Comedy - Ninja Beach

DESCRIPTION:

Ninja Death Warrior is on the hunt. His first victim will be our beloved Karate hero, "Sensei Bob". His strategy is to disable Bob's most dangerous weapon, his ultimate right arm of power. However, Bob does not plan on being the victim in this war.

Original Title - Random Ninja Attacks With An Armbar
Production Date - September 2009.

CREDITS:

Shot, Cut & Directed By Ryan Golding
Music By Jason Fyfe
Produced By Amrit Singh, Kyle Strohack, Ryan Dhanraj & Ryan Golding
Special Thanks To Dalewood Productions

This video is uploaded in Ninjavision "High Definition" "HD".

Video filmed with the Canon 5D Mark II camera.

Jay's Channel: http://www.youtube.com/crazycat1984

BLOG NOTES:

Ninja Beach seems to be the weakest of our Random Ninja Attacks episodes. We had many planned, but at this point it is uncertain if we are going to continue with the comedy series, as we are looking to get more into "How-To" videos. None the less, it would be fun to do some more of these videos on and off. This was the first of the RNA episodes, and was only really meant to be the debut of Black Ninja Death Warrior. So we stuck with something simplistic.

Basically Kyle (Sensei Bob), sits meditating when he senses the presence of a Ninja. Of course this shouldn't be possible as Ninja have been extinct for many years. Originally Bob was going to say something along these lines but we just kept it simple by saying "It shouldn't be possible". This whole idea was actually to spoof a Chuck Norris film called Octagon, where throughout the earlier portions of the film, Chuck senses things as we hear whispers going on in his mind. He is rather shocked to sense the presence of Ninja. He does away with them all anyhow, much like his biggest fan, Sensei Bob Wokowski.

Anyways, we went to Picton Ontario for the filming of this particular video. The area has some of the nicest looking beaches in Ontario. The water is actually blue (Usually we have greenish or brown water here), and the sand actually feels and looks like sand (Usually it's more like mud). The trees themselves almost seem tropical. I'm sure one would be surprised while watching if they knew that the beach we used was in Canada.

We went on a Wednesday in September, and left at 5am or so. Our goal was to get the entire beach for ourselves, and logically it seemed very possible as summer vacation had ended, kids were back to school, families were no longer camping, and people were at work due to it being a weekday. Nothing ever goes that simple though, and surely enough, the beach started filling fast. We worked around it though and managed to pull off a deserted kind of feel.

This was actually the second episode of 3 and a half that we filmed that day. We tried to hide ourselves up in the trees, as by this point the beaches were loaded with people. Anyone walking by seemed to get a good laugh out of our mustache Karate master and full uniformed Ninja. Several people seemed to plop themselves down directly in front of our position on the beach just so they could look on and watch our madness take place. Amrit (Black Ninja Death Warrior), felt the pressure, and managed to screw up in a fantastic way several times. After peaking from behind a tree, he charged out Ninja style, dashing through the bushes and around the roots in the ground. What seemed like a perfect Ninja attack all went downhill when he tripped at full speed and began rolling along the ground, much to the delight of the spectators on the beach. It happened twice, but we finally got it.

Originally Bob and the Ninja were supposed to struggle a lot longer in the arm bar position, but when the edit was done, it simply wasn't working. It seemed to drag, as grappling moves onscreen tend to do, and lost the high pace it had in the buildup. So I cut it down a bit and went right to Bob pulling the Ninja up and punching him off. I think the best thing about this particular video was the Ninja vanishing act at the end. I started off with just a sand cloud vanish, but it seemed to lack something and wasn't quite working how I envisioned it. So I cropped out a still picture of the Ninja that we shot in studio weeks earlier, and composed it in the frame, darkening and blurring it, and then animating it quickly off the screen. This made for a far cooler effect, if you watch closely you can see the Ninja making his flying getaway, as fast as the speed of light. Why he doesn't use these skills when fighting Bob is beyond me. Bob would probably win either or.

Overall it was a fun video to put together, the lighting and location were beautiful, the weather was great, the choreography of the action sequence went quite well with exception to the Ninja back roll after being punched - Amrit himself was unhappy with this as it looked sloppy, but the fact of the matter is he was just getting back into onscreen fighting after 8 years of being away from it. Being rusty is expected, and ultimately it worked better for the video since it's supposed to be cheesy comedy. It's also why I decided to make the Ninja very loud with his running and screaming, completely giving away his position. He's not exactly the most experienced Ninja out there... Then again, when are movie Ninja ever that good? Usually the lead characters in movies manage to destroy whole armies of Ninja.

The production value of the video I felt went well, I loved the lighting and the very sharp details of the location. I screwed up with eye-line when Bob and Ninja are having their stare down, screwed up the 180 degree film rule that is, where in order to keep direction proper the camera should always be positioned on one half side of a full circle around the focus of the shot, only to be broken if a dolly or pan over to the other side, or cutaway to another object and return takes place. I managed to fix this in the re-issue of this video, seen within "The Expert Martial Artist Series Episode 5" which can be found on our channel as well. It only took a simple flop of the Ninja close-up shot. For whatever reason this idea didn't come to mind when putting together this video the first time around as a standalone. I don't think anyone will really notice much though.

Ophion Digital
http://www.youtube.com/ophiondigital