The Oner
This 4-minute martial-arts fight scene is one continuous shot. Tony Jaa in The Protector ascends 4 stories through dozens of bad guys in this oner that took over a month to choreograph and prepare, and 5 takes over the course of several weeks to finally get right.
YouTube – The best unedited fight sequence ever [via rebelpixel productions].












so the impressive thing is suppose to be how it was shot in one continuous motion right?
the actual fighting and choreography was not very exciting or impressive to me I wonder how long it takes to choreograph some of the more fancy stuff we see (in more takes obviously)
I guess that’s true—i haven’t seen the entire movie yet, but you’re right, several parts of this scene felt lazy and lacked the impact of many good fight scenes.
But yeah—the impressive part is that it was shot all in one uncut take with a single camera. There was no editing or special effects. In contrast, typical high-action scenes have cuts averaging probably every 2-3 seconds. They only had about 4 minutes to work with because that’s how long short reels of film are (short reels are usually used for hand-held or steadicam shots because they’re lighter).
Think of everything that had to happen perfectly to pull off the full 4-minute scene:
Now picture all the outtakes from any Jackie Chan movie.