What exactly is a “trained stuntman”? That’s the only kind of guy who should attempt various incredible feats being shown in movies and TV, as opposed to the lay people watching at home who should absolutely not try it.
What kind of training do these people get? I wouldn’t think there are enough of such people to allow for formalized training programs.
Perhaps it’s just a colloquial term for someone who is 1) in great physical condition, 2) familiar with certain basic stuntman concepts, and 3) not enough of a jackass to try things without a realistic assessment of exactly what’s involved and how the risks might be minimized.
There are actual stuntman schools. My younger brother went to one in California. It didn’t turn into a career but the training was real and they were happy to take his money. How to fall, how to drive, etc.
Like many things in Hollywood, success probably depends upon who you know. But there are schools.
the daughter of one of my wife’s old friends attended one. You learn how to fall and how to use specialized devices for stunts, and presumably build up a tolerance for doing things that look scary but are engineered to be safe.
I’ll bet they learn a lot of those other physical skills actors get, too, like fencing and boxing and “street fighting” for show.
Actually, a lot of stunt people have developed actual skills like “fencing and boxing and ‘street fighting’”. When you see a complex action scene in a movie, what you are seeing is the actor doing the stunt (or part of it) “for show”, and then the stunt performer doing it “for real”. Of course, “for real” on film still means pulling punches or making a swordfight look good without actually hitting their opponent, but doing that well means knowing how to do it in reality.
As others have noted, there are “stuntperson schools” where you can learn basic skills like falling from height, throwing and accepting fake strikes, et cetera, but that’s just entry level instruction. Most stunt performers will get training in various martial arts, tactical driving, horse riding, et cetera depending upon the type of roles they are looking to do. A lot of stunt people are highly specialized in a particular area like parkour, dancing, winter sports, or medieval fighting arts, and being a stunt person is actually an outgrowth of their hobby. Building a career as a stunt performer means doing a lot more than just going to a school and sending out resumes; stunt people get hired by reference, and so developing a network of stunt coordinators, directors, casting directors, et cetera, as well as being represented by an agency (yes, there are dedicated talent agencies for stuntpeople, although a lot of stunt performers work without representation).
Some of the best stunt performers get associated with particular actors because they match their build and general appearance of that actor, and end up building a good body of work doubling for that actor in film after film. A few, like Zoë Bell, actually manage to get into acting themselves although they are generally noted for “X used to be a stuntperson” rather than for their qualities as a thespian.
I was making the distinction between actors, who often learn just enough of a skill like fencing or archery to make it look “decent” for a brief instant before a cut to a stunt person (and often not that much; Jeremy Renner clearly didn’t even bother to learn the basics of archery for his role as Hawkeye, hence why he has two arm guards) and stunt performers, who learn how to do those skills for real so that they both look realistic(ish) and to be skilled enough to avoid hurting other performers.
I took some stunt classes. They were taught by the same guy I was training with in martial arts (Benny the jet Urquidez) He is also an accomplished stunt man, training many Hollywood stars.
There was a lot of overlap with the martial arts class, notably the falling down parts. But also we did some gymnastics training, trampoline work, falling down stairs…and I got hit by a car a few times. It was great fun, but I got married and had to get a real job before I could really get a career going and get steady paying gigs.
OK, so the question in the OP seems to have been clearly answered. I have a follow-up relating to the premise of the OP, though.
My assumption was that there likely weren’t enough professional stuntmen to make formal training feasible. Question is whether there are really a lot more professional stuntmen than I had thought, or whether a lot of people get stuntman training who don’t eventually become stuntmen (whether because they failed to land enough roles, or because they never intended to do this to begin with and took the training for other reasons).
Question then is: what’s a ballpark guess as to the percentage of people in these training programs who become professional stuntmen?
Semi-related question: are these programs similar to formal schools, where you get tested and eventually certified in some manner, or is it just “we’ll teach you a bunch of stuff and your job is to take out if it what you can get”?
You may underestimate just how many stuntmen are used in a big action movie. Avengers: Endgame lists more than 200 stunt performers in the credits, not even including stunt coordinators and such. I would expect that there must be thousands of them in all. You’ve got not only movies but also TV shows as well. Virtually any show with action scenes will employ stunt people.
Here’s some data on the number of stunt professionals. He found there were about 5,900 stunt credits on movies released in the US in 2016. Between 2000-2016 more than 17,000 stunt people received a credit, although more than half only received one credit during that time. Also during that period, 74% of all movies had at least one stunt professional listed.
Note that this is only for movies. There must be many more stunt people employed in TV.
I suspect stunt training is valuable for many live action performers as well. There are stunt shows at the major theme parks, and it could be useful for renaissance fairs, medieval enactors, etc.
Stuntmen don’t perform only the major highly dangerous stunts. Any little pratfall by an actor might be performed by a stuntman. Before any actor is allowed to perform even mild stunts they need to be cleared by the production’s insurers. That’s not purely for safety either, even a minor injury to an actor can slow down a production. It’s not an abundance of caution either, plenty of actors have sustained injuries that last a lifetime from ill chosen stunt performances. It may not end their careers, but I’m sure they’d prefer not to have gone through a lifetime of back pain because they wanted to do that jump-slide over the hood of a car themselves. So the demand for stunt performers is high, they are necessary in a very high percentage of films and TV shows.
There has been a trend of actors doing more of their own stunts in recent movies (and even some older ones—one of the reason Sean Connery stopped doing Bond movies was that he was injured multiple times, and both Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig received serious injuries requiring surgery during filming various Bond films) but this requires training and conditioning the actor to pull off even a straightforward stunt or fight move, as well as a lot of additional protections that a stunt performer might eschew because a risk to the actor could compromise the filming schedule or even the ability to complete the film at all.
Stunt performers for film and television, like most crew, are essentially gig workers and so they’re constantly having to find new work. A lot of stunt performers do other work to supplement like fight choreography, martial arts instruction, et cetera; I suspect it is fairly rare for most stunt people to actually make a living on doing stunt work alone unless they are well known and associated with a major action star. And of course there is significant risk of injury, including a potential for disabling injuries, so it is mostly a young person’s game.
Don’t forget there’s more to stunts than falls and fights. Car stunts are a whole different discipline, hanging off rooftops can require specialisation, Parkour is a big thing still, not to mention the incredible range of Martial Arts movies that aren’t mainstream but can have fifty or a hundred stunt fighters in one sequence. Plus there are technicians involved in stunts, operating wires and winches etc, or setting up a car crash, who aren’t performers but are still considered part of the credited team.
I have a friend who had a fairly brief career as a full-time stuntman. He didn’t go to school, but basically got on the job training and an informal apprenticeship. He had been a wrestler in high school and did martial arts as a hobby, which helped. What helped even more is that one of our mutual friends was in the industry, and helped him network (AFAIK, he didn’t directly help him get any gigs). He actually started as a production assistant, got interested in stunt work, started hanging out with the stunt performers, and kind of drifted into full time stunt work.
He did mainly fighting stunts. In addition to the stunts, he appeared on camera as a random thug in a few shows, a background extra in several others, and served as a stand-in a couple of times. My understanding is that this is common.
His career was brief, because he suffered back injuries. There wasn’t a specific acute incident he could identify, but he developed progressively worse chronic back pain, and wound up getting surgery and being told in no uncertain terms that it would be a Very Bad Idea to continue to do stunts.
