Submitted 3 weeks ago by Naich@piefed.world to [deleted]
I know that they aren’t really falling down the stairs in the same way that I would, and breaking a bone on every step. Presumably there is a technique for descending the stairs in such a way that it looks like you are falling down them.
Padding and learning how to prat fall.
Yup. I remember seeing a behind the scenes clip once where the stuntman got a Styrofoam insert on his back under the sweater, as well as pads for knees and elbows. In the clip of him actually falling you can see him rolling in a manner that ensures only the padded parts of his body are the ones that hit the stairs particularly hard. His head never touched anything.
Fun fact: stunt women cannot wear much padding because they usually wear tight dresses.
Stunt women are just stunt men wearing extra padding in the chest and hip area. 😌
There is actually a stunt person who posts on here. I’ll see if I can dig out their username and tag them…
Crazy how their last comment was, “About to do a stair fall I’ll brb”.
I think to tag people you put @username@instance instead of /u/username@instance. I could be wrong though
Thanks. Testing…
…
@MartianRecon@lemmus.org
Athlete level fitness, padding, rolling rather than falling, and smart camerawork, editing and sound editing.
Training on how to fall properly to avoid injury, soft stairs that looks hard.
Having some muscles is a very good measure to protect your bones.
Carefully
I’ve seen actors fall down stairs and over a breakaway bannister live in a Broadway show. It’s clearly highly choreographed, and I also spotted the pads one actor was wearing when his shirt accidentally came untucked. Even though it looked very chaotic, in hindsight it was more of a tuck & tumble then a random fall.
Not an answer but you might be interested in looking up “parachute landing fall,” a method parachutists use to distribute the force of hard landings throughout their body. I guarantee every stunt person knows the PLF and the stair fall is probably somewhat related to it.
I’ve noticed they definitely have a method for rolling down hills in movies, they always do it like this Princess Bride clip. Nothing but their arms and back and knees touch the ground.
This was one of the first things I remember someone teaching me as a small child and then again (correcting some) when I started martial arts. I attribute never breaking any bones as a kid to this.
Knowing how to fall is an important life skill that should not be reserved for people who partake in dangerous activities.
The Prime Minster of Canada was good at this stunt.
Impressed Katy Perry.
Hey, I got a family friend who does stunts and explained this to me. It’s kinda like the ball with a punch of sticks through it. You try and creat contact and slow yourself down as much as possible while also having some concealed restraints to keep anything serious from bending the wrong way. That and not being afraid to get actually hurt, which can and will happen anyways.
Have you seen The Prestige?
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.
Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Not that I am a stunt person, but as far as I know:
someguy3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This. And sound editing afterwards for crashes and blows adds a lot.
AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
One of the things I love about all the old Jackie Chan movies is that they always include stunt outtakes in the credits. You can see how some things go wrong. Bloody nose here, broken foot there. Even the best of the best get hurt. I don’t think you’ll find a professional stuntperson who’s never broken a bone.
Witchfire@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m not a stunt person but I do a lot of dangerous stuff as a circus performer. Same for us, we’re always healing random shit. A lot of the time we end up injured when things go right, we just control the level of injury lol
passenger@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Deserves top comment spot! But I feel like speeding the material up is a major point you missed. It used to be comically apparent back in the days, but I am sure (with 0 proof) that they continue to do it so the stunt can be performed just a bit slower