Listen to this episode from Kung Fu Drive-In Podcast on Spotify. Capoeira practitioner, fight coordinator, stuntman, filmmaker LOYD BATEMAN joins the show fresh off of Season One of Marvel's LOKI! Loyd served as the fight coordinator for the series and talks with me about designing action for an Asgardian god as he skips through time. Also, we go into his study of the brazilian martial art of capoeira and how it prepared him for the stunt life. Plus some incredible insights into the preparation of some of Loki's actors before they yell ACTION!
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Approx: 9 - 10:30mins
‘Tom Hiddleston has a great affinity for kind of the bull fighter, very stoic, tall, reaching, almost balletic style. And that speaks very much to him, and how his character and personality are as Loki. And so we built a lot of his stuff off of that. Had a lot of fun with him, you know, exaggerating his movements and flowing. We did some sequences as drills for him obviously using the blades, but for the most part it was about him try to be very graceful, and have Sylvie be... more of a street fighter, because she never lived the God life, she was always hiding, she was always on the run. He comes from this place of grace, and she doesn’t.’
25:10 How was [Tom’s] movement in terms of coordinating him?
‘He is very coordinated. He learns very quickly. And he drills. He is not afraid to do it a thousand times. And he’ll go slow and move through it. Frankly Sophia, she’d be done, like, totally cooked, and he’s like, ‘Just a few more’, and she’s be like, ‘Oh my God! I can’t do anymore of these!’ He will just keep going and going. He has an amazing amount of stamina. In fact, before every take of everything, he’ll do like twenty squats, ten push-ups, and sprint 100 metres back and forth, and then do the take. Every time. All day long he’s sprinting and running.’
Wait. Seriously?
‘Seriously! All day. And i’m not just talking about on the fight days. He does it on the regular acting days too... It’s pretty crazy. He’s massively strong, and tons of stamina. It’s great.
It must be nice to have an actor that is willing to put in that effort, and go beyond, to really bring the action you’re designing to life, ‘cause it makes it so much more appreciable, as a fan.
‘Absolutely. You can do so much more with them, because they’re in it, it’s their face the whole time. You get actors who are just. ‘palm it off to second unit, let the double do it’. And it’s really annoying... So it’s pretty great. He put in a ton of work. So did Sophia by the way. She worked her butt off, and, when we started the show she had just had a baby a month prior. And she’d never trained martial arts of any kind in her life, so she was fresh.’