Interview with ‘Duty - Out of Line’ Filmmaker Felix Fukuyoshi Ruwwe

Images courtesy of Felix Fukuyoshi Ruwwe

Felix Fukuyoshi Ruwwe is a filmmaker, martial artist, actor from Germany. He wrote, directed, produced, edited and did the cinematography for the martial arts short film Duty - Out of Line, starring himself, Julia Schunevitsch and Khoi Chau. Duty - Out of Line was screened at Fighting Spirit Film Festival 2021 and won the Audience Choice Award.

Describe yourself in three fictional characters.

Images courtesy of Felix Fukuyoshi Ruwwe

Vegata, Optimus Prime, Peter Pan

Can you tell us about your martial arts background? 

I started with Taekwondo when I was seven years old and did it for about seven years. My family then moved to my grandparents’ house and I had to stop Taekwondo. About 3 years later after I graduated from middle school, we moved back to our old hometown and I started Shaolin Kung Fu, with my brother. The school freshly opened under a Shaolin Master from the Shaolin Temple in China. I practiced it for around six years, while I also did my high school degree via home distance learning. For quite a while I was also teaching Shaolin Kung Fu at our school. After I got my high school degree in 2010, I went to China to take up Wushu as a university major.   

Can you tell us about studying Chinese Traditional Sports at the Beijing Capital Institute of Physical Education and Sports? 

I enrolled at the university in 2010. The first year was just a language year to obtain a certain level of Chinese language proficiency which was a prerequisite in order to start the undergraduate programme in Wushu or Traditional Chinese Minority Sport which is the official title for the major.

Together with a colleague from Mexico, we were the only foreigners in a class of 23 Chinese students. The courses were all in Chinese and you can imagine how hard it was to follow along in class only after one year of language studies. I would have to invest many extra hours just to learn new vocabulary that I encountered in every lesson. My Chinese improved quickly though and the following 3 years got gradually easier in terms of my language comprehension. The theoretical classes ranged from sports physiology, TCM basics to sports anatomy, history and theory of Wushu and of course all the physical classes in Wushu and many competitive sports such as football or basketball. I was also part of the schools’ representative Wushu team which was a great honor given the fact that I was a foreigner. With the team I was part of stage shows and took part in many competitions.

My greatest achievement was winning two silver medals at the World Wushu championship in Henan in 2013. I graduated in 2015 but would still return for the next 2 years just to improve my Chinese and Wushu. I didn’t become a Wushu or sports teacher after graduation like most of my classmates, but stepped into the film business instead. Truth is, the certificate of graduation along with all the knowledge I’ve accumulated weren’t exactly a booster in my career path as a filmmaker.

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At the end of my studies my Chinese language teacher even told me I should have gone to the Beijing Film Academy instead which was also just around the corner of my uni. She was definitely only trying to push me into what she believed was a more ‘prosperous’ career direction. Actually I believe 98% of Chinese parents would put their kids in a film uni (a very prestigious one too) instead of a sports uni if they had the choice. But I can say, going to ‘Shouti’ (Short for Shou Du Ti Yu Xue Yuan) was the right decision and I’ve never regretted it. It was one of the biggest adventures and happiest times of my life and I have made lots of good friends and precious experience along the way. Plus, my filmmaking career is coming along quite nicely despite my Wushu degree. 😁               

Can you talk to us about being a fight choreographer? How do you prepare for a film or TV show as a fight choreographer? How do you work together with the director?

Choreography needs to be in accordance with the story, style of fighting, location, characters and lastly the skills of the actors. There is always a frame work that needs to be filled with choreography. It restricts you, but in a good way. You have to be creative within a certain fixed structure.

In Commando 3 my brother Lorenz and I choreographed our own climactic fight against Vidyut Jammwal. Andy Long the action director of the movie knew what we were capable of and he entrusted us with the choreography. The finale took place in a hotel lobby which we scouted in advance to see how much space there is and what surrounding objects can be incorporated into the fight.

First choreo ideas are thrown around and being tested at this stage. We then come up with a general structure of the fight scene, like initial phases, middle parts, and finale. On professional sets the choreography itself usually takes place at a training facility and not at the shooting location itself. We try to replicate the dimensions and objects of the original sets often using cardboard boxes and all sorts of dummy objects. We then choreograph each and every movement, focusing on rhythm, tempo, length, style, cut points and camera angles as well. As you can see there’s plenty of factors to be considered during the process of choreography, more than I have mentioned here.

For the choreography itself the actors are usually not present. Once the whole fight is choreographed they are called in and we guide them through each step. In case of Commando 3, Vidyut Jammwal could handle the choreography fairly well. Being aware of his skillset we could go for more intricate and advanced movements which we all were very happy about.

Creating good action requires skilled fighters. You can only conceal the lack of skills with the help of camera tricks and editing to a certain point until it just turns into a messy cut frenzy. Once the choreography is done the action director would look over it and do some tweaking if needed. We then start training and rehearsing the movements. In the case of Commando 3 we only had one day to practice with Vidyut Jammwal and just two nights to film the whole thing. It was madness.

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Unfortunately productions tend to underestimate the time needed to produce high quality action. Often times it’s also a matter of budget and availability of locations etc. As a comparison: The bathroom fight in Mission Impossible 4 took 6 weeks to complete. Even Jackie Chan spends several months just for the fight scenes. At this point we can only dream of such luxuries!

One other issue to point out is that no matter how well the fight is choreographed it needs proper camera angles and editing to make it work. If I’m the choreographer I would always plan the angles and cut points in order to sell the choreography in the best way possible. This will also ensure to make the actors and actresses look good on screen. Sometimes the wrong camera angle and editing can ruin the otherwise solid choreography. That is why we would often film the choreography with the intended angles and cuts prior to the actual filming. We call this a previsualization or previz. This will give the director an understanding of how the final fight scene could look like. Some will stick to the previz some won’t. It happened a few times where the team and I have no control over the action apart from the choreography. Sadly many directors and DPs will not have an in depth understanding on how to film the fight scene properly and it will end in a poor result.                                                                                       

Can you tell us about your first experience with filmmaking?

Me and my older brother started in early 2001 to film little martial arts fights in our backyard. We didn’t just pick up a camera and started filming though. There were two sources that served as inspiration: The first one was our first Jackie Chan movie that we ever watched: Shanghai Noon. We watched that on a tiny tv on a plane ride (back then no one had their own private LCD screens in the front seat).

The second source of inspiration were ‘The Stunt People’, one of the very first independent group of martial arts filmmakers from the US. We had just gotten an internet connection in our house and YouTube didn’t even exist. So you could count the groups of martial arts filmmakers on one hand. When we saw Eric Jacobus and his peeps basically do what we saw the great stars of the Hong Kong action cinema do on the big screen we were hooked.

We went out and bought our first analog VHS-C Camcorder (we sold hand painted pictures from house to house to get the money) and we shot our first little movie called ‘First Contact’. No camera man, (we literally used a music stand as a tripod), no clue about 180 degree rule, no nothing. But we loved it. We probably watched the final cut around 50 times. When we started out we actually sent Eric Jacobus our work and he gave us very valuable feedback.

For early short films we would also ‘use’ our mom to operate the camera. I remember how we were shouting at her for not getting the shots right Nonetheless she said that going out with us filming was one of her nicest memories. The good thing is that me and my brother immediately harmonized so well with the choreography. That’s because we had the same martial arts background and just the fact that we were brothers helped a lot. We came up with a name for our group calling ourselves ‘The Young Masters’. The rest is just history. 😁

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How did the story of Duty - Out of Line come about? 

I initially wanted to film it together with my brother but he had to go on a stunt job for a while so I had to come up with an alternative. In independent productions with limited budget we always have to work with the resources that are available. There’s a lot of reverse-engineering going on. Often you write the story around the people and locations that are available. The story evolves as you go along planning things. I drove around Berlin at night scouting for a suitable location. At this point I had a general idea of what I was looking for. Some sort of alley. That’s all. I knew that I wanted the movie to happen at night, so I also brought along some LED panels to do some on the spot lighting tests. While I was at the location some more ideas popped into my head and wrote them into the script.

One incident that impacted the whole planning process was that I suffered from a facial paralysis (Bell’s Palsy) a couple of month before the shooting. It came out of nowhere and causes could not be identified. For a few months, the right side of my face was just hanging down and recovery went extremely slow. Of course I couldn’t step in front of the camera looking like that so I designed my character to be a masked killer. I also had massive hip issues during that time and this impacted my martial arts performance quite a bit. I took a lot of pain killers during the shoots. Some might be able to tell that my kicks looked pretty crappy compared to what they used to be. By the way I underwent surgery last year the hip is like new now. I’m really happy about it. Anyways, under those circumstances it was actually a little miracle that I still pulled the movie off. This showed me again that there’s almost never an excuse to not do something. There’s almost always a way around it. You just got to have a fighting spirit!    

Can you tell us about the writing process for Duty - Out of Line?

Most of the story was created through reverse-engineering. The type of action scene I want to create is often times the driving force or framework that would dictate the story. I wanted some sort of ‘protect a person while she has to fend off an attacker’ – type of fight scene concept. I worked from there. I created a conflict around this idea. Find a reason for having to protect the person. Who could be the person that needs to be saved, who could be the hero/attacker. That’s of course is all limited by who I am casting as the characters. And that again is limited by who is skilled enough and interested in the project of course. So many factors that impact the outcome as you can see! But me and my brother have worked like this since we started making movies so I guess we’ve just gotten used at working with given limited resources and make the best out of it.               

One of the biggest themes in Duty - Out of Line was sexism, can you tell us how you wrote the dialogue? What made you choose to write about a serious topic in a comedic way? 

To be honest I didn’t shoot the movie because I specifically wanted to work on the subject of sexism. I was simply looking for a comedic element to balance out the fighting parts and of course to have a reason to include the three way fight scene. I could just imagine the sexist theme to work well with the given character constellation and that it would bring a nice additional conflict into the whole mix. After all conflict is what propels the story! The dialogue pretty much comes naturally once you have a clear picture of the character. The characters will just start talking to you and you just got to write it down.      

Duty - Out of Line is described as a Hong Kong 80s style martial arts film, what were your cinematic inspirations for Duty - Out of Line? 

Growing up with Hong Kong action cinema the influence it had on this movie is evident. I took some inspiration from the movie ‘In the Line of Duty 4’ starring Cynthia Khan and Donnie Yen in terms of characters, overall look, obviously the title (The Chinese title is Te Gong Shuai Jie which is not a direct translation of the English title, but it literally means ‘handsome sister special agent’. Even the Chinese title for In the Line of Duty 4 has a completely different meaning than the English title. That’s mainly because those Chinese titles sound ridiculous if one would just go and translate them word for word.) and to a bigger extent the music.

Images courtesy of Felix Fukuyoshi Ruwwe

In my opinion, In The Line of Duty 4 features one of the best fight action soundtrack so I took the final piece as direct reference to use in composing the music for our movie (done exceptionally by none other than Garth Knight who some of you might know). I think overall there’s also a good portion of Hong Kong cheesiness seeping in which is just to blame on the massive intake of those movies over the years, haha. 

Can you tell us about the stunts and action sequences in Duty - Out of Line and how you collaborated with Andreas Nguyen, the stunt coordinator on the stunts?

This movie is an Andy Long Stunt team production at its core as I brought many of the 1st generation members on board. Andy Long founded his stunt team during the production of his first feature film ‘Kung Fu Warrior’ (available on Amazon Prime!) in Vietnam in 2016. He brought me, my brother, Andy and Brian Le from Martial Club, Du Au, Khoi Chau and Markus Ketterer on board to star in the movie as villains, help with the choreography and perform duties as camera operators for the action scenes.

For my movie Andy offered his help which I gladly accepted. Andy, who knows every aspect of martial arts filmmaking is as skilled as it can get. His versatile skill set made the shoot so much easier and he just lend a hand for whatever had to be done. I could not have made the movie without his support!        

Can you tell us about what it was like working with Julia Schunevitsch and Khoi Chau on Duty - Out of Line?

This marked the second time collaborating with stuntwoman/martial artist Julia Schunevitsch who did a brilliant job. We were going for an old school style of fighting including animal styles and Julia could adapt really well to it - thanks to her background in traditional martial arts and dance. I was happy to see her active engagement during the whole production of the movie. She was especially critical and meticulous about her own performance. She would tirelessly perform takes over and over again until it was perfect. She would also prepare for certain moves and stunts in advance and practice them prior to the shoot. Since we’re both pretty demanding about the quality of our work we could complement one another very well. Aiming for a common goal and having the same motivation within the team is crucial for creating quality work.          

I've known Khoi from when we were filming Luc Van Tien aka Kung Fu Warrior in Vietnam and always thought he has a great talent for acting. He stepped back from doing screenfighting a while ago and although it seems like he's not doing much during the fight, his experience in timing and coordination were vital to make the choreography work. I was very happy with his overall performance. 😁

What was your favourite part of the final film?

I think the 3-way-fight section turned out nice. It was more challenging in terms of choreography and it was just fun to create. 

What was the best feedback you received for Duty - Out of Line?

Most viewers thought it was a great throwback to the golden days of Hong Kong action cinema which made me very happy to hear.  

How has your experience been with Fighting Spirit Film Festival?

My experience has been very positive from beginning to end. This festival stuck out as the one with the best support and personal interaction with the filmmakers. Although I couldn’t attend personally, the feedback I got from Julia was very positive. Luckily, she currently lives in London, so she could personally be present at the festival. I really appreciate the follow up interviews with the filmmakers as well, that’s something only a few festivals out there do!

Speed Round. Pick one film for each category.

What is your favourite film from your childhood?

The Lion King

What is your favourite film from your favourite filmmaker? 

Leon the Professional

What is your favourite film from last year?

My Name 

What is the best film made from the last five years?

Mr. Long

Which cinematic universe would you like to live in? (e.g. The Grand Budapest Hotel, X-Men, MCU)

Avatar

Images courtesy of Felix Fukuyoshi Ruwwe

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