Fight Scene breakdown: "Disciples of the 36th Chamber" (1985) (Part I)

Hello Steemit, shovelling-coal here back from a small hiatus to take a bit of a different direction in order to ENTERTAIN YOU, YOU SPOILED CHILDREN share a small scene (actually only about half a scene) from one of my favourite movies, Disciples of the 36th Chamber (1985)
Small background: Disciples is the 3rd movie in the 36th Chamber trilogy, focusing on young kung-fu expert Fong Sai-Yuk played by Hsiao Ho, one of my favourite comedic martial arts actors. Fong is a rebellious youth with two brothers who try (and fail) to keep their brother in line, with Fong eventually getting the 3 in such trouble with the ruling Manchu that they are forced to flee to Shaolin temple to become monks. The movie is available on Netflix and I encourage you to watch it if you like kung-fu films.

I realized pretty early on that this post would be much better suited to video rather than text. Unfortunately for you, I have little experience with video editing and didn't want to spend too much time learning it all just yet and so you shall be forced to read paragraph after paragraph focusing on about ~2 minutes of actual screen-time. But hey, maybe you'll find it as interesting as I do.

I'm going to be focusing on the first big fight scene in the movie, where Fong convinces his brothers to take him to a Manchu gym in order to apologize to a Shaolin monk which Fong had offended earlier. As punishment for his offence, Fong's mother bound him in ropes which severely restrict his movement, but Fong convinces his brothers to untie his legs before they go to talk to the monk. The brothers are of course turned away at the entrance.

You can get the idea just from looking at this screenshot. Fong is on the left in the blue, with 4 guards barring his way. 2 seem to challenge him, but the 2 behind are clutching their shoulders from the blows Fong dealt trying to get past them. This is a pretty basic shot, but it's well laid-out. Fong is almost dead-on 1/4 left screen, with the middle 50% taken almost entirely by the henchmen in gray. Fong's brothers have been left out of the shot: Fong is the only instigator here. Notice also how the potted plant on the left has been moved farther from the wall than the one on the right. I don't know if this was intentional or not but it does make the plant much more visible, as well as marking a divide between the two factions (Fong & Henchmen.)

This shot is a bit more interesting. Fong pushed past the guards into the courtyard, but is halted by more guards (surprise surprise.) Look at the set up: Fong front and centre, aggressive stance, behind him on either side his two brothers, casual stance. Behind them are 4 guards, aggressive, and behind them 4 more, looking rather hurt. Then we have 3 open doors, each filled with curious but perfectly casual onlookers. Really great geometry in this shot. It's simple, you can see everybody, and best of all it looks completely natural even though it has such an obvious pattern. Also note how the camera is not facing Fong or the main door dead-on, but is tilted to the right slightly. The 4 henchmen behind Fong's brothers echo this; the ones on the left of the screen are turned to the right, the two on the right of the screen are front-facing. We'll be doing more counting later on, so please try to contain your excitement.

Here the tension gets upped quite a bit, with the two fighters in gold pushing the trio back to the stairs. Fong's brothers now come forward, but are still non-aggressive. Then we have the 8 henchmen framing the shot along with the red doors and orange mural-things.

The two fighters attack Fong and get kicked aside, then instantly the scene changes. The henchmen close all the doors, removing the neutral onlookers from the scene. Fong's brothers too are now in fighting stance: Very suddenly the heroes are in real danger. The right-tilt has increased as well, and notice the bush in the lower left corner. Although it is the closest thing to the camera, it actually pushes the viewer's vision away from the bottom left, so that we take in more of the scene. Something I forgot to mention: Fong is either in the middle of every shot, or is facing the middle. Here his left cheek is almost exactly centre. Another thing that pulls our attention to the right is the facing of the henchmen (in gray) and the fighters (in gold.) On the left of the screen we see backs and shoulders, but on the right they face the camera, mostly.

Fong reminds his brothers (but mostly the viewer) that his hands are still tied, just as the first two fighters attack (see the gold sleeves on either side.) We also get the shot split into nice approximate thirds by the background, red/white/orange.

Fong's brothers get smacked to the ground and Fong takes on two of the fighters. This isn't a very good screenshot, but I felt like I needed it to lead up to the next one (or better yet I should learn how to make a .gif.) You can't see Fong's brothers at all here, but they pop back up from behind him a second later which gives us this nice shot:

This 1 2 1 2 set up is pretty common for the brothers. When they are with Fong they are shown surrounded but still grouped together, but here they are split and quickly kung-fu'd out of the fight again.

Meanwhile, Fong is fighting more Manchu generic fighters. This is the part that really made me want to make this post, and also the point where I realized that without video it's quite difficult to convey exactly why it's so well done. I could point out the positioning or ratios etc but I'll leave that to you for now. Instead, just count the number of fighters with me. These screenshots are taken in very quick succession, so this all happens pretty fast. Here's that last screenshot again, just count down with me now:

3

2

1

Don't you just love that? No? Just me? Whatever. Moving on.

Back to the brothers again, notice that same 1 2 1 2 positioning, with some henchmen trying to look tough in the background. Maybe Fong's brothers should have been paying more attention to the two fighters behind them, because again they get tossed out of the fight fairly quickly.

Fong comes in to take on his brother's attackers. Again note how Fong faces the middle of the screen. Also see how everyone else is positioned higher -> lower from left to right,

Now Fong duels with one of the better fighters. Notice how for the first time Fong looks concerned, and the two fighters on the right are in casual stance. Fong's brothers are both helping him, and the heads of the two fighting men are lower than everyone else's (dead middle horizon.) We can see that Fong can't overcome this opponent.

Now Fong is being restrained from 3 sides while the attacker hits him from the front. The fighters on the left are casual, not in any danger.

Another great shot. Fong is defeated, the main attacker points at him. His finger is exactly middle horizon, and he and the fighter on the far left/the red door divide the shot into thirds. The fighter that brought Fong down is also the only odd man on the Manchu side: Arcing behind the 3 brothers are 8 fighters, 4 on each half of the screen, then 6 henchmen split 4 and 2 on the doors. The brothers heads are the lower than everyone else's, and Fong's is lowest of all.

So what happens next? Well, if you haven't seen the movie, you'll either have to watch it, or wait for me to do part II of this scene, though I think I'd rather do a video so you might be waiting a while. I highly recommend watching the 36th Chamber trilogy, all 3 are fantastic movies.

Thanks for reading.