Kung Fu Kids, Rogue Ninjas, And Sci-Fi Galore Load This Week's List Of Action Shorts!
Lee B. Golden III
Photo: Agent Odyssey by Shaun Charney
Getting right down to the nitty-gritty, feel free to click here to take a look at some previous entries of test fights now available online. Hopefully you’ve been keeping up, because there’s nearly a ton more you’ll find just below, including some competitive short projects, fan fights and even some pre-viz stuff, all of which are worth looking at, and hopefully we’ll see plenty more from these amazing folks. Carry on!…
Kicking off this list is a fun little collaborative gem hosted by independent filmmaker and vlogger Adande Thorne in a hilarious homage to classic kung fu flicks with scenes involving cocky fighters challenging a packed dojo. Kung Fu Kids is the name of the project, filmed on location at Yoon’s Martial Arts in Delaware, and if you watch YouTube regularly, keen eyes may also spot the appearances of Devin White (a.k.a. Kid Haru) and fellow YouTuber, Bijou, who’s looking mighty deadly in this video with a bo-staff…I wouldn’t get on her bad side. Just sayin.
As it stands, actor, stuntman and director Alex Chung is the reigning champion of schizophrenic fight choreography, greatly and comically personified so well in his earlier short, Hit Me, inspired by the 1999 cerebral crime thriller, Fight Club. Now, Chung is back and upping the ante once more this week in the brilliant sequel follow-up, Hit Me Twice, wherein our central hero is forced to team up with his reluctant imaginary self to take down an elusive beautiful crook after involuntarily helping her get away.
Should this haphazard mission fail, well…let’s just hope our hero doesn’t beat himself up ab-…..oh nevermind. Check out the first one in case you missed it, and be sure to watch the new one just beneath!
If the most recent trailer for director Ben Ramsey’s upcoming superhero short, Black Salt, left an impression on you, then you may like this little tidbit illustrating some amazing pre-viz work for the project. Martial artist and stunt performer Donovan Sheehan stands in for actor Kinyumba Mutakkabir who stars in the short, and while this bit of action choreo won’t be used in the final product, it certainly lends some worthy credibility to the vision, as well as the work of action director Ron Yuan, and Ramsey himself. Take a look!
Representing one of Singapore’s brewing groups of martial arts film fans and aspiring filmmakers, the folks over at JKHH Films have another new wicked test fight of their own called Squashed. Joseph Chai, Kent Lee Joon and Hazlan Shah can be seen in this short little gem about a squash court cleaner, who least expected to have to mop one more stain from his newly clean floor. Big mistake!
I’ve written about these guys before, and while they don’t focus a lot on acting, they love what they do and have as much fun as they can. It certainly shows as they continually prove they have a growing eye for cinematic fight design, and that’s certainly something I look forward to myself.
Here, director Said Chaou has his own fan-driven shortfilm take on the latest popular Ubisoft game, Watch Dogs, which is now available online. Nevermind that a feature film is already on the way, while fans and artists like Chaou are more than free to appeal to the gaming community through their own vision of a story centered on renegade hacker Aiden Pearce as he dispenses his own brand of vigilante justice in futuristic Chicago…or in this case, actor Michael Chan by way of Hong Kong. Sound good?
On a seperate note, actor and film critic Sean Tierney makes his guest appearance at the very top of the short. Feel free to check out his review corner over at The Silver Spleen, and make sure to subscribe to Zs Studios for more exciting content.
Actor and stuntman Emmanuel Manny Brown first came on my radar earlier this summer with a cool little experimental test fight short titled Coin Toss, with fellow performer Ari Loeb. Now, they have a new project floating around online titled Stuntmen, which you might say is a great step upward in their repetoire. Brown and Loeb are joined by David Armstrong, and actress Julia Maggio in a cute little story that features a well-crafted three way kung fu brawl illustrating great choreography, good camerawork and some nicely-timed comedy to boot. It’s a fun few minutes and well worth the time, so take a look!
Agent Odyssey is just one of those projects that take time to come to fruition being an indie production. It’s the latest short from independent filmmaker Shaun Charney, and while currently in the works, he’s decided to unveil a sweet action clip from it, wrapped in darkly-lit existentialism with a perpetual dash of screenfighting talent featuring stuntwomen Anna Ranoso and PeiPei Yuan.
Hopefully time will be on our side and we’ll soon get to see the full product. In the meantime, this little nugget should do for now.
…And speaking of Charney, you can also catch him in full ninja mode alongside actresses Ishida Sachiko and Ashley Short in the latest independent project from Wushu Shaolin Productions own Sal Redner, titled Wushu Warrior: Legend Of The Rogue Ninjas. The six-minute project is actually available on-demand through Vimeo for a buck, so feel free to check out the trailer below, and then CLICK HERE to browse the channel for more content.
And lastly, here are at least four of my favorites from a finalist line-up of eight thrilling new short films finalized in this year’s Prototype Film Contest hosted by Escapist Magazine. The finalists were awarded $20,000 to produce their own thrilling new action/sci-fi shorts, and the filmmaker, whose winning project will be announced on December 10, will be granted a chance to develop their short into a feature film for New Regency Pictures.
That said, while all the projects posted look very stellar, I mostly enjoyed the four you’re about to see below — A dystopian future where a privately-employed punching bag fights back, a lone warrior with questionable motives defends a helpless desert village against raiders, two women thrown into espionage with video technology and special armor as their only means of protection, and Elon James – a bounty hunter whose organic tortilla chips are something not to fuck with. The rest, of course is history (Personal Note: If at any point this year, you’ve ever watched the Showtime drama, Ray Donovan, you’re pretty much into James by now. Great acting on his part.)
Whipping Boy
Drakken
Hacked
The Liar’s Chair
Subscribe to these channels, and if you’re a filmmaker or a martial artist with a good quality action short or a test fight you would like to share, feel free to shoot me an email at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com.
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Lee B. Golden III
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
