00:00Hello, I'm Henry Cavill, and I'm going to break down a scene from the show, The Witcher, shot by shot.
00:14Where's Renfri?
00:15She's at the tower with your little friend.
00:18Right here, Geralt is into Blaviken looking for someone called Renfri, or Shrike, as you may know her from the
00:23books, if you're a fan of the books.
00:25Her gang has been laying in wait for me.
00:33This shot was designed by Wolfgang Stegemann, a stunt coordinator and a fight coordinator.
00:43What makes a Witcher and Geralt very, very special is the ability to deflect an arrow in mid-flight, or
00:50in this case, a crossbow bolt.
00:52We wanted to make it unique in a way, and Wolfgang's idea of the camera circle round the crossbowman allows
00:58the audience to feel that moment like the bolt was truly going to hit him.
01:08I'm blocking this stunt performer's sword blow with nothing, essentially.
01:13We often use cut-off swords for particularly complex or technical pieces, or pieces which may be very, very dangerous.
01:19This sword is actually half-length.
01:21With the half-length, it allows for a lot more moves to be done, which involve blood and gore.
01:28The difficulty is, we all have to perform like the sword is full-length rather than half-length.
01:33When you're moving at full speed, and your adrenaline's up, and you're doing take after take after take, sometimes that
01:39can be tricky.
01:44So the cameraman cannot see where he is going, apart from through memory, and with someone, a guiding hand behind
01:49him, so he doesn't run into a wall and injure himself.
01:51And also, he has to stay out of the way of all of us.
01:53If you can see in this particular freeze frame, if that stuntman doesn't move in the perfect way, the operator
01:59gets a wooden pole in the eye.
02:08It's all done in one take.
02:10There was another option, which we had, which was a different cut, where we shot different angles at different times,
02:15and that's slightly easier to shoot.
02:17You can do three or four movements in a segment, and then you stop.
02:20The problem with a one-shot scene is that if any bit slows down or anything doesn't work perfectly, it
02:28ruins the whole scene.
02:29And so you have to keep on going back and doing it again, and again, and again, until you get
02:33it right.
02:33There's no time for mistakes. There's no space for mistakes.
02:41Even here, this is still a cut-off sword. Because we did this all in one shot, the sword had
02:46to be cut off throughout.
03:00It's not just as simple as shooting someone moving around. There's so many different moving parts.
03:05Even if I did my performance perfect every time, and I remembered every single move, and every single move looked
03:10real, the camera may have been in a slightly different position.
03:13Or one of the stuntmen may have moved slightly off his mark, or to the left, to the right, and
03:18so a strike looks like it misses, or it doesn't work.
03:20Now that Geralt has walked through all these men, Renfri comes back into town with Geralt's young friend, Marulka, and
03:27that was essentially her family, and so she decides to go to town and try and take Geralt out.
03:35If we cross swords, I won't be able to stop.
03:41Emma Appleton, who plays Renfri, trained relentlessly. She trained for the full, I believe it was three or four weeks.
03:49She was in there every day for hours on end. Training with her team, there was only so much one
03:53can do to actually build up to a fight which was this technical.
03:57And so I had the great fortune of working with probably the best stunt performer I've ever actually performed with,
04:04and that was Lucy Cork.
04:06Her viper-like actions were exactly what Shrike or Renfri is described like in the books.
04:20Our strikes were exact, or at least looked exact.
04:24We were moving less than an inch away from each other's heads, she had to move just enough, and I
04:29had to make sure that I was close enough.
04:31So if I was making a downward strike, I have to redirect my sword so it does end up being
04:36less than an inch away from her head when it misses.
04:38It's a true dance and requires a lot of patience and a lot of skill.
04:42They created me just as they created you.
04:45We're not so different.
04:51Wolfgang and I really wanted to make sure that the story was told through the fight.
04:56It's not just a random fight of people swinging swords at each other.
04:59These are two people in a dance, and through that dance, a story is told.
05:04Renfri was very much the aggressor, and Geralt is on the defensive.
05:08Right up until...
05:24Within four moves, she is completely defeated, and then Geralt stands back and gives her the space.
05:32He allows her one last chance.
05:34Walk away from Blaviken, forget, and you won't be a monster.
05:36And instead...
05:52As much as he hates the idea of it, he's not going to lose his own life in the process
05:56of someone who's determined to die.
06:01I hope you enjoyed.
06:02I hope it wasn't too detailed.
06:03I tend to get a little excited about these things.
06:05But you can see it for real with the rest of the story on The Witcher on Netflix.
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