The view from the end of a broadsword

The incredible whirlin', slicin' and dicin' in this video was shot by the forces of Swordfish 2010 with a tiny GoPro Hero camera attached to the end of a broadsword. [ryrlen's YouTube via Gizmodo]

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MORE: broadswords • Gadgets

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iktiw

Expect this to be the dominant cinematographic gimmick in all “Gladiator”-clones now.
- Duffong
  
  I thought that right away… but you gotta admit it would be kind of a cool little gimmick for a gritty flick. I want to see bones, heads, and blood fly across the blade. It would be a neat trick.
Anonymous

http://www.duckbrand.com/Duck%20Tape%20Club/history-of-duck-tape.aspx
Anonymous

DUCK TAPE

http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html
Anonymous

That was awesome!!!
chgoliz

That’s one heckuva sword, able to throw a man around like that!
Anonymous

You do realize that the Porn industry is now going to use this for a different kind of sword fighting.

K.O.P.
turn_self_off

ugh, instant motion sickness…
- Tool Using Animal
  
  Only took 14 seconds in to make me nauseous.
Church

What sword is that, exactly? I want a cutaway view from a third person perspective.
- Anonymous
  
  It’s an Albion Meyer.
  
  http://www.albion-swords.com/swords/albion/maestro/sword-practice-meyer.htm
DJBudSonic

This is a lesson in relativity…
singingdragon

On YouTube, broadsword swings you.

That is one mind-twisting frame of reference.
zorlac

when will I learn to just leave the sound off when watching youtubes? It’s like a competition to see who can find the shittiest music. Cool clip, but I would have preferred to just hear the swoosh of the sword rather than some half-baked, auto-tuned piece of crap.
vitruvian23

What’s duck tape? I’ve heard of duct tape, but never a special type of tape for sticking ducks together…
- Anonymous
  
  You do realize that Duck Tape is a brand?
- John Clukey
  
  I bet the duck-tape was a mistake, but to give them the benefit of the doubt, Duck Tape is a real brand of duct tape.
- efergus3
  
  http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/duckvsduct.html
Chloramphenicol

I would have liked to have seen a side-by-side video with the sword-tip camera on one side and a stationary camera on the other. You know, to compare how we see the guys performing the moves versus what the tip of the blade experiences.
Anonymous

I’d also like to have seen shots with the camera pointed toward the tip.
Anonymous

This would be even cooler if there were a simultaneous video from a stationary angle. Mind trip!
mcv

Is this really a broadsword, and not a longsword? Or is a longsword simply a type of broadsword? It looks like they’re using it two-handed, and I thought a broadsword was a one-handed weapon.
- Anonymous
  
  It is, indeed a longsword, not a broadsword. I expect they’re just falling into the typical modern trap of “anything that’s not a rapier is a broadsword.” Whereas, properly used, broadsword refers to 17th-18th century one-handed swords with full width blades. (As opposed the narrow blades used on civilian dress swords such as sideswords, smallswords and rapiers.)Re
- Zergonapal
  
  A Longsword and a Broadsword and two different weapons. Its hard to tell though what the sword is from that perspective.
Anonymous

I agree, a split screen with a fixed camera would be neat. Mounting the camera at the hilt, pointed outwards wouldn’t look like much unless he was sparing with somebody else. If he was though, it would probably give a really nice illustration of how the parrys and guards actually worked. ISTR that a general pattern is use a leverage advantage to push the opponents blade out of the way, and when your leverage is as a disadvantage, try to threaten with a thrust.
obeyken

I want to see the Star Wars Kid version.
petsounds

Eh. It would have been much better to put the camera at the hilt and reverse it 180 degrees, so you can get a feel of the swings. As is, I have no sense of what they are doing or their level of skill.
Anonymous

Good, but Jesse Rae was doing this in 1985…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOad0FU9zF8#t=2m59s
Ivan R.

It would be great to see the normal view of what those guys are doing and compare it to the view from the tip of a sword.
EH

Nice one, this was about 4.5x better than I thought it was going to be, but naturally, just as the “Speed Test” started, YouTube buffered.
Anonymous

Cowboy performer Chris McDaniel has been doing a similar project with sword swallowers (including me.) I’ll try & find it somewhere
koshi

That is a longsword, you can clearly see two hands on the hilt (as opposed to one for a “broadsword”).

This was taken at the Swordfish 2010 event. The event featured rapier, steel longsword, and nylon mixed tournaments. A clip of the final in the longsword tournament is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2zA9EabWmM
Tynam

Now I want a camera every time I drill. (Pity there’s no way to keep it safe during a bout…)

Also there’s a tagging issue here: having the ‘broadswords’ tag, why would anything need an ‘awesome’ tag as well?
jfrancis

Cool.

I was expecting some of that crazy ‘slit-scan’-looking rolling shutter effect in the highly motion blurred frames but I guess that camera has a different kind of shutter.

http://boingboing.net/2010/08/31/more-cool-rolling-sh.html
http://boingboing.net/submit/2010/08/rolling-shutter—no-photoshop-needed-for-these-surreal-photos.html