How Creed’s Amazing One Take Fight Scene Was Shot
‘Creed’, the ‘Rocky’ spin-off that’s a million times better than it has any right to be, hits cinemas today and it features one of the best one-take scenes we’ve seen in a long time.
In it, Michael B Jordan’s Adonis Johnson (this is before he assumes his father’s name) takes on Leo ‘The Lion’ Sporino in a two-round boxing match that’s captured in one fluid take, without any cuts, also known in the industry as a “oner”.
Preparation for the scene required weeks of rehearsals as the film’s star reveals in our interview above.
“We prepped for that [scene] for nearly a month and some change,” says Jordan, “going over that choreography and really nailing it home. It was super-ambitious, I love ‘oners’, I think they’re a great tool to use in shooting a film. It really keeps the audience engaged.”
Last year’s ‘Birdman’ was conceived to be an entire one take movie, but it was actually achieved by stitching together lots of smaller extended sequences. For ‘Creed’ though, there was no trickery involved. The scene was all shot for real, with the filmmakers using the 10th take for the final film.
“We shot a bunch [of takes] before lunch,” explains director Ryan Coogler, “we kept blowing it. We’d blow a punch here, or we’d bump into the camera but eventually we started nailing it after lunch. We got 2 that were definitely useable.”
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“It was a lot of fun,” he adds, “We had a lot of extras around. I think it was really the day we gelled as a crew to be honest.”
Watch a clip from the scene below.
‘Creed’ is in cinemas now.
