Gun Sau essay

[GunFu]

INVENTING GUN SAU

by Mike Munro

Most readers of martial arts magazines and ezines will have seen at least one kung-fu movie in their lives and they may also have played martial arts video games, etc. This essay is about how we (my dad, my brother and I) have begun to invent a martial game or sport inspired by the action scenes in an excellent science fiction/martial arts movie called Equilibrium. I have written it to encourage other martial artists to "think outside the box" and hope that we will see more of this type of creativity in the future.

Equilibrium and the Gun Kata

Equilibrium was released in 2002 and was directed by Kurt Wimmer. Mr. Wimmer is a very talented director but Equilibrium (or EQ as it is known to fans) was his first ever feature film and he only had a twenty million dollar budget. I know that sounds like a lot but most feature films cost way more than that. Anyway although EQ is a good movie parts of the script are very derivative from other movies like Farenheit 451, 1984, Logan's Run etc. and the critics HATED Equilibrium. The film company didn't spend much on promoting it either and as a result it was a box-office bomb. However for the past two years it has developed a very strong cult following due mostly to the action scenes which feature a fictional martial art known as Gun Kata.

The Gun Kata is used by the Grammaton Clerics, who are a combination of religious monks and secret police and their job is to hunt down "Sense Offenders" who (in the world of the movie) are breaking the law by feeling human emotions like love, sadness etc. The basic plot of Equilibrium is that the top-ranking Cleric, John Preston (played by Christian Bale) begins to question the way his society is run and ends up fighting to defeat the rulers of Libria so that people will be allowed to feel again. Along the way of course he must use his Gun Kata skills to defeat many enemies.

[GunFu]

Kurt Wimmer (who is himself a martial artist) came up with the idea of Gun Kata. As the character DuPont says in the movie:

"Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents while keeping the defender clear of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. The difference of a 63% increase to lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly."

As you can see from the quote, the Gun Kata is basically a kata (pre-choreographed set of movements) and there are two scenes where you see the Clerics training in this kata. However the action scenes also show the application of Gun Kata in many different ways. This is very exciting to watch but is not that realistic because in real life I doubt that anyone would be able to predict where and when an enemy was going to fire and take evasive action (especially when you only have two handguns and are fighting something like 20 soldiers armed with machine guns, but hey, that's Hollywood!)

However the final fight scene in the movie happens between Preston and DuPont, the leader of Libria, who is also a Gun Kata master. Now this is some of the most original fight choreography I have ever seen because they are actually fighting at trapping range, using parries, sweeps, spins, locks and escapes while both trying to kill each other with handguns! It is an amazingly intense fight.

Getting started

We have watched this fight scene many times and one day we decided to try to copy what the actors were doing to see if it could really work. At first I was discouraged because if you slow the action down you can see that if they had really been fighting they would probably have killed each other about 11 times. But then we began to think of ways to re-create that type of fighting as a sport or a martial game, with rules that would keep the fighters safe, help them to develop skill and also keep some of the flavour and flashiness of the movie fight.

My brother and my Dad who are both also martial artists helped me and we began to create a new martial sport which we decided to call Gun Sau. The name Gun Sau is kind of a joke, like a combination of Gun and "chi sau" or sticking hands technique, which is what it looks like. The first thing we tried was to slowly move with the actors as they performed the fight choreography (just by slowing down the DVD) to get a feel for the style. Obviously we were not competing at this stage. We quickly realised that we needed some kind of "gun" to train with so we bought some SuperSoaker type squirt pistols. These are pump-action operated and worked fine (although of course we could only train in the garage and out in the yard!)

Gun Sau Drills and Games

The next step was to develop basic drills and exercises for the art. My dad (who is martial arts instructor) advised us to work slowly and do it like a dance or a non-competitive game until we started to develop real skill, because 99% of people who start MA training get frustrated because they are trying to run before they can walk. So, we set up different kinds of games and drills to develop different skills. Some of these are:

[GunFu]

STATIC GUN SAU

In this drill you take a solid wide stance and cross forearms but you can't move your feet. You can shift your balance between your feet by straightening and bending your knees. Use this drill first to practice shifting your weight (which is where the power comes from) and to work on basic arm skills.

ONE-STEP GUN SAU

Now you can take one step in any direction during the drill but then you have to wait ten seconds before taking another step

TWO-STEP GUN SAU

Like the ONE STEP drill but now you can take two steps

PIVOT/STEP GUN SAU

Another version of the ONE STEP drill but this time you both have to keep one foot (right or left) on the floor. You can pivot on that foot but you can't step with it. The other foot can step around as much as you want.

ONE HAND GUN SAU

You can do this using the STATIC, ONE-STEP or TWO-STEP and PIVOT/STEP drills. In this drill you can only use your gun arm for parries, traps, etc.

SLOW MOTION GUN SAU

You can do this from all the drills. In fact you should definitely start out in slow motion anyway. If you move too fast too soon or get too competitive you will not develop good technique.

KILL ME! GUN SAU

This might sound weird but it works really well. Use the KILL ME! drill whenever you are going too fast, pushing too hard or not having fun any more. In this drill you can say Kill Me! at any time and purposely leave yourself open to get "shot". It is the best way to stay loose and you will develop more skill that way.

BLINDFOLD GUN SAU

Use a blindfold to focus on sensitivity and positioning skills.

DISARM/RETENTION GUN SAU

In this drill you are not trying to shoot the other player, you are trying to take their gun away while stopping them from disarming you. You can also do variations like one player is unarmed and the other one is armed.

FREESTYLE GUN SAU

This is the most advanced drill. Just move freely using all your skills to shoot, trap, disarm, etc.

Gun Sau equipment

After we had been working the drills for a while we started thinking about equipment, etc. One thing we figured out pretty quickly was that when you are fighting with pistols at trapping range, all you really need to do is flick your wrist to get around the other player's guard and score a shot. So to prevent this we created a reinforced wrist brace, based on the kind of wrist protectors used by skateboarders. The wrist brace allows you to hold on to the gun but not to flex your wrist backwards. By keeping the gun aligned with the forearm players are forced to use technique rather than just flicking their wrists. It also protects the wrist and lower forearm and encourages much more body movement. The game becomes more about trapping with the forearms and elbows and this is best done by good stance and weight shifting.
We also began to experiment with other types of "guns". At first, because we wanted to be able to train indoors we tried toy disc guns that fire little foam rubber discs. These did not work very well because the discs kept jamming.

Finally we ended up buying Lazertag pistols, which are much more high-tech than we really need but they work with a few modifications. We are also looking in to EBBs (electronic blowback, kind of like airsoft guns) and paintball guns but these are probably too powerful to use safely at the very close Gun Sau combat range.
We are also thinking about using padded gloves because when you are fighting at trapping range with squirt guns or Lazertag guns you quite often get hit across the knuckles and the wrist.

[GunFu]

The Rules of Gun Sau

We are still developing the art but we have already set up some basic rules for Gun sau competitions. These are:

1 - NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES use real guns for training or train in public with realistic looking replica guns. If you are going to train in public you should only use guns that are OBVIOUSLY toys. THESE ARE THE MOST SERIOUS RULES.

2 - You can only shoot for the head, face and the heart (the KILL ZONE!!) This is because it is more challenging to limit the targets. If you are allowed to shoot anywhaere then you will only have quick boring fights!

3 - You can only shoot when your gun arm is extended. You can bend your elbow during moves but it is against the rules to pull the gun back tight to your body and fire away. It's too easy!

4 - Be careful not to hit each other in the face with the guns. Even though they are only made of plastic they could still chip a tooth or damage an eye.

DISARM RULES

If you are playing DISARM RULES remember that you need to cut the trigger guard off your gun. This is because a real disarm will trap your finger in the guard and hurt like hell! Once the guard is gone you will still be able to shoot and disarm but you will not have to qworry about breaking your friend's finger (or getting your own finger broken! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!)

We are experimenting with ways to play Disarm Rules when using LazerTag guns. The problem is that these guns are connected by a wire to the HUD display and sound speaker in the goggles, so if you disarm you may damage the cable. We're working on it! If you use another type of laser gun then you may not have this problem.

STRIKING RULES

If you are playing STRIKING RULES then you can also fake strikes with your unarmed hand, kicks, etc. I would recommend only playing these rules if you have serious martial arts training.

Promoting the Sport

To promote the sport and let people know about it I set up a website and a web forum. I also began posting to many martial arts, Lazertag and Airsoft forums as well as science-fiction fansites, etc. One of the first things I noticed about doing this was that about half the people said something like "Cool idea, go for it!" and offered good advice, and the other half were quite rude and just laughed at the idea. I had to be very polite and quite often had to explain things several times before they began to understand what Gun Sau was and wasn't about. For example some of the most common criticisms were that it would not work in real life and that it didn't make sense to base a real sport on a movie. However Gun Sau is not supposed to be used as real self defense, it is just a sport or game for fun and to develop skill.

Also, there are several other combat games that were originally seen in movies and people liked them so much that they began to play them in real life (with changes for safety, etc. obviously). These include the sport of Jugging which was based on a science fiction movie called "Salute of the Jugger" and involves contact fighting with padded weapons as part of a ball sport (kind of like field hockey). There is also Tron Frisbee which is based on the movie Tron and is a game in which you try to tag other players by throwing frisbees at them. In that game you can also use your own frisbee to block attacks, etc.

Anyway since we set up the forum some people have come along with some excellent ideas for the future of Gun Sau. One guy runs a LazerTag battlefield and he thinks we should set up Gun Sau tournaments. We have also had posts from the man who invented the Lazertag gun, who is very keen on Gun Sau and he says that he would like to practice it himself! Maybe one day we will be able to have our own tournaments and even develop something like the long range Gun Kata scenes from the Equilibrium movie.

Conclusion

Gun Sau is a very new art/game and it will probably take us a long time to develop it. However I hope that this essay will encourage people to try something a bit different and not be afraid of being creative. You will come up against closed-minded people and the best way to handle that is just to be friendly and polite, be very clear about what you are doing and keep asking questions until you start getting answers. You will also meet up with people who are almost as enthusiastic about it as you are and that makes it all worthwhile!

The Gun Sau website is online at www.gunkata.freeservers.com

About the author

Mike Munro is 17 years old and lives in New Zealand where he trains in several different martial arts.

[Rymel]

i'd just like to know why you bothered trying to make it sound like a chinese martial arts, then use naming conventions like "kill him!"

i'd also like to know why there's a scan or photoshop of "gun-fu" with a samurai when 'gun-fu' seems to have gotten its roots from kung fu...

[Achilles]

I think you need to move from the flowery to the realm of the realistic.

keep going tho. Keep us all updated on your progress.

[GunFu]

Rymel said:

i'd just like to know why you bothered trying to make it sound like a chinese martial arts, then use naming conventions like "kill him!"

i'd also like to know why there's a scan or photoshop of "gun-fu" with a samurai when 'gun-fu' seems to have gotten its roots from kung fu...

Hi Rymel,

The name Gun Sau is a play on words, based on the Chi Sau training of Wing Chun and various techniques (lop sau, pak sau, etc.) It's just a nickname.

The samurai logo I use as my avatar is actually the cover of a book called "Gun Fu: the martial art of paintball".

Thanks,

Mike

[GunFu]

Achilles said:

I think you need to move from the flowery to the realm of the realistic.

keep going tho. Keep us all updated on your progress.

Hi Achilles, there are lots of people doing realistic pistol combat, etc. and the idea of Gun Sau is to play it as a game without worrying about how realistic it is.

Thnaks, Mike

[Achilles]

My mistake, Play away.

your wenlcome

[Rymel]

yea, sorry dude.