Hey guys I am a stunt guy so I can give you an answer to this!

So, it like, depends on the kind of fall that’s needed! The technique for falling down stairs like, where Rocky runs up the steps, or where John Wick falls down the stairs a billion times in Wick 4 are different than if you’re falling down something smaller like a set from a house, or even narrower.

A big part of it is wearing the correct protection when doing the stunt. We have everything from insert pads like these bad boys (…afstunts.com/…/action-factory-polymer-insert-pad…) to full on tactical armor. The latter being great as you can wear both an insert and tactical knee pads and you’re just covered in protection on your hard points.

But back to the narrow vs wide stair fall!

So for a wide stair you literally can lay along the steps, and just ‘roll’ down the steps! You keep your hands to your chest and kind of put your elbows into the L shaped nook of the stair, and place your way down however many you need to fall. For narrow steps, it’s a little more tricky as you kind of have to ‘ping pong’ your way down the staircase, but the concept is the same. You’re just going over your head as well since you can’t fit horizontally down the steps.

The concept though is you get your sharp points (knees elbows etc) into the L part of the step, and kind of control your fall down the steps however you need production to have you fall. You also are generally doing this at a pretty controlled rate. They can speed it up in post-production if they want to.

Fun fact, the way stunts gets their pay is your flat rate, plus ‘bumps’ for doing individual things. So the guy who’s fighting and doing just background action will get one rate, the guy who’s on fire, getting wire pulled across the shot and lands on the hood of a car is getting extra pay for all of those extra things he needs to do.