| How did Fusion start? | Joe, Matt and Joy all knew each other from going to the same church. One day Matt saw Joe's nunchuku and asked to try them out. After realizing Matt picked up quickly, Joe tried out some choreography with Matt and next thing they knew, they were committing it to celluloid. They later found a gymnastics gym from another church member and were given access to it. So on a weekly basis, they would go to practice new moves, tricks and choreography. The team's name came from an attempt to describe everything the team did. Because it encompassed all types of action, Fusion became the natural choice. In 2004, several new members joined (Jason, Lisa, Adam and Mark) and the team began to expand to new things. Vanessa, Edward and Ryan were added to the team in 2005 and Cody and Arlene joined in the beginning of 2007. Members come and go, but the heart of Fusion still remains: to continue pushing the limits of creativity in action performance. |  |
| Do you compete? | Yes, several of our members are still in active competition. | |
| Where are you located? Where do you train? When do you train? | We're located in the Greater Los Angeles area of California. We come from various places such as Cerritos, Fullerton, Claremont, Upland, etc. We train in a gymnastics center called California Gymnastics near the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim. Usually our gym sessions are on Sundays. | |
| Do you ever hurt yourselves? | Absolutely! And there's clips here to prove it. Anyone wishing to perform such moves, stunts, etc. should seek professional instruction. We've all had some sort of formal training or another and work under SAFE conditions. Please do not try these things at home without supervision. It may look cool, but if done incorrectly, you can be seriously hurt, perhaps even die. No joke. | |
| I'm in your area. Can I practice/film with you? | If you're in the area and are available when we go, sure. If you're just interested in hanging out or tricking in the gym and not filming or joining the team, that's cool too. We have several people who join us every now and then but aren't involved in the filming side. Just e-mail myself at JGPalanca@aol.com. | |
| Why film fight scenes? | Truthfully, even before the tricks, fight choreography got us started. The Hong Kong film industry was known to me long before The Matrix was even conceived. I just have a ton of great ideas for fights, and now that Matt's learning, I have someone to help me put them on film. There's a lot of stuff I wanna do, but we have yet to attain the acrobatic level needed for pulling it off. As we get better, I try more daring stuff to choreograph. None are "true" movies, cuz honestly, we can't act, nor do we have the crew to help film a "true" movie. | |
| How do you make your clips, samplers, and movies? | Camera: Sony DCR-PC5 mini digital camcorder Computer: Sony Vaio laptop (Centrino; 1.2GHz; 2GB RAM) Software: Sony DV Gate, Ulead Video Studio 10.0 (or Sony Vegas 5.0 or Adobe Premiere), various video conversion software |
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| How do you make your website(s)? | Computer: Sony Vaio laptop (Centrino; 1.2GHz; 2GB RAM) Graphics: Either taken from stock or hand drawn and scanned in. Photos/Camera: Sony Cybershot DSC-P5 (3.2 megapixels) Software: Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (graphics/photo manipulation); Macromedia Dreamweaver MX (HTML); CuteFTP (Uploads); Internet Explorer (Web Browser) |
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| You guys suck. Why bother? | Well, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. But guess what? We don't do this stuff to impress you. We do it for ourselves and for our own entertainment as well as the entertainment of our friends. If you come across our site and like what we do...then cool. If not, then that's fine...we're not forcing you to watch our stuff. We do what we enjoy and that may differ from what you enjoy. | |
| Where do you come up with your ideas? | 90% of the time, we think of things on the spot. Sometimes you see something in the environment and think, how can I use that? Other times you just picture something that would look really cool just by standing on set or on location. The other 10% of the time is either seeing something and wondering what it would look like if you changed it to something else or things that just pop into our heads that we imagine might look cool. | |
| Can we hire you for a project/film/live show/etc.? | Absolutely. Just send any of us an e-mail and let us know what you have in mind. | |
| I have a question. | E-mail us: JGPalanca@aol.com. |