I'm an actress and I have to learn how to sword fight

in one day.

I am a last minute replacement to play Romeo

in a gender swap production of Romeo and Juliet.

I have to go on tonight

and I do not know the fight choreography.

So Robb Hunter, fight choreographer extraordinaire,

is going to teach me how to do the sword fights.

I hope I do not kill anyone for real.

[dramatic sound effect]

[clock ticks]

Thank you so much for taking time out of your day

to be here.

- You're very welcome.

It's my pleasure, my job.

So I know we have a limited amount of time today

and you have to go on tonight.

So no combat experience on your part.

And we're gonna need to get you up to speed

as soon as possible.

- [Victoria] Okay.

[upbeat music]

- The fight that you're gonna do with Tybalt is a fight

where the emotions are very high

and there's a lot of passion

and you're just gonna be trying to swing it at her

and kill her.

- That wretched boy that did consort him here

shalt with him hence.

- This shall determine that.

[sword clank]

[grunting]

[yells]

[gasps]

[gentle music]

[upbeat music]

- I'd like to look at a few clips from films

that have notable sword fights in them.

Many fight choreographers hold this up

to be one of the best sword fights

that has ever been filmed.

Everything is meant to like kill and drive that objective

to win this fight of life and death.

[swords clanking]

- I always want to know where the actors end

and stunt doubles begin.

- They do a good amount of their work.

[swords clanking] They do a lot of face time.

[yells]

This is certainly not Liam Neeson's first fight on camera.

And this fight was choreographed by the way

by Bill Hobbs who passed away just last year,

probably the greatest sword master for film.

All his fights are super realistic.

We could watch this stuff for days

and never see the same thing twice.

[dramatic music]

[growls]

Look at this, this fall.

It's like it looks spontaneous.

It looks like it's affecting him

in different parts of his body.

Pitches forward and doesn't blink

as the sword almost hits him in the eye.

In a good film, the fight really tells a story

and it progresses us through.

In a fight like this, that wasn't a fight just for,

you know, for fun or for the spectacle of it.

That fight was a resolution

of these two characters' existence.

So our job is to make sure that that fight kind of finds out

where these characters live

and how they're experiencing this moment

and help them, you know, fulfill their objective,

help us tell the story to the audience.

[upbeat music]

These are the swords that we are going to be using.

So the fencing blades are nice and light.

The blade's nice and flexible.

When you hold it, this is called the hilt.

Everything that's not the blade is the hilt.

And you're gonna lay it in your hand

and let your fingers go in this curved part

and that's called a knuckle bow.

Protects your knuckles.

Your pointer finger, you want to slip through

this little area right here called the pas-d'ane

and that will give you a little bit more control

over what you do with the point of it.

- Mm-hmm, alright.

- Give her a try.

- Okay.

- You would hold it like you would a bird:

tight enough to that it doesn't escape,

but not so tight that you crush it

because you want a lot of flexibility in your wrist.

You want to be able to move the weapon all sorts

of different ways.

- Okay.

- The action that you take with the sword is much

like fly fishing where you're trying

to get the weapon to go in such a way

that swings like your fishing line out.

- Okay.

- I've taken to tell people imagine

that you've got like a piece of gum stuck

on the end of your sword and you're trying to sling it off.

- I feel like my wrists are not.

- That's, what that did was it made the weapon stop

over here instead of going through me.

So if you're trying to get something off your weapon,

you wouldn't just swing it around.

You would go [grunts] get off.

- [Victoria] Right.

- There's a lot of things that we do

to keep the other person safe.

One of the first things that you do is communicate

and that's our big start off safety,

that we always make eye contact and we look at each other

before we do anything.

Next things that we do is we check our distance.

We have protocol so that when I'm swinging at you,

I'm really not swinging at you.

I'm often swinging where you used to be.

- Do I have like a wind up?

- You're already doing it.

- [Victoria] Great. - We call it the cue.

- [Victoria] Uh-huh.

- So the cue, it tells the story

by saying I'm gonna gather energy

and send it at this opponent.

So do that again and this time I'm gonna parry.

- Okay.

- Are you familiar with the term?

- I'm assuming you're gonna step away.

- I'm not.

- Okay great.

- I'm gonna block it.

So a parry is just simply blocking an attack with a weapon.

So give me that cue and that attack.

- Okay, I'm feeling very on display.

- That's okay.

We'll fix little details in a moment.

- Thank you, okay.

- Great, the most dangerous part of this weapon

and most swords in general is gonna be that point.

For us, I want to minimize the amount of times

that this is directly between the two of us.

We divide the body in half through our centerline

and through our midline.

We want to avoid the point

of this weapon crossing your centerline.

It also allows me to do things like boom,

take these big actions around here.

- Yeah it looks cool.

- Pow and boom.

So let me have you do that.

So I'll do it once, boom, boom, boom.

You can make sound effects if you want, boom,

and then we'll stop.

- Okay. - And I'll just be a target.

- So you started down here?

- Start here. So we're gonna start left, so yeah.

- So right.

- And then take it all the way around

to the low line on the other side.

- Take it all the way like that?

- Yup, and then just cue straight back.

- There?

- Yup and then take the long way around

to get to the other side.

Great, yeah, perfect.

Looks like you've done this before.

- Haha, no it doesn't.

Don't lie to me.

- Bess, would you like to step in here?

- [Bess] Would love to.

- Alright, I would love to move us on to crap.

- To crap?

- Crap is very important in this line of work.

[upbeat music]

What you have been doing so far

- Is crap.

- I'll explain.

What you've been so far is carp, C-A-R-P,

which essentially means cue, action, reaction, principle,

which means you've been giving me a cue.

So cue me as if you're gonna attack this part of my body.

- Right.

- There's the cue.

You do the action and then I do the reaction right?

- Yeah.

- Crap on the other hand, flips the R and the A,

the reaction, action.

Can I borrow Bess for just a moment?

So for instance, the main one is when we do a swipe

at her head like I'm trying to cut her head off.

I give a cue and I wait.

Then she's gonna do a reaction, vacating that area.

Then I swing through where she used to be.

The important thing to remember is I give her the cue,

hey this is coming up.

She reacts before I do the swing.

Make sense?

- Mm-hmm.

- Alright cool. Give her a cue and she'll duck.

- Okay.

- Oh there's my cue.

- Okay.

- Duck, let's try again.

Cue, great.

We can also the same kind of protocol,

the cue, reaction, action by swinging at the belly.

I'm gonna give you a cue and then you're gonna take

just your belly button away from me.

- Okay.

- Cue, belly button make it go far away

and anything in that area like hands also go away.

You can also imagine that someone has like tied,

like if you were wearing a belt,

someone's tied a rope to the back of your belt

and they just hank it really hard.

- Right. - So that goes out of the way.

Cue, whoa, cue [exhales].

Last thing we'll do is diagonal attacks.

The same rules apply.

There's a cue, there's a reaction, there's an action.

If I were doing a descending diagonal attack

like I'm trying to, you know, get my sword to come,

[spits]

- Great.

- Rob Roy, right there.

[dramatic music]

[growls]

[sword clanks]

Cue, now you have to go that way.

- I have to go this way?

- Yeah, because I go this way. You just leave the room.

- It's just like peace.

- Yeah, you can even leave your right foot stuck there.

- [Victoria] Okay.

- So you can be going, boom,

and make this nice long line to trace.

So the people back in the balcony get that bigger picture.

- Uh-huh.

- Cue, whoa, cue, awesome.

[upbeat music]

Let's look at the very first move.

Mercutio's sword.

I grab, turn, and then she's charging in

to do this attack and I'm just gonna get out of the way

and beat it.

Then she just goes and brings it right around.

[swords clank]

Then get it a little beat and boom, get a little beat.

Let's just try those three moves.

- Okay, so if I'm here like that and you come in.

[swords clank]

Oh, that was not the best.

- And keep moving away.