Hollywood Stuntwoman Breaks Down Her Career in Stunts | Notes on a Scene | Vanity Fair

hi my name is Alicia Vela Bailey and I'm going to break down my career incidents being a stunt woman is super cool I never wanted to do stunts it never crossed my mind I literally fell into it I was asked to audition for a film cuz they were like you would make a great double for this actress and it kind of snowballed from there people remembered me from working on that show and they hired me on other things and it's the greatest fun job in the world this is my first time doubling Kate Beckinsale even though I'm a little bit taller than she is when she wears the heels I get to wear my flat shoes which makes it easier for me to do this does we made a great team so it was awesome this was the first shot of the film for us we film out of order a lot of times this was eight stories high landing on to this truck rolling off and grabbing quite painful but luckily for me because I was so cold yeah I felt numb so I didn't realize my bruises until the next day and then you feel your you feel the pain later so for this I'm of course on a wire we did have to time out the truck over here to drive up perfectly so by the time it rolls in underneath me I'm in the right spot for the landings we had this huge huge crane way up here that attached me and it was kind of at a certain level that it wasn't till about you know three-quarters of the way down that you actually feel like oh I have something on me to protect me and not fall to my death this shot right about here is when I do feel the support of the wire holding me up learning how to fall and movement with the legs and stuff you don't want to look like someone just hanging on a wire frozen so giving it slight movement you're not trying to fly but you're trying to like balance yourself doing a jump with a wire on for me is a lot more comfortable because you do have that extra protection and you're not full-on free-falling the whole way down this is a whole different shot so they have me on a quick release they pull and it drops me so I'm basically free-falling onto the truck boom because this outfit is so skin tight wearing pads it's a bit tricky so you have to disguise them we used ice skater pads so I had knee pads on elbow pads and I think I stuck a little bit of foam in my back for my spine this parking structure back here it's so dark but there was a line was almost like 50 feet to the truck it wrapped around me and I had another line back here going off the other direction so when I rolled I couldn't roll off the truck it was still protecting me but this had a release on it so it would start my roll and then get released then I could reach out and grab without falling so I had a wire here attached you know to protect me from falling off all the way this one was fun we had a stunt man dressed as this werewolf in this all this prosthetic her arm gets bit and she starts to fall this all this right here we did it in a room green screen this is the ground right here and we had wires holding us up and we spun this way like around this way and we had objects like poles in our way so we had stuff to hit basically someone pushed us on a wire and we just spun around and whacked into things for this one shot right here for this next part this was done practically we were hanging on another platform write-offs camera over here and we basically had to jump freefall and land sideways and hit and then fall right right off they did have like a little insulate right here to help pat it but it's still like really thin and the stunt person in the werewolf outfit actually cracked his ribs boom boom so yeah that didn't feel good this part so this all compressed and made it a little cushion for me and they actually put foam around this so it wasn't a metal hard object oh you can kind of see right here there's like a little shackle that's actually one of the wires so what my legs were held up and then my ribs and chest were held up by another wire so my back when I do hit this I wouldn't over arch and break my back made it so much safer for me this is total recall I was doubling kate beckinsale again we put all this shuffleboard wax to help make this a more slippery surface to get me all the way through to the elevator I had to work up enough speed to get a good enough slide to make it all the way to the hole then we cut to me kind of standing over the hole and dropping straight down starting this battle was a lot of fun very very small space and then you have four people in here it was hard to make sure everyone's timing was perfect because we're moving back and forth but then you also have to worry about the people behind you and everyone it was just chaotic because in rehearsal it's easy it's like you don't really care but when there's cameras that's when everyone kind of has brain farts and they forget the choreography and that's when you can accidentally as a stunt person we're trained to make sure we stop and not actually punch them but sometimes the actors that's when it can get a little like watch out the actors were great they learn their choreography perfectly so this is me and the other stunt double and because the cameras above us I'm actually swinging underneath her chin to give the effect so it looks like a hit when you can make contact safely like the blocks and certain punches to the body we know how to go in strong but then almost retract it a love tap is what we call it never know the truth about what she is or how she came to be for Wonder Woman I was doubling gal gadot for this training sequence this costume as you can see her knees are not covered her shoes only go up so high there's no room for pads at all the men are in full you know jackets backpacks whatever and so they can wear all the pads they want for us what am i head and where we get the short end of the stick sometimes and we have to like just choose little places where we can pad up so this was in Matera Italy a beautiful location there was just strong women everywhere learning the fights together training together it was just magical this character she was so strong and these the swords and stuff that we had we were really having to block and like really take the hits with the sell the action they do different weights for different shots there's a more realistic metal sword which is heavier for like the clean clanks you know and then there's the lighter foam versions that are still like hard but it helps the for us doing the speed of the action when she gets pushed down to the ground right here that was basically we had a pad down there so they could just push her right out of France this was CG she was getting close but we weren't actually making full contact and then right here this was the stunt double she was on a wire that was hooked up to this crane off-camera and basically she goes flying and then they do another shot of her landing on the grass so it was done in two parts for this next clip we were on a stage lots of a green screen all around us they had like the street part on the floor and I basically had to run full-speed jump and toss myself on the ground and roll and then they cut to gaol finishing the role it's hard to see but this is actually me tossing myself onto the ground and rolling boom boom boom boom boom and I had to land perfectly in this one spot the next shot was her kind of going up but she started like with her arms crossed the way I landed so she would watch me do the action and see how I landed and then they would cut and be like alright I'll get in there and I would help position her body exactly how I was so it would cut a lot nicer [Music] avatar was actually my third film I ever did I worked on it for three years a lot longer than most projects even though we're playing these alien creatures we actually are doing the action so we we have these logs that are built they don't look all green and beautiful it's like a grey volume but there's millions of cameras everywhere to capture all of us doing this but then we also have reference cameras like normal filming cameras like all different angles so when Jim figures out his angle that he wants to edit with he can go back and look at all these different angles we have this first part was a lot of fun I basically run up this log and had to jump into a net that was being held by some of our riggers the leap was one take so that was just that we went to another stage which was about 30 or 40 feet tall and we hung on a wire so we were in a harness held up and we basically were dropped on to the natural PVC pipe here and then we folded a mat over it so it actually created a leaf looking effect that was just for us to get the idea of it so even this one down here I'm still a pipe with maps over and it was folded so it created like a tepee effect and we really had to fold over the belief training this was actually where I cracked my ribs because we didn't put them out on at first we were just trying to get the effect of bending over the leaf and really making the impact because you are falling you're free-falling this isn't just computer like we are doing the movement for this character so for this next film interstellar this was when I was doubling Anne Hathway and she's rushing in onto the ship makes it just in time and we filmed this part on the stage they had this water that was gonna shoot out at me and I had to just jump in at the right moment as the door is closing the suit itself you know because it weighed 30 pounds it was easy for me to fall but right here that was just really hard to get up move they just had like this huge huge gush that came through and that made it actually slippery as well so trying to stand up was not as easy as it looks and then they have the ship tumbling so we are all on wires here and basically we had a rigging team like hiding like off-camera over here and another one off-camera like way way over here so we were being pulled in every direction and they would kind of drop us and lift us up to simulate the ship going out of control and tumbling through the water and you just had to go with it and pretty much you're a puppet or divergent I was doubling shailene woodley in the beginning when I first read the script I see that there's this huge jump and I was kind of wondering how we were gonna do this so I was asking Garrett Warren who was the stunt coordinator and originally we were gonna do it on a wire and I was like who thank goodness until they're like no we really want to do this for real so I had to do a free fall originally they told me it would be 40 feet I was like okay and then it went up to 60 and then it got up to like 66 or 68 feet that was a bit nerve-wracking because with the wire you feel safe this is like if you miss that air bag you you'll die now it's hard to tell but right here this ledge I'm standing on it's not flat my feet are angled down already getting her balance was tricky up here so we had a green screen over the air bag all below me was green the camera is looking out at me the stunt coordinator Garrett is hanging holding the camera above me and like he's hooked up to a wire so he's falling almost in front of me so this is how you get that top shot because he stops he gets to stop on the wire where I keep going out of frame this hole was not here this was actually the air bag all this was green-screen everywhere green green green also around just for safety precautions they had boxes helping support the air bag if for some reason I did land kind of off-center I would still be somewhat safe and crash into the boxes as opposed to the concrete these boxes there your moving boxes your normal cardboard boxes we usually do two two feet by two like good size you would also have a layer of flats so like you open you cut open the box so it's open into one flat and you'll put those on top as well to help give it a little more stability depending how high you're falling or what the action is the level of boxes will change the width everything and sometimes people will hammer the corners of the boxes because sometimes if you land wrong on a corner it can like really dig into you so they'll push by hammering the corners down so it's a little bit more soft but the box is basically when you land they kind of fold into each other and they catch you I was hanging on a trust I had to crawl out on my own no wires and basically below is a net it's different from landing in an air bag because the air bag you land and you just sink landing in a net you had to land proper because you could easily get bounced off and like go off the net there's walls on every side so you're just like in this tiny little room and all over here is like walls up here too so you're just seeing buildings and objects moving past you that was fun so right here landing in the net and bouncing off my gymnastics training came in great because it was kind of like a trampoline if you felt you were going off you had to use your arms and leg to kind of swim in the air to like make sure you would land proper in the right area [Applause] for transformers 3 this part was actually done on stage so this is all real right here but in this window is where we were jumping out of all over here yeah this is all CG I forget how thick it was but they had to crack the glass first before we can jump out because if not it was so thick that you just bounce so it was multiple people so we had a ton of boxes there the whole stage is like really big and we had it at an angle so basically on action we were standing up at the very top and we just jumped and then landed and then started the slide but this was fun because it was like a huge slip and slide pretty much and they had the fake glass to keep the window that we just broke through like with us this is pretty much all we had right there our wardrobe everyone had something different so we had to do it a few times to make sure we all slid at the right pace this was another building that was full on tilted and things were flying like it was a hectic mess in here these types of movies for transformers especially a lot of its realistic so it's it's a it really does help with like the adrenaline rush and you're really trying to save yourself there was a skateboard little thing to help slide faster and as soon as he grabs it would fly out from underneath him and then for Rosie having to slide right here and get caught at the last second that was a timing thing Rosie did actually a lot of that so she was in there doing it herself - 3 2 1 [Music] for Ender's Game I was actually doubling ASA he was growing at the time I think he started off at like five five and through filming he grew to like five nine so they used me because I was really skinny they're having problems finding a male stunt guy who could do the wire work but also be super thin this was done on a gimbal which basically it was almost like a circle and we almost had like is almost like little seats it would rotate and we would have a camera like hooked on right above the heads or off the shoulders so they could see the other actor and it rotated like a hamster wheel for filming weightlessness you have to have a tremendous core strength it's a lot different than doing normal wire work fighting and jumping you basically do all the work for this you have to let the wire do the work for you if you sag anyway in your body it gives away the effect like oh they're getting held up by their waist right here but you had to be careful because if you pushed off of something too hard it's like you would get a pendulum and that you would never get if you're in outer space so it's controlling it going slowly and that also made it harder on the body because you're like holding it so for this scene he's in a twisting belt we call it the lollipop arm so it was like a belt in another ring and that ring was attached to like a seesaw type thing so that people can control up-down you know no wires were in his way and that's what gave it that smooth spinning effect working on agents of shield I was doubling adrianne palicki this was letting out all your aggression you really had to like make contact even right here and I'm actually kicking him in his belly and we actually put a pad a hard pad right there so I can actually kick him my husband was doubling the other actor so we got to kick each other's butt they always give a countdown like three two one action and that's you know so you get ready but right before we were like we looked at each other because we're like bracing because we're about to slam into the wall and we're just like I love you I love you and we kissed and then it was like action and then we just went at it we hit the pole and then he basically pushes me back so up here we have the door yeah so this is on a release system so as soon as I hit it it would just timber over they had a boxes back here to block it because they wanted to make sure it didn't fall all the way flat because then it would throw off the rhythm it would be a lot harder to get up quickly and continue the fight so this made it a bit more sloppy and more realistic for television fights you only have like a day or two to prep luckily my husband and I we were able to choreograph this fight on another day and then we had to teach it to the actors that's why we mainly do masters for television because it gets a lot of the the fight and the flow and everything all in one take and then they can go back in and do their edits and capture the actors faces and certain moments that they want to get being a stunt woman is super cool I feel you're just playing like make-believe all day I kind of feel like a kid and yes there there are dangers people do get hurt but we're always ready you know we have personnel there with a medical background you know to make sure if anything does go wrong everything's all all good each day I'm set it's something different you never know what you're going to do one day you're flying another day you're fighting another day you're crashing through a window so it keeps you on your toes

Channel: Vanity Fair

Views: 2,250,965

Keywords: stunt, stuntman, stunts, stuntwoman, career timeline, career in stunts, stuntperson, wonder woman stunts, notes on a scene, the stuntman, movie stunts, dangerous stunts, greatest stunts, best movie stunts, greatest movie stunts, movie stuntwoman, best stuntman, alicia vela-bailey, underworld stunts, total recall stunts, wonder woman stuntwoman, avatar stunts, interstellar stunts, transformers stunts, marvel stunts, vanity fair

Id: 6dtEoMw-zR4

Length: 20min 26sec (1226 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/BrainWav]

Also, Adrianne Palicki was tapped to play Wonder Woman herself in the canceled TV series from a while back.

Ginger Ninja needs to come back to the show too.

[u/Bluenosedcoop]

Seriously her CV is really impressive just about every Marvel TV show she's worked on.

[u/videoninja]

Wonder Woman part at 6:13

She also talks about Bobbi's fight with Ward at 18:14.

[u/robertwsaulwork]

Saw Bobbi, thought I was in The Expanse subreddit. Still glad I clicked cause Mockingbird.

[u/anotherandomer]

Watched this video last night, it was really interesting.

[u/[deleted]]

She also briefly appeared as an henchman(or henchwoman) in Defenders.

[u/ADCPlease]

very interesting video

[u/DickNervous]

That was awesome.

[u/Macman521]

I thought Adrianne Palicki did her stunts all on her own.