THE HIT LIST – July 20, 2015

Well, I’m certainly proud after last night. I don’t get to have too many adventures with stunt professionals, but when I do, they’re all inarguably some of the most fun experiences I continue to have. I guess I can only hope to share those experiences with even more people I include in the weekly Hit List…for now though, distance and affordability are my disadvantages. But that doesn’t stop me from bringing the action where it is, so…

…let’s get this shindig started with a new playlist of stunt and action demo reels. The names here include Alfred Hsing, Bonnie Pisciotta, Janelle Beaudry, David Ausem, Michelle DeMond, Petra Sprecher, Alvin Hsing and Julien Briau.

I thought I’d advance things a bit with the inclusion of a couple of parkour videos this week since content is a bit low. Plus, sometimes I do include freerunning videos to spice things up seeing as how such a dynamic sport has much to do with how we view cinematic action. And this week, Ilya Semyonov, Will Sutton, and the freerunning talent in a new reel hosted by the Epic Metal Piece channel have it down packed!

It was back in March that Stunt 360’s own Jacob Sebastian Malm shared a trailer to showcase the names of talented martial artists enlisted in this Summer’s presentation of Giacmo Puccini’s Turandot at Bregenzer Festspiele in Austria. This month, we have a new highlight video featuring all of our talent hard at work behind the scenes and rehearsing, and to be honest though, I’ve never seen Turandot myself, so I’ve never been familiar with it until as of late, although considering what we’re seeing here, it looks like an exciting show we could all wrap our heads around.

Anyway, as you are about to see, one of the show’s key performers includes filmmaker and Martial Club creator Andy Le who himself has another video on his team channel featuring some more behind-the-scenes work, and this time with indepenedent action performer and member of Zero Gravity, Unlucky Stars star Ken Quitugua. Not much is being said about this project other than its title, The Challenger (I’m already sold), so there isn’t much to go by except for Le’s own insight and some of the exclusive footage Le is introducing to all of us. Check it all out now!

Also offering some extra behind-the-scenes goodies are on-set highlights from the production of Lunar Stunts Action Cinema’s Spring short film release, Tough Street. You can find it on their channel as of three months ago, while this week you can now observe just how director Eric Nguyen puts together action sequences and tells stories in the process. His channel is full of morsels and if you haven’t heard of him now, hopefully this will clue you in.

The fight action now ensues in several new test fights and shorts from here on out. Kicking things off is a new little gem from action actors Anthony Pho and Alex Levand and Shift Media’s latest action short -The Reveal with Craig Canning and Grant Steven.

The remaning three videos recapitulating this week’s Hit List are now here – a few of which you may be familar. The first is a new addition to the blog courtesy of Glasgow-based martial arts studio Hybrid Fight Academy who have experimented with cinematic action before. They always do solid work and moviegoers may even find some of their touch applied to filmmaker Christian Sesma’s forthcoming installment sequelizing the long-awaited release of one of his recent titles, Vigilante Diaries.

In the meantime, you can find their latest contribution to action cinema with their brand new short, Interrogation, principally featuring Hybrid fight instructor, actor, choreographer and director George Johnston.

Consider these latter two as honorable mentions, with the first coming from independent filmmaker Frank Hernandez in the form of the new action drama short, Heart, and Fabien Garcia’s newest hard-hitting epic piece of post-apocalyptic action fanlore, Drained World, which is now seeking funding from the public, as well as interested investors for a full webseries season. Click HERE and HERE for more info.