miahz’s digital quality

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.

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:

The actor, stuntmen, and extras obviously had to hit all their cues
The many individual fights had to be succesfully and safely executed, including various set pieces and props that are moved, broken, thrown, etc.
The steadicam operator not only had to carry the full steadicam rig up 8 flights of stairs, but also had to hit all his cues, and keep the shots composed as intended, and not trip on the stairs or bump into the set or people
The set and lighting had to be “safe” so that you don’t see any behind-the-scenes stuff as the camera moves and pans throughout the scene, and so the camera man didn’t create shadows in the shot
There was probably an audio guy that had to follow the camera with a mic and not get in the way of the camera or actors

Now picture all the outtakes from any Jackie Chan movie.