Funday Monday! Series #4-2 Making of Yokogumo

Gan-Ryu series: Counters to Eishin-ryu - Yokogumo: http://sueniaidokyudo.blogspot.com/2011/10/funday-monday-series-3-2-trailing.html

Yokogumo was an interesting technique to play with. The kata encompasses all the basics of Iaido. The movements are very tight and leave very little room for defense and counter.

Continuing with the theme of a "floating sword", we thought it would be cool if an attack can be stopped mid-way by the use of something like "the force" in Star Wars. The following clip is a behind-the-scenes look at how we made it happen:

You'll notice that the final version is slightly different, as we added in a casual waving of the hand, causing the stopped sword to go flying. The next video is a compilation of our initial takes, some went well, some, less so.

Commentary of each take:

1. I held on too long for this one
2. I thought this take went well (hehehehehehe), but didn't fit into our definition of a "counter"
3. This one was ok, except we started noticing the stopped sword hanging awkwardly, so we wanted to do something about it.
4. We got the sword to go flying now, but it didn't seem like it was controlled by Mike. Thus, the final version.