Robin Hood New Movie

During June 2009 I had the pleasure of working on the latest Robin Hood film down on the southern welsh coast of Freshwater bay starring Russell Crowe and directed by the legend Ridley Scott (Aliens/Kingdom of heaven/Gladiator many more).


I was asked to be part of the 30-man combat stunt team and was also asked to be part of the command team. From the very start we had a mind set of keeping the team in a military mind at all times on the film set- for example; Marching in line and forming up in ranks when travelling from one location to the next. Once we hit the set after 6 hours of travelling and winding each other up we got our costumes fitted and went through some basic boot camp training in the belting down sun!


The initial training was just so the stunt team and our team could work together and know the same basic moves. The training was very similar to the knife-stick numbered cuts that we have trained with in tactical edge with cuts angled at the neck and legs using sword or sword and shield. Then we moved on to our reactions and taking hits falling over onto crash mats which was a laugh- some of our teams “death screams” cracked us up!


The actual fight scenes where huge roughly 400 extras beating the hell out of each other and 30 of us doing our fight chorography in the middle of it all, we spilt into teams of two so we could come up with our own fights so we all had something different to show. Our first day filming was forming up a shield wall with the stunt team while receiving a cavalry charge from 140 horses! It was quite a way to wake up on your first full day. We did this from various angles and with different starts and endings for most of the day.


For the rest of the time we did various scenes involving the French Normans invading the English coast, so we had there huge Norman landing crafts custom built for the film. Fighting in the sea is a new experience for me and fighting beside Russell Crowe and being so close and being able to see how they put the scenes together was amazing. In my fight scenes I was often close to any number of cameras so I was always aware of not slacking at anytime with my work! I didn’t want to be that guy you see at the corner of the screen having a laugh with his mates during a battle scene!

The training I’ve done in the past and the training with Krav Maga and Tactical Edge really came into use during the battle scenes, you never knew quite how long a take was going to last so often you had to continue a fight with the next random person beside you wearing the enemy colours- I found myself facing off against 5 extras armed with spears and all running straight at me! Thankfully I had a shield so I could use it to deflect a couple of stabs and charge into the group and take them out. I remember charging and dodging random horseman chopping at my head and tripping up extras and taking them out safely using very similar takedowns I learned in Krav Maga and Tactical Edge. During a few scenes I was disarmed and tackled my opponent to the ground and we grappled in the sand – to keep the scene real and flowing I grabbed his helmet that had fallen off and started to smash it into his face- or so it looked anyway. I found using the neck twists with the chain mail coifs (head gear) was a good adaption of the Tactical Edge techniques!


I had an amazing time and was very proud to be a part of the film and part of the team. All in all I learnt a lot while working on the film and I saw new ways to utilize my martial skills. Film due out 12th May 2010!

Craig.