Stunt Rat

Found a nice little surprise in my Inbox this morning, courtesy of my good friend Darryn. I received a couple of screen grabs, one of me getting killed and another of my name in the credit list from the movie (Tunnel Rats) that I was roped into (doing some stunts). It still hasn't come out in South Africa , so besides the trailor I have yet to see any scenes, let alone any scenes with me in it.

It's super sweet to finally get some evidence of my involvement, the experience was so surreal that after such a long time, it seems like only a faded dream. Remember, I'm a boring software developer by profession, so doing stunts for an action film is certainly not part of my day to day activities, only with Paul's expert guidance and training sessions was I able to pull it off.

As I recall Action Dan had a strange, if not misplaced confidence in my ability to play dead and decided to kill me off on a number of occasions. I remember in one particular take, I was killed not once but twice and somehow had to get shot, die, crawl out of the camera's line of view, have my makeup and costume adjusted; just to run back into picture and get killed again. Being killed so many times, the make-up and costume department did well to hide my ugly mug, but I think in one instance there is a semi-close up of my face where I'm actually recognizable (Look Ma! I'm on the silver screen!).

Working on set for the first time was a real eye opener, I felt like a kid again; absorbing new information and trying to take in as much as I could. Tristan, my roomie for the shooting of the film, and I tried to get involved in every area of stunting that we could: we helped out with rigging, performance and doing general errands. After a while we even got so used to handling the AK47s and M16s (assault rifles), we lead some of the training and demonstration sessions for the "new recruits" and in some cases even tested out a couple of rigs. I'm not even an adrenaline junkie, but in one of the tests they threw me out of a 15 m high tree...blind-folded!

Besides the amazing adventure, the cast and crew were all great and I've made some really amazing, life-long friends. I'd have to say that of all the things that I've ever done, doing this film ranks right up there with one of the coolest and most gratifying experiences of my life.