Supernatural's Fight Scenes Were Excruciating; Misha Collins Can Attest to That
Misha Collins revealed that Castiel's fight scenes are much more fluid and seamless on screen than they actually were on set.
Supernatural has become a global cultural phenomenon with a huge fan base.
Thanks to the dedication of its fans, the dark fantasy series, which follows brothers Sam and Dean Winchester as they hunt demons, ghosts, monsters and other supernatural creatures, has run for 15 seasons and 327 episodes with consistently high ratings.
The incredible chemistry between the cast and exciting guest appearances helped to keep people interested in the show.
Misha Collins ' Castiel started out as one of those guest appearances, but by Season 4 he had become one of the show's most popular regular characters. Castiel, aka Cass, is a powerful, impulsive and somewhat naive angel, lacking emotion, empathy and understanding of human behaviour, which often provides comic relief. Moreover, the angel also has a considerable amount of fight scenes in the series.
According to Misha Collins, such scenes can be extremely hard to film.
The actor told PopSugar at Comic-Con that few fans actually realize how technical the job of the Supernatural cast can be. Collins explained that any fluid fight we see on the screen tends to be divided into the smallest scenes that are all shot separately. Sometimes, it might take several shots to do a single punch right.
"It is incredibly important that you hit your mark while you are in a scene because otherwise you might be out of focus. Or if I am going to punch you in a scene, it actually has to line up perfectly with the camera lens so that it sells on camera. Sometimes we do a punch and they will say, "Actually you need to do that three inches higher and come off a little further to the left with it."
What we perceive as one fluid sequence, is actually tons of hard work.
"With fight scenes, which often seem like they are happening in real time and are really dynamic and fast, we will just pause to do the same punch a few times to get it right, and then move on to the next. So while it seems often fluid and seamless in what you see on air, it's actually broken up into tiny little pieces. It is very precise and very technical," the actor revealed.
Though shooting such scenes might be excruciating, thanks to this precision we now have beautiful fights that look good even several years after they were shot.