The next step involves taking out the person doing the hitting and bringing back the person about to be hit. As Warren explained, this step allows for the body on the receiving end of the blow to actually react physically, as if the blow were real:
“Then you remove that person, and you swap. You say to the person (about to be hit), ‘Do not react. Do not try to sell this punch. Just be ready for the character that you are.’ I take this pad — it’s a very soft, square pad — and you jam it at them. You hit them for real. Anybody — a girl, a guy, a child. It doesn’t matter because it’s basically a glorified pillow fight. It’ll look like a UFC fighter getting hit in the face, and trying to keep their composure. It’s wild.”
Then comes the final steps of the process. Liman, Warren, and the crew would film a slow-motion take with the stars performing the fight at reduced speed. “Like when you were a kid,” Gyllenhaal added for the sake of comparison. This is then followed by a “clean pass,” meaning a shot with no one in it just to get the scenery. At last, all the different layers from these various shots are stitched together. The red rectangular pad is removed and the final shot is a composite of everything that was filmed.
Composite shots are nothing new, as they’ve been employed by filmmakers for decades. It’s how Michael Keaton played many different versions of himself in “Multiplicity,” for example. But this is a rather inventive way of employing multiple versions of a shot to stitch together a satisfying version of a fight scene.
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