So You Want To Be A Stunt Performer

So You Want to Be a Stunt Performer by Linda Soules is a career guide to a job whose craft is making the safety invisible. The audience must believe the character is in real danger, but the performer must actually be in real safety.

A shoot day runs from a 7:00 AM safety meeting to an evening debrief, and the book follows that schedule closely. Before cameras roll, readers learn the five-step stunt breakdown, crash pads and house-sized airbags, wire rigs, fire gel, and sugar glass. It names everyone on set, the stunt coordinator, double, rigger, and medic. Later sections explain why saying no matters more than action, how ten hours of rehearsal sit behind three seconds on screen, and the physics, acting, and communication skills the work requires. Practical prompts invite readers to write their own breakdown or practice a supervised backward fall with a parent.

Soules keeps the physics readable: airbag pressure, harness ratings, proprioception mid-fall. Her closing line, "Plan the action. Engineer the safety. Land it," says more than the glossary does. In the So You Want To Be A... series, the illustrations match the text closely: a rooftop fall with the airbag waiting below, a planning table covered in maps and ramp models, a coordinator working through harness load calculations, and a full set with ambulance and fire crew on standby.

Choose this if your child keeps asking how movie stunts work and you want honesty, not hype. For ages ten to fourteen, read it together first, and you will know whether stunt performing is a passing interest or a real direction worth pursuing.