Micah Brock’s short film “Johnny Owes”, featuring Dennis Ruel of The Stunt People, recently won the Action on Film Festival’s “Best Fight Choreography (short)” award. Micah’s hard-hitting style of choreography is reminiscent of Tony Jaa’s in “Ong Bak” and “The Protector” and undoubtedly made an impact on the judges when they handed down their decisions. The small-res version is embedded below, but Brock recommends the high definition download since it was shot in HD.
Johnny Owes – Martial Arts Action Short Film
http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=37105605,t=1,mt=video
Pretty cool short, but so many martial art shorts revolve around paying off money to some loan shark, and I’ve had this problem , too, when coming up with a plot for a short or feature, and then at that point, I just say, “fuck it”. Most people could care less about an action movie plot as long as the action is good, so why not at least attempt to make a plot interesting and fun and still have action?
I don’t know if this is due to the resolution or not, but the super high-contrasted look is actually pretty difficult to watch, especially for the outdoor scenes.
On the flipside, was a 35mm depth-of-field adapter used for this short? Some shots look great and have that shallow depth look (maybe the cinematographer just zoomed in to the longest lens on the HVX or whatever).
I am so sorry that I have say that, but that was simply awful. How could that win “best choreography” , what choreography?I didn´t see any. Than guy Johny Owes had made such a terrible performance as an actor and even as martial artist.Bad timing,choreography and everybody in the movie was awful. Even Dennis Ruel who is great did´t help that movie, it wasn´t in his power turn it into good fight, so terrible. As I said I am sorry and I do my apologize for my comment but as a fan of martial art movies I was disgusted.