This was an outstanding interview! It was incredibly generous of Keoni Waxman to give such detailed, well thought-out answers. He could have just responded with a sentence or two, claiming to be too busy with his schedule, but the depth of his explanations was remarkable, very informative, and reflected what seemed to me to be a genuine affection and respect for Seagal.
That being said, DiDa deserves a huge thank-you for coming up with the idea and for taking the initiative -- brilliant! And the contributed questions and suggestions from some of the members here were excellent. All in all, it added up to an extraordinary discussion/interview.
I especially liked this paragraph of Mr. Waxman, which, for me anyway, explained quite well the reasons for the fast cuts and doubles. We have all noticed it, found it annoying at times, but I hope everyone really reads this and understands why it can happen. Well done!!
"Hollywood likes fast cuts because there aren’t really any more “real” martial artists (except the obvious guys) making action movies. Most of the guys now are actors who are doubled by stunt guys or are super heros who fight in costumes via CGI. It’s hard to compete with that when a lot of the audience has grown used to the fast cutting and massive VFX. That said – Steven still choreographs all his own action and (unless too dangerous) does his own fight sequences. Because it is the movies after all – we do use doubles for dangerous or more technical shots – but if you see a Seagal fight believe that he choreographed it and put a beat down on all the bad guys himself. One of the other reasons for a double (and therefor fast cutting) is because we have to move so fast on the shooting schedules these days. We used have about 25 days to make the films but it is now down to 20 to 18 days – it costs more to shoot so we don’t have enough time. As such we sometimes need to fill in the sequences on 2nd unit days – that’s why I work with Lauro Chartrand as my stunt coordinator. He’s a director as well so I can tell him what I need to finish a sequence and he can pick up the shot and I know it will cut in. In all we have been using my team from Canada for the past 6 years – we all know Steven’s style and know how to make the movies. I brought the entire team down for FOE which we shot in New Mexico instead of Vancouver this time."