How do you sell a martial arts movie that isn't finished yet?

Show the fights

A martial arts film project about a ninja clan needed a promo to raise money and bring in distributors and cast, before the effects were done and before the world of the film existed

I produced and directed the promo

Title art first

It opens on the masked warrior artwork and the logo against black, the promise of the film, dark and simple

Then it does something most promos are too scared to do, it shows the raw material

The green screen stage

Black clad fighters with swords, flips, strikes, full contact choreography, all on a green screen stage

Here is the deal, green screen fight footage gets shot wide and clean on purpose, every limb in frame, so the effects team can drop the fighters into any world later

A cropped kick is a dead kick, you can't composite what you didn't shoot

So it's the opposite of a finished movie, no fancy angles, no shaky cam, just the move, the whole move, hit after hit

Lighting the green evenly matters as much as the kick. A shadow on the screen behind a fighter is a hole in the composite later, and a hole costs the effects team a day to paint out

Why show unfinished footage?

Because investors and distributors aren't buying the effects, they can buy effects anywhere. They're buying the fighters, the choreography, whether the action is real

Would you fund a fight movie without seeing anybody fight? me neither

Choreography is a schedule

Full contact on a stage means safety, rehearsal, resets, the same move again and again until it lands clean in camera, and everybody tired by the afternoon

The producer has to protect the people as much as the shot

Producer and camera, one person

When the producer is behind the lens there's no back and forth about a kick that clipped the frame, I see it in the viewfinder, we reset, they go again

More promos are in the Promo gallery, and how I direct movement on my fashion sets in the Behind The Scenes gallery

No effects yet, all fight

Length: 1 min 18 s · Producer & director: David Victory, VRSET video production, Los Angeles & Orange County

Key moments

  • 0:00 Opening credits
  • 0:09 Masked warrior artwork
  • 0:22 Title
  • 0:29 Sword work on green screen
  • 0:42 Fight choreography
  • 0:55 Two-fighter sequence
  • 1:01 Full-contact strike
  • 1:14 Final move

See the matching photography in the Promo gallery.

More videos

The full video library

Also on our YouTube channel.

Planning a video or a fashion shoot? Contact David Victory or call (310) 988-6575 in Los Angeles, (949) 873-4551 in Orange County. Free consultation and quote for first-time clients.