Articles | "Concrete Jungle" program details | "Fight Scenes and Fall Guys" panel details

Lin Oeding: Sure. I wanted to make a short that would serve as a good calling card narratively and visually. The catch is that in order to make something look high budget it generally costs high budget, so the trick was to get creative and work backwards. I hired a DP (Chris Manley) who shoots CSI: NY, Mad Men, and Prison Break, because I liked the night exterior work on his reel. I paid him his rate for 2 days and as a result got all the cameras, equipment, most of the film, and crew free. I did the same thing with other parts of the crew as well. I found a top notch locations manager, paid him his day rate for 2 days, and then used his relationships and favors to get our street closures, and crew parking lots downtown for free. I basically worked backwards, hired good people, and used their relationships and favors to get things for free. That's how we achieved the studio film look for relatively little money.

LO: When I was in middle school my dad let me use his 8mm camera to make home videos. I enjoyed watching martial arts movies and always thought, "Hey I could do that stunt". So from middle school through college, I made a number of really bad homemade martial arts short movies with my friends. The videos continued to get better and better until I eventually put together a 3-minute demo reel of homemade fight scenes. I sent this demo out to tons of people in the industry and got a bunch of very nice rejection letters. I was excited though because I knew I was headed in the right direction. I kept at it, continually improved my reel and eventually got to where I am today.

LO: I have only been to the emergency room 3 times in my career, which is pretty good. On set we always try to plan ahead and be as safe as possible, accidents do happen but fortunately I have never been seriously injured.

LO: Yeah, it started after I saw Ernie Reyes Jr on Ninja Turtles 2. I asked my parents if I could take martial arts classes, and they told me if I could do the center splits by the time 4th grade was over that they would sign me up. I practiced everyday, got my splits and eventually started training in Kung-Fu. From then until midway through high school, I studied various forms of martial arts. Around junior year, I got into a scuffle at school and realized that everything you learn in traditional martial arts does absolutely NOTHING for you in a real fight, so I did research on Bruce Lee & Jeet Kun Do and immediately switched to training in boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai.

Yves and I were successful in our fights because pro-fighters were not well-rounded back then. If we'd fight a jiu-jitsu, judo, or wrestler stylist, we would just stop their take downs attempts and try to knock them out. If we fought a kickboxer, tae kwon do fighter, or boxer, we'd just take them to the ground and submit them. We used this strategy and won almost all of our early fights this way. Yves went to fight for the UFC the same year that I got out of fighting to pursue film directing at UT. We went in different directions, but we both love what we do.

Yves and I also made home-made martial arts videos in college while training for our MMA fights. He'd say, "Wouldn't it be cool if one day I could fight in the UFC, that'd be soo awesome", and I'd say, "Heck yeah! .... and wouldn't it be cool if one day I could work in Hollywood as a stuntman, that'd be soo awesome". At the time we were 19-year-old kids with dreams. It's been cool to look back and see how far we've come and how our persistence paid off in the end.

LO: I wouldn't say a 'go-to-guy' because there are other stuntmen who are very talented and could also get the job done. Stunt doubling depends on an actor’s height, weight and what the stunts his character is required to do. I guess I'm a close enough size to double a number of actors - not too short, not too tall. I enjoy doing it, it's a fun job and it's given me the opportunity to travel to a lot of countries that I wouldn't have otherwise. The past 10 years have been a great journey and I feel fortunate that I've been given the opportunity to do what I do.

LO: I plan to continue working as a stuntman, which I enjoy, until I fully transition into studio directing. In the long term, I hope to be directing big budget studio films that audiences not only enjoy, but films that the critics respect - films that are highly profitable, but also smart and clever in writing. Some examples might be Collateral, the Bourne Series, Slumdog Millionaire - these are films that most directors would be proud to have directed. They are the types of films I'd enjoy making because they are visually stunning, have smart writing, appeal to a wide demographic and are commercially successful.

LO: This is a great question. At the end of the day, all choreography for film should be entertaining. Some aspects of real fighting such as jiu-jitsu are boring on screen. Most people who don't understand jiu-jitsu will watch it on UFC and say, "it looks like guys laying on top of each other", and unless you like watching guys lay on top of each other, most will find that not very exciting. I think a good fight choreographer will take a mixture of realism and flash and split the difference to create something exciting to watch.

A few years ago, wire work was used in everything from Matrix to episodes of Charmed, now it's played out or used less gratuitously and more subtly. Fight choreography will continue evolving but I think audience's these days are shifting towards realism, movies like Taken, Bourne, and History of Violence have been successful in recent years and have used a more realistic style of choreography.

LO: I am currently developing a feature length screenplay (crime/action/romance) that I will try to get financed through the studio system, it not, I will use independent financing and make it sometime in 2010.