Working As A Stuntman In China

Anyone browsing this website frequently is bound to notice that the number of martial artists (namely Wushu athletes), stunt performers, and action actors on this site is growing day by day. Increasingly, young stunt guys & Wushu aficionados from western countries with a gusto forprefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /Hong Kongstyle action flicks are giving some serious thought to working and living inChina. prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

As our network expands, I get bombarded with questions from eager bros back inEuropeabout life & work of a stunt actor in the Middle Kingdom .

So, I figured it might be a good idea to post an article about this topic on my blog here. This gives me the opportunity to talk a little about my own experiences, to pass on some useful (I hope) information, and to give some advice on how to tackle the industry.

Moreover, I can simply refer to this website in the future every time some bustling nincompoop with rose-tinted glasses starts pestering me with stupid questions :-)

Although it seems unnecessary to point this out, it always surprises me how ambitious western stunt guys often fail to see the obvious: the film industry inChinais first and foremost a Chinese domain. This may come hard to some, but nobody is going to roll out a red carpet for you around here. As the saying goes, you pick up a stone inChinaand there’s a hundred Chinese stunt guys underneath. And they’re all GOOD.

Stunt actors from the U.S. and Sri Lanka working on the set of the Chinese TV drama series "The Legend of Huo Yuanjia(霍元甲)"

Unless the screenplay expressly calls for a foreigner to perform the action, any local production will without doubt ask a Chinese guy to double the actor. There are good reasons for this, too: firstly, a Chinese stuntman costs but a fractional amount of what a foreigner would probably charge; secondly, unless you’re with a big-budget project or an international co-production, there’s

almost never adequate insurance (in a worst case scenario, Chinese stuntmen have no choice but paying for their own hospital bills); and thirdly, a lot of foreigners working on Chinese film sets don’t have a proper work permit and any accident befalling them might cause unwanted trouble with the authorities.

I know this is unlikely to scare off any of the die-hard “Eastern” movie buffs among you (it didn’t scare me off, as you can tell), so let me just give you a few tips:

·         Study Chinese! The better your language skills the more job offers you will get. No action director has the time to have his instructions translated to you with the extra cost of an interpreter (this is experience talking… my Chinese still sucks, I’m ashamed to admit, and life would definitely be much easier, if I could read scrīpts, for instance).

·         Forget what you’ve learned back inEuropeabout union laws, minimum wages, and safety measures . The Hong Kong Stuntman Association (HKSA)  has been trying to establish regulations for local performers, but in MainlandChinaproducers couldn’t care less. Be prepared to work long hours and for rock-bottom pay. Most actors & stunt performers (except when they have a well-heeled AND well-disposed daddy who pays the bills) take on a day job; teaching English still is a dreaded but widely-spread option with native speakers. I know only a handful of non-Chinese actors who can actually scrape a living by acting… they all live inBeijing, by the way, and they are all fluent in Mandarin.

·         The climate (i.e. the weather) inChinais not everybody’s cup of tea. It’s not likeThailand, where you work on sun-drenched beaches all the time. Shooting during the winter, with arctic temperatures in the north and chilly damp in the south, is no fun at all, and the summers are seethingly hot, no matter where you are.

·         For a foreigner, living inChinadoes not come as cheap as most people think . Especially, if you live inBeijing,ShanghaiorHong Kong… and this is where you’re going to have to live, if you want to maximize your chances of getting movie or TV work. I don’t have to tell you, as a stunt performer you’ve got to stay in shape, work out, eat well, etc. And this is going to cost you. So, unless you want to move toGansuand live on instant noodles, expect financial straits.

·         The lack of good agencies is a major problem. Most agents mainly deal with foreign fashion models, western talent for advertising (this is where the money is), or movie extras. Needless to say, they know nothing about stunt work. Apart from one or two agencies inHong Kong, there’s nobody around dealing with this kind of thing. Zilch. Another big problem is that most foreigners are blissfully unaware of the actual rates for acting or stunt gigs , which gives crooked agents ample scope for lining their own pockets at your expense.

Most of the aforementioned points apply to the Mainland of China .Hong Kongis a different story, altogether. Work permits for movie projects can be easily obtained by the studio for a moderate charge. Many crew members speak good or at least basic English, so do most directors. Unfortunately, at this point there are not too many features being shot inHong Konganymore. The heyday of the chopsocky with its constant need for Caucasian bad guys has long gone. Production has shifted to the mainland. The majority of the Hong-Kong-based stunt actors left forEurope, theU.S., and, yes…Thailand.

I’d like to mention that I have been asked more than once by western (and Southeast Asian) film-crew members shooting on location inChinawhy on earth anybody in his right mind would want to work in the Mainland Chinese film industry. Well, I haven’t been able to find a thoroughly satisfactory answer to that myself, yet. The brusqueness on Chinese film sets is notorious and if you’re easily offended,Chinais probably not the place for you.

On the plus side, the Chinese film industry as a whole is growing rapidly, and more and more international productions are coming toChina, too. In the near future, to further reduce production costs, many of them will recruit available western stunt performers on site (once they realize that we exist).

If you’re willing to live here for a number of years, to invest time & cash in building up a network, if you have this mysterious affinity for Chinese culture that a lot of martial artists and stunt fighters (including myself) suffer from, and most of all, if you like Chinese movies and you want to be a part of this more than anything else… well, then you just ought to give it a go.

A few more crazies around here won’t matter, I guess.

By the way, Conan Stevens (a gargantuan 319 Lbs, Bangkok-based Aussie stunt actor) has written a similar, very informative article about stunt work inThailand. I highly recommend his report, since the problems a foreign newcomer has to face are to some degree the same all overAsia.Go to

http://www.conanstevens.com/acting-movies-tv-film/thailand-bangkok-stunt-actors/working-as-a-stuntman-in-thailand.html