I recently had the chance to briefly speak to Joey Min, and Jon Truei, who, aside from their current careers, are also oft-partners in independent action filmmaking. Earlier this month, Min uploaded a fight scene clipped from a previously unfinished project with martial arts stunt performer, David Crosby, called No Way Out. The clip was originally shot in 2008 and uploaded a year later and features some truly fast paced, violent Hong Kong stylized choreography set in open field, featuring swordplay, knife fighting, and ultimately, feats of Wing Chun and Tae Kwon Do, from Joey and David, respectively.
The scene also features an intense soundtrack adding a sense of underlying drama to a clip that looks like its part of a much longer story. And in my opinion, it should have been. Joey is a 20-year practitioner of Shaolin Kung Fu, along with some training in Hyakkuken and Kyokushin Karate. His eight years of professional filmmaking after high school lend him much deserved credit as an action performer, as well as choreographer and director. Combined with David’s talents, in addition to Jon’s own training in Kung Fu, along with 5 years of Tae Kwon Do coupled with his 9 years of experience of independent filmwork, the following clip, although several years old, is exemplary of just how much true fans who love the action genre can generate quality product.
The description comes straight from Joey’s old YouTube account for his stunt filmmaking group, Team FistyleZ:
Hey everyone, I haven’t updated on here since…2006, my bad. Well, let’s just say career paths changes and work got in the way of what we really like to do sometimes. So this was a project that we did last year but we never got to finish it, so I figured I’d show everyone the fight scene at least. We’ve always done a happy non serious fight but this time around, we tried to incorporate more of a dramatic feel by making the choreography a little more gritty and bloody than our usual upbeat fight scenes, and adding a blue tint to the video making it look washed out.Other things: I tried to make a more cinematic fight with the swords without losing much of the style. A few liberties were taken like having the sliding blocks not actually slide and the fact that we fought with swords to a more HK-styled choreography but over all I was happy with the sword section. Also, those are swords made for the movies, that being they are made with aluminum alloy so they can get banged up over and over again, but never break. They’re real swords, full metal and all, just not sharp. Thanks to Mario Perez, he’s the one that gave me those swords. The knives part has to be my favorite. We both learned contemporary knife fighting techniques from Frank Crosby, so that was my tribute to him. I mixed both traditional Kung Fu techniques with his teachings to make the knife part really memorable to me. Of course, the hand to hand combat is always fun to shoot. Once again, I take up a more kung fu style but this time, I focused on using Wing Chun and tried applying it to a more contemporary/modern style of fighting. My friend is an excellent Tae Kwon Do stylist as his kicks and technique look very crisp during this fight. So I hope you guys enjoy the Wing Chun vs. Tae Kwon Do hand to hand fight.Please enjoy. I hope that we’ll be making more to upload in the future.
Enjoy!
Don’t forget to subscribe to Joey Min’s new YouTube channel where the NWO fight clip was also re-uploaded. You can also view some of Jon Truei’s previous work here, and contact him on Facebook as well.
I sent David Crosby a friend request recently so maybe I will get to learn a little more about him in the near future, with his background in martial arts and his career goals. But not before I make good with my other commitments, lol.