Every Frame a Painting
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2015–2022
9:04 · 25M views · Dec 3, 2014
Every Frame a Painting analyzes how Jackie Chan stages action comedy, with nine principles such as starting from a disadvantage, using the environment, clear shots, and keeping action and reaction in the same frame.
HN repeatedly recommends it as the clearest explanation of why Chan's fight scenes beat fast-cut Hollywood action.
11 comments from Hacker News
Here’s a really cool video breaking down exactly how Jackie sets up his stunt-action-comedy. this video One thing that was particular interesting to me is how the setup always starts with him at an extreme disadvantage: no shoes, tied to a chair, hanging upside down, etc. I never noticed it before and it’s exactly what makes his action so enjoyable to watch. (The YouTube Channel is called Every Frame a Painting and all the other videos are fascinating and very worth checking out.)
This episode of "Every Frame a Painting" does an excellent job of explaining why Jackie Chan's way of doing action is awesome and why contemporary Hollywood (generally) sucks: this video
One of my favorite "Every Frame a Painting" videos is on Jackie Chan. If you haven't seen it be warned, it will ruin your view of almost all modern action fight scenes. this video
You can see this difference in the the films produced by him and his studio versus the american-produced ones. Every Frame a Painting has a good video on this. [0] Typically for films the shooting portion takes only a few weeks to finish, so lots of retakes = money lost. Jackie Chan does a lot of random flourishes in his films that end up with him needing a lot of takes. For example, how he scales fences. [1] The way he scales the castle wall in Wheels on Meals (1984) is probably my favorite example. [0]: this video [1]: [LINK]
Shaky cams are abused in "western" cinema to hide the fact that the studios never have the time to give their actor skills to act out an action scene. In contrast, "asian" cinema either stars actors who can do a large chunks of their own action scenes, or spend time training them. On top of that, "western" cinema doesn't even know about how our eyes and brains perceive the world. Every Frame a Painting has a very good video essay on how Jackie Chan films action scenes: this video Note how punches are filmed.