like a katana due to his size. A katana CANNOT be properly scaled for his size to me. Why? Because I just don't see the turtles having their own forge and smithing their own steel weapons.

;)

i think your right if you look closely it does look like a shorter katana or wakizashi and often times wakizashi's can be longer

Great vids, those guys are all crazy talented. The martial arts action is the one thing I'm looking forward to in this movie. I just hope they focus the camera on the action; the jump cuts drove me nuts in Transformers. :ohwell:

true but Johnathan does really do that often so i think the action scenes will be easy to fallow, just remember with transformer they were dealing with something so much larger. so i think it will be fine.

ill be honest and say, that shot of Donnie, in the trailer disappointed me for two reasons 1) it was of his back, and 2) it was so close in you couldn't appreciate what was happening unless you went frame by frame

- i want to give them the benefit of the doubt, cause maybe they were purposely showing his gear...and there were much wider shots employed as they slid down the mountain, and leo leaped off the water tower...but something about hollywood's obsession with the ultra close camera angle, and constant jump cuts bothers me BIG TIME...and not just for the Turtles, but in general

...i get its supposed to be an immersive experience, but at what cost. ya know?

I totally understand. I was kind of annoyed at the Donnie shot too. It looked cool but I just want a better look at him. All of them

?
The size of the models has nothing to do with fast cutting the action. Directors sometimes use the technique to disguise poor choreography or other visual flaws.

Me, I miss true martial arts films, where choreography was everything. Doesn't seem like they make too many of them anymore, either here or abroad. :ohwell:

I mean i know one thing that wont be bad is the choreography seeing as all the people working on that aspect are great and have worked on amazing movies and have alot of talent.

But the main reason for those quick shot were due to the size of the transformers them selves. they can fit into the frame because they're 4 story tall fighting robots. and i believe they were not Mo-capped were as these guys are mo-capped relatively normal sized

I agree that these videos give me some hope that we may get some actual, decent martial arts action. How much remains to be seen, since you know, there hasn't been any in the actual trailers yet... but here's hoping.

Again, the size of the CGI models has nothing to do with how the shots are edited. It's a technique directors use to make the action parts more action-y, but IMO it's lazy and obnoxious trend in Hollywood movies. I want the camera to linger on the good stuff so I can see their moves.

yeah it one thing im not worried about.

YEah i get that im just saying thats the reason it was used so much in transformers, this movie it should be easier to not use that style of film added with the fact the Johnathan's shooting style doesn't usually consist of those kind of action shots very often.

I still don't think you understand the difference between editing and computer animation, but whatever. Liebesman being on the project is exactly why I'm concerned about the camerawork and editing.

Roger Ebert on Battle: LA:

"There is a lazy editing style in action movies these days that assumes nothing need make any sense visually. In a good movie, we understand where the heroes are, and where their opponents are, and why, and when they fire on each other, we understand the geometry. In a mess like this, the frame is filled with flashes and explosions and shots so brief that nothing makes sense."

The fight scenes in Batman Begins had the same problem of shaky cam/ extreme close up shots. The second film, The Dark Knight, corrected these problems. So let's hope that Liebesman learned from his mistakes on his last movie and won't carry them over to this.

Well I like the way Bay shoots his action shots.. Nemec said that hes been giving his two sense on the action and that we will feel Bays hand so maybe it will be an improvement. Imo the more influence from Bay the better. Now I'm gonna go duck behind a dumpster lol

I now the difference what im saying is they shoot the scene first right but because the content of whats "being" shot are larger robot that the CGI in later, make the shot look too close cramped and confusing because to the quick cuts to"make since" of the action.

But I get what your saying we will have to wait and find out IM betting that things well turn out, but i guess thats just blind faith to some. But on thing thats got me hopeful is the Cinematographer, the second unit director (more action direction) Worked on V for vendetta and fight club so there is that.
I agree plus the fact they have a fantastic second unit director. And the CGI snow mountain scene looks like that was all filmed location with stunt double and actors lol which is pretty BA.


I agree to an extent I honestly dont get all the hate about bay really.

Bay is probably getting a lot of hate from film critics and film fans because instead of coming from some prestigious film school, or being connected to some other critically acclaimed director and working under his wing, he came from music videos and playboy. Like in country clubs, you got those who came from generations of money, or went to college and built their businesses from the ground up, and then you got those who became rich from winning a lotto ticket, or from rapping on the street corners. No matter how much money they have or how hard they try to fit it, the elitist snobs will never truly welcome them.

Then the rest of the haters are just sheep that think they are being cool or something.

Okay, I get you. I still don't think it's a very good way to approach action shots myself, but that's just my opinion.

Come on man. You're going to bring classism into this? I don't know what the man's background is. I don't like Bay's films because they're juvenile, aimless, and he doesn't exactly strike me as a guy who cares deeply about source material. His movies don't exactly scream "struggling artist." The guy makes popcorn flicks, he's not a working class hero. :roll:

That said, he's not totally without merit. I'm not a fan of his movies, but he did shoot one of the best commercials from back in the day.

He started working when he was fifteen as an intern for George Lucas. Then he graduated from Wesleyan University majoring in Film and English and then did his graduate work at the Art center College for Design. Then after only two weeks of doing impressive work at Propaganda Films he was picked up by Capital records. This is just a small little smidge of what he has accomplished to get where he is today. Whether critics like his stuff or not he IS a talented guy that HAS worked for what he has and built his business " Platinum Dunes" from the ground up. He's definitely paid his dews

Do I like some of Bay's films? Yeah. But the guy also does Extremely Stupid stuff. Want to know why a Decepticon in Transformers 2 had a pair of balls (which were wrecking balls) dangling between his legs? Not from the writers, but because Michael Bay decided on it (it even showed him coming up with it in the documentary/behind the scenes footage)...and Bay thinks that a Decepticon with a pair of balls between his legs is quote 'funny' while it's just plain Stupid.

TO be far both transformer 2 and 3 were written during a writers strike so bay virtually had to write near two thirds of the film by him self on the fly Yeah it lead to some no so satisfactory writing.
But there are still great elements he did add. and im possitive had he had more time to develop a better script and work with the other writer it would have turned out better

Just a few videos of some stunt doubles and martial artist involved with this movie
Chris Brewster= Foot soldier


Kimmy Suzuki- Karai double

Airon Armstrong-stunts

Kristina Baskett- Megan Fox double

Nick Benseman-stunt performer

John Bernecker- stunts

Nitasha Bhambree - Stunts

Jake Huang- stunt performer

Suo Liu- stunt performer


Hiroo Minami- stunt performer

Jason Ng- stunt performer

Jim Ng- stunt performer


R Marcus Taylor- stunt performer

Luis Tolentino- Mikey's skateboarding double

Gui DaSilva- stunt performer

I wish someday they'll find some good stunts on Slash.