Welcome to The Queue — your day by day distraction of curated video content material sourced from throughout the online. At the moment, we’re watching a video essay that explores how stuntmen within the director’s chair had been essential to the John Wick franchise.
When you’re a fan of motion motion pictures, the thought of turning your nostril up at a stuntman within the director’s chair feels fairly foolish.
Y’all ever heard of Buster Keaton? Charlie Chaplin? What about Jackie Chan? Motion boys the lot of ’em! Solely that’s promoting the true crux of the bias quick. There’s actually a precedent for a type of Jack of All Trades: the director/star/producer/stunt coordinator who’s a one-man forged and crew. However the identical isn’t true of stunt staff who fall extra into the Journeyman class.
Enter John Wick — the little indie flick that spawned a genre-reviving franchise. It’s arduous to think about studios turning down John Wick, understanding what we all know now. However because the video essay under underlines, co-directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch struggled to get their movie made by way of conventional avenues, partially as a result of there was hesitancy about letting two second-unit stunt guys direct a characteristic movie.
Calling Stahelski and Leitch “stunt guys” undersells how a lot expertise these two dropped at the desk. And fortuitously for us, they believed of their capability to inform a strong story (that additionally occurs to kick/punch/shoot all types of ass). All that mentioned, right here’s a video essay on how the movie did get made and what the “stunt guys” can carry to the filmmaking desk:
Watch “While you rent stunt guys to direct the film”
Who made this?
This video essay on how John Wick benefited from placing stuntmen within the director’s chair is by CinemaStix, a weekly video essay channel run by U.S.-based creator Danny Boyd. You may subscribe to CinemaStix on YouTube right here. And you’ll help Boyd on Patreon right here.
Extra movies like this
For extra of CinemaStix work, right here’s a equally edited video essay that highlights Heath Ledger‘s ideas about enjoying the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Darkish Knight.
And right here’s CinemaStix’s have a look at the how and why of when administrators forged non-actors of their movies.
One ultimate instance of CinemaStix work: a spotlight reel showcasing how Sam Rockwell manages to discover a technique to bust a transfer in nearly each film he’s in.
I discussed earlier that certainly one of our greatest stuntmen/administrators is Jackie Chan. Right here’s a video essay that underlines how one of many Renaissance Man’s biggest qualities was understanding the narrative energy of taking a punch.
Associated Matters: John Wick, stuntmen, The Queue
Meg has been writing professionally about all issues film-related since 2016. She is a Senior Contributor at Movie Faculty Rejects in addition to a Curator for One Good Shot. She has attended worldwide movie festivals reminiscent of TIFF, Scorching Docs, and the Nitrate Image Present as a member of the press. In her day job as an archivist and information supervisor, she commonly works with bodily media and is dedicated to making sure ongoing bodily media accessibility within the digital age. You could find extra of Meg’s work at Cinema Scope, Lifeless Central, and Nonfics. She has additionally appeared on quite a few film-related podcasts, together with All of the President’s Minutes, Zodiac: Chronicle, Cannes I Kick It?, and Junk Filter. Her work has been shared on NPR’s Pop Tradition Completely satisfied Hour, Enterprise Insider, and CherryPicks. Meg has a B.A. from the College of King’s Faculty and a Grasp of Info diploma from the College of Toronto.
