Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

Brave heart

Colin Handley

Meet Colin Handley, Hollywood’s ace stunt director who calls himself an action choreographer. Handley, who has worked on action sequences with Hollywood’s greats like Arnold Swazzanegger, Sylvester Stallone, Tommy Lee Jones and Van Damme, and also for the stunt scenes of popular English serials like Baywatch and Santa Barbara, was at Marwah Studios, Noida, to share his experience with the students of Asian Academy Of Film And Television. Expressing his happiness at the progress of Bollywood towards presenting more professional action, Handley, speaking to the students, cautioned that one should not expect Hollywood-like stunts yet from our Hindi filmmakers.

“Hollywood has been doing fighting scenes for more than 100 years whereas Bollywood has started it about 20 years ago. Action scenes are really good in Hindi films but the sound effects let it down,” he commented. A nine time Australian full contact taekwondo champion, Handley felt that Indian films “are gaining from collaborations with foreign production units.” For instance, he said his students were involved in the action scenes of the recently released Singh is Kinng.

“Krish, which was shot mostly in Hong Kong and Singapore, hired stunt actors locally, and Singh is Kinng, most of which was shot in Australia, also hired some people locally to do the stunts. They are my ex students,” he said. Handley, who started practicing taekwondo since the age of seven, is the principal of the Australian Stunt Academy, based on the country’s Gold Coast.

About some film stars doing their own stunts, he felt, “If they do their action themselves, the scenes will look more realistic and will produce good results, but the dangerous stunts should be avoided, because if the main character gets hurt, the whole unit will suffer.”

Handley who featured in one of Australia’s popular tele-shows, Neighbours, summed up saying, “Performing stunts requires a brave heart, mental alertness and above all specialised skills.”

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail