Q: What do you call a person who performs a stunt in front of a live audience (and not in a film or TV show)?<\/p>\n
A: A daredevil.<\/p>\n
Daredevil is defined as a person who does dangerous things and takes risks, usually in front of a paying audience. Stuntman is defined as a person who substitutes for a movie or TV actor in scenes requiring hazardous or acrobatic feats. During the silent picture era, movie stars such as Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton performed their own stunts. Today, Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan perform many of their own stunts instead of using stunt doubles. By definition, this classifies these movie stars as daredevils.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s stunts often combine pyrotechnics and weapons along with physical stunts to make for explosive action movie sequences. This trilogy of Stunts\/Pyrotechnics\/Weapons create movie\u2019s most dangerous, and often most spectacular special effects. Not to be confused with visual effect (digitally created computer generated effects), stunts\/pyrotechnics\/weapons special effects are practical\u2014they are performed in the real world. Today\u2019s action movie franchises, like Fast and Furious and the James Bond movies have a built-in need to constantly escalate the level of complexity involved in stunts, pyrotechniques and weapons.<\/p>\n
This evolution of stunts can be demonstrated by comparing the original stunt to its modern day adaptation.<\/p>\n