Focusing on fight porn is making your fights boring

I posted a YouTube video this past week doing a deep dive into why so many fight scenes are boring.

To summarize, there are really two camps of people that absorb content with fight scenes.

People who like entertainment and stories, meaning general mass audiences, and people who love martial arts, which I call Fight Nerds. I am one, which is exactly how I know how tiny that audience is.

Fight Nerds get absolutely fixated on choreography. They get deeply offended when you mention that mass audiences couldn’t care less about intricate choreography, and instead crave fight scenes that they can attach to emotionally, which can only be achieved by context and great storytelling.

The comments on the video went off, and proved the point for me.

Fight Nerds make up a fractional amount of the people that watch things online or in films.

Most people who try to make cool fights are doing it from the perspective of trying to make the most intricate choreography they can imagine. And they put 100% of their focus into movement and karate. They’re basically unknowingly, or maybe knowingly, creating their fight scenes for other Fight Nerds.

Anyone who isn’t a Fight Nerd scrolls right past these videos once they realize they have no idea what this is actually about, which means they are scrolling right past hours, or days, of really hard work.

This isn’t a license to create shitty choreography.

The point is that amazing fight scenes, the ones you love and want to watch again and again, sit at the intersection of great story and setup, and creative choreography and gags.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to create things I love that move people. That make them want to share and talk about. The kind that stick with them for days or forever. This only happens when someone can emotionally resonate with what they’re seeing.

Everything else is forgettable.

And if you don’t learn this, you’re going to be making invisible work forever.

Caleb