A course by Jean-Paul Ly
You’ve always dreamed of putting a fight scene in your film.
You can already see it: the first hit, the reaction, the moment your hero turns it around. But when it’s time to shoot, you don’t know where to start. Where does the camera go? How do you build the fight? How do you keep everyone safe?
Fight design isn’t in a textbook, and no AI can hand it to you. It’s learned through practice, on set, one production at a time, through years of trial, error and hard-won fixes. Most filmmakers never get that access.
This course opens it up to you.
Built on years of experience on Marvel blockbusters (Avengers: Doomsday, Doctor Strange 1 & 2) and successful independent films (Jailbreak, Nightshooters, The Prey).
Join the waitlistAnd yet
there’s nowhere
to learn it
Workshops cost a fortune, and they teach you to perform, not to design. You come out able to throw a convincing punch, still unable to build a scene.
YouTube tutorials stop where it gets hard. Ten minutes on how to fake a hit. Nothing on how to structure a fight, read a location, or survive a shoot day where the schedule has already eaten half your time.
Nobody teaches the line from script to screen. Not the moves. The thinking. How a fight is conceived, mapped, protected, shot and cut, as one continuous craft.
That line exists. I’ve been walking it for thirteen years, on Marvel sets and on films with no money at all. This course is the first time I’ve written it down.
Online course · Coming soon
Action
Fight
Design
The complete methodology for designing, directing and executing action fight scenes that work. Taught by Jean-Paul Ly, stunt double for Marvel and Netflix, actor and action designer on Jailbreak.
Lesson preview · The right angle sells the hit
Lesson preview · Selling a choke safely
Why this course
Built in
the real world
Over 13 years, I’ve worked on blockbuster films, including Marvel and Fast & Furious productions, as well as independent films. That experience led me to a question: how can we make action scenes more original, compelling, and deeply connected to the story and its characters?
I developed a practical framework to help answer that question. In this course, I’ll share my approach to building a fight from the script to the screen: finding the story in the action, shaping its structure, and making clear choices about movement, camera angles, and safety. You don’t need a martial arts background to follow along.
This course is for filmmakers, producers, and creators who love action movies and want to make action of their own, whether they’re just getting started, working far from a stunt team, or looking for a flexible way to learn. You’ll get lifetime access, with new modules added over time, including future contributions from guest experts.
This is my methodology, developed through years of practice, not a set of rules you have to follow. It’s a starting point you can adapt to your story, your characters, and the resources available to you.
Jean-Paul Ly
Lesson preview · How to create original action design
Action is not
a break from
the story
People treat action as the part where the story pauses and the spectacle starts. It’s the opposite.
A fight happens at the exact moment a character runs out of words. When language has failed and the only thing left is the body. That’s not a pause in the storytelling. It’s the storytelling at its most desperate point.
Which means the punch is a line of dialogue. How hard it lands, how long someone hesitates before throwing it, the way a fighter raises his guard when he doesn’t want to hurt the man in front of him. All of it is acting.
Design it that way and the audience feels it. Design it as choreography and they watch it politely.
This course is about the first one. Done safely, done cinematically, and built from the story out.
The curriculum
15 modules · around 3 hours
Founding students · First 20 only
Personal feedback on your fight scene
The first 20 students to enrol get one personal review from Jean-Paul of a fight scene they have shot. Send your scene and get a recorded video review back, with detailed notes on the choreography, the camera and the edit.
- One review per student.
- Non-commercial projects only: personal projects, short films and fight tests.
- Not eligible: commercials and advertising, TV series episodes, feature films or any paid production. These are professional jobs, handled at professional rates through Action Design.
- Scenes up to 5 minutes, sent within 6 months of enrolment.
FAQ
Disclaimer
This course is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It presents Jean-Paul Ly’s personal methodology and creative process for designing action and fight scenes. It is guidance, not a set of instructions to be followed.
Any use you make of the course content, including the videos, is at your own discretion and risk. Jean-Paul Ly, Action Fight Design and JPL Films Ltd accept no responsibility for the creative, technical or production choices made by course participants, or for the quality or outcome of any film, video or content they produce. Participants remain solely responsible for their own actions and productions, including on-set safety and hiring qualified, insured stunt professionals where required.
Nothing in this disclaimer limits any liability that cannot be excluded by law.