Wow, thanks CylonMATRIX and Pike, those were really good. What is most impressive is their stagecraft and choreography. Make no mistake, it is really easy to do a bad job at this and very hard to do a good job.
I took part in a stage fighting class for a show I was in high school. At first we thought it was going to be a lot of fun to swing swords around. The first class they let us simply handle the swords and fight each other. We thought we were badass as we sparred against each other, swinging swords and play punching each other. Halfway through they told us to stop and told us we were going to watch a video. Turns out, they were recording us and to our horror we saw what we looked like:
We looked ridiculous.
What we thought looked cool looked stupid. Our swings looked clumsy and an in the end we felt some shame and embarresment.
“That was lesson 1 folks. Take away? This is hard. Here is the kicker: in order to make it look easy and be safe you are are going to have to work really hard at this.”
Work hard we did. One hour after school for a month. In the end we were good, but as I look at those videos…damn, those guys are on a whole different level.