How To Get Into Stunts

#1: It’s really physical: Stunts always look amazing on film or if you watch them on stage but once you actually try to do a move it may not be as fun as it seems. Stunts are kind of like running a marathon. Watching someone run is simple but actually doing it takes a ton of mental strength. You have to be in super good shape. Somebody can’t just jump into it and expect to be able to perform a stunt correctly. Some people may watch people simply running through the street or doing a simple fall and think I could easily do that. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I got union rate to simply do that. Yes, not all stunts are difficult but are you able to do it 10-15 times without hurting yourself? Stuntmen will have to do intense stretching, a ton of fight choreography training and train various skills before being able to achieve what they achieve. It actually looks easy because they make it look easy. You might be able to take a hard fall on a gymnastics mat but doing it on concrete is a completely different thing. One thing to take into consideration before even attempting stunts is that doing stunts is a dangerous jobs where you can get seriously injured or even lose your life. Look at the stunt performer Olivia Jackson who almost lost her life and had to get her arm amputated from doing a stunt on the 2016 movie Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. Poor safety practice on set lead her to getting injured. Movies are doing bigger and bigger stunts. With higher stakes comes bigger risk. #2: It’s not easy to get into: There are similarities between acting and stunts but one thing that people need to understand is that you cannot simply get into stunts because you want to do stunts. Yes, there are auditions for stunt work, especially if there is some form of acting involved, but mostly people get hired by referral. A stunt coordinator usually is able to call people that he trusts and hire them to do the job. This means that if you are new in town, it doesn’t really matter how good you are because you just don’t have the connections. It’s true that even the acting world is very much dependent on whom you know, but I think the stunt world is even more dependent on that. This means that in order to book work you need to get yourself seen. The best thing to do is to hit up as many stunt/gymnastics gyms in your area and simply train with the people there. If you see people rehearsing fight scenes, or stunts, try to approach them and get to know them. Collaborate with these people as much as possible. If you are skilled at what you do, eventually people will take notice. Of course, especially if you are in a location like Los Angeles, you can wake up at the crack of dawn, drive around Downtown LA or figure out where they are filming stuff, crash the set and ask to talk to the stunt coordinator. It does happen that they need stunt performers on the day and they can hire you on the spot. Do a good job for them, and the stunt coordinator can put you on his roster of people to call. Getting good at specific things such as high falls, car driving, bike riding, horseback riding, or even weapons will give you a leg up because this will give you more of a niche market specialty where the stunt coordinator will have to call you because there are less choices to take from these pool of skills. #3: Train as much as you can: If you’re really serious about this line of work you must train hard and become the best at what you are specializing in. Take stunt classes and film as many fight scenes or stunts as you can. Luckily we live in an age where everybody has a camera, be it on your phone or a simple DSLR camera. This means that if you are training, you are most likely surrounded by a ton of people who love doing stunts the same way that you are fascinated by them. This is a good thing because now you can create a ton of projects where you can film short fight scenes incorporating a bunch of stunts. With that you can actually build a reel which can showcase what you can do. Before being able to perform in the big leagues you need to do work outside of the big movies so that you can gain the experience to actually do the stunt properly once on set. I always say safety first. You never want to accept a stunt job that you aren’t comfortable doing. This is why stunt coordinators will always be very reluctant in taking people that they do not know and trust. If you get injured on set the production will end up spending more money and ultimately could even get shut down temporarily. Time is money and also the safety of the performers is usually the #1 priority for you as a stunt performer. We’re talking about longevity here. It’s better to say “NO” to performing a certain stunt if you don’t feel comfortable doing it than performing it but being so hurt by it that you cannot stand up anymore.