Wrestling Moves?

in , , ,

This one was fun. I first met Lewis at the short film festival Dan convinced me to go to back in 2019 (check that video out here, and watch the video we showed ‘The Map’). We talked a bit and he thought it would be cool to do a fight video but I left it there. I’ve found lots of people say they’re interested in making a fight video, because they think it would be cool, but never go any farther than that, no matter how often I ask. Then last year I ran into him again at the local beer fest we have here in Shenzhen and he said he was legitimately interested in doing a fight video.

So we started practicing. We decided to use Lewis’ Youtube character, Rey MAFAN, in the video. He’s a washed up ex-lucha libre champion who’s stuck in China and we figured he’d make a funny fight. Next was the hard part. Coming up with a story. I won’t spoil it so watch the video if you haven’t yet.

 

Since Rey MAFAN is such an over the top character I wanted to come up with an equally ridiculous premise for the fight and basically hallucinating the entire thing seemed to fit the bill. One hurdle we had to overcome was getting enough cans to scatter around for the scenes where I get to the park. I drank some energy drinks and coffees and stuff and kept the cans but most of the cans I collected at work. I asked everyone for caffeinated beverage cans so whenever anyone had an energy drink or a coffee they gave me the can. I ended up with two small trash bags full. I can only imagine what everyone in the office thought of me collecting cans...

The second thing was wrestling moves. Since Rey MAFAN is a wrestler we wanted some parts of the fight to be at least sort of wrestling-y. I don’t know anything about wrestling so I was at a loss for what to do but Lewis was familiar with some so we managed to find ways to work a couple into the fight.

Other than those two things the fight proceeded like most other fights. We met a couple of times to start making and then practicing the choreography, we found somewhere to film, we moved our practices to the filming location to make sure that everything fit, then we found someone who could film (big thanks to SJ) and did our filming. And I’m really happy with how it turned out.

From the beginning we planned to do two fights, one for my page and another for Lewis’ page. That second fight is all filmed and I’ll make sure to tell everyone when it’s all finished. This fight was really fun to do and I’m glad it came to together so well and so quickly. There are some more exciting fight videos coming up too, in addition to the second Rey MAFAN fight, and I’ll keep everyone updated on those as well.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you on my next trip. Don't forget to click the links below and follow to stay up to date on what I'm doing and where I am and to see all the pictures and videos from my trips.