Check medical insurance, forget the mattress, have a few decent mics at the landing zone to get some good splat sounds.
Seriously though, take care. Cardboard boxes are better than a mattress. Again, take care, 10' is way more than far enough to get yourself killed. Biggest risk I can see is getting tangled up in the ladder, probably this stunt is way more dangerous than falling off a roof of the same height.
You see to make this thing look right you have to fall, not jump and that to me is the very dangerous part, as you fall you may well tumble against the ladder and injure yourself on that and then bounce off to who knows where and get inured again.

BTW Endorphine makes doing this in CGI very easy, handles all the physics for you. If there's a trial version available might be worth getting a hold of it, you can simulate what lies ahead for your body.

Bob.

" .... I will probably use a few different camera angles ..."

Me, I'd get someone else to film it. You may not be able to focus or get the white balance set properly while you're falling and you might damage the camera on the way down. Also, those close up face shots will look terrible if the camera is strapped to your head. Best of luck ... :-)

Seriously, you can get hurt. Start by falling off the lower steps so that you can find out just how much that mattress is really helping.

Rob Mack

farss / rmack350 - I seriously appreciate your concern, and I am going to be careful. I wasn't planning on diving off the top step the first try, I am going to slowly see how high up I can get. I'm not shooting one of those "backyard WWF" shows or anything like that!

Clipman - after re-reading your post, I see you're being sarcastic.. but just in case not, then yeah, I am going to have someone else, as well as tripods, film the fall. :)

And if everyone hasn't figured it out yet, my "how do I be a dead ghost" post is for after I fall off the ladder...

You could rent the Endorphin software for a month for only $1,195.

That would save you $8,300 compared to buying it.

:O)

What ever you do don't end up making a post-humous post :)

setup 3/4 cameras at once. then you need to only do it once. It's a great benefit if oyu get hurt on the first try. Then you've got all your footage! :)

You in an area with snow? Or hay bales? Trust me, those help break the fall. :) The snow even conforms to your body for a nice napping area!

First I'd say don't do it. Let MTV find someone dumb enough.

Do you really need realism or the idea placed in the viewer's mind
someone fell?

A dummy wearing your clothes dropped from above the camera's view
cut to a shot of you laying on the ground might be all you need. Try that first
before actually risking injury.

Oh dont listen to these babies.. Go for it!

The human body is tougher than you think. I'm a skateboarder, i hit hard concrete on a daily basis...

ok seriously. I started skating when i was about 10, and i'm 29 now. You can easily take that kind of a fall, if you're body is prepared.

Cardboard boxes, stacked on top of soft foam mattresses (standard hong kong stunt technique) can do wonders!

A few things you need to be aware of...

How are you going to fall?

Can you shoot it in multiple shots? IE: Medium (starting to fall), wide (actual in air shot of falling), close up (hitting ground)

If you do it that way, you can cheat and limit the risk of injury.

My father fell off the roof of his house at age 60. Right on his face (into the snow luckily)

Falling is about grace... not about being otu of control.

I mentioned that i skateboard. There's a term called "ninja roll" It helps a lot when you fall, to ninja roll out of it. Never try to stop yourself with your hands straight out. Absorb all impacts with your body and roll into and out of teh fall.

Lots of falling off latter stunts are done more acrobatically, using the latter like a pole vault as it tips... thus allowing you to fall form a lower height. In other words, as it tips... you hang on for a bit... then let go/push away.

It really depends on yoru physical condition, and if you're at all familiar with falling.

Honestly... cause of injury is 10% accidental, and 90% fear. If you're affraid from the start... you're going to get hurt.

If you comit from the start, you'll survive. But there is that 10% chance of accident :)

Sure it will 90% hurt.... but i give it a 10% risk of broken limbs.

I've broken 2 in my 20 years of skating.

Think of things to mimize injury. Could your character be wearing heavy winter clothing? (AKA padding) You can hide knee pads under pants, wrist guards and elbow guards under jackets...

Rule one of falling, never try to land and absorb a high fall with your knees because often you will drive your knees right into your chin. And i'm sure you can imagine the result.

Which brings me back to the Ninja Roll.

Absorb the energy gracefully in a way that looks natural and chaotic but is designed to be safe.

There's plenty to be said for sound fx, lighting, and camera angles.

Dig a hole in the ground, fill it with soft foam matresses, cover with leaves :) (still a ballsy move but... you wanted to be a stunt man!

(btw if you havent noticed my username... its Jackie_Chan_Fan for a reason :) )

Finally, ignore everything i said, because i'm not responsible for you :)

Its possible to do it, but you have to be smart about it. Dont do it on cold ground. Stretch out before doing it. Dont do it in the cold. Cheat with camera angles and hopefully you'll only have to take one fall.................

But again.. THINK. Ther eis no reason to take the full 10 foot fall on camera in a single shot. You are not a proffesional stuntman. You do not have the same bone structure as a man that has been falling on hard things regullarly. Bones can break if they are not conditioned.

Cheat it.

Obvious advantages to faking it but how not to make it look fake. Nothing spoils a whole movie more than one badly faked bit, better to leave the scene out if it don't look right.
Just my opinion but it's all about timing. It doesn't take very long at all to fall 10' to your death, don't linger on it, sure a shot might look great but if you run it too long so it blows the overall timing you blow the whole thing. I'd let a dummy fall the same distance and then cut the real footage against that.
Needless to say watch continuity. If the fall is supposed to have killed someone it'd better look like they hit the ground hard enough to get killed.
By the way, getting shot is way safer!
So is getting electricuted, hm, there's a thought, up the metal ladder you grab onto some power lines, big flash and something falls to the ground, cut to smouldering dead 'body'. Much easier to fake.

Even falling of the roof just at the top of the ladder would be easier to do as a full on stunt and even easier to fake.

Bob.

"I wasn't planning on diving off the top step the first try..."

The not so funny thing is that I've seen this exact thing done and the jumper found out the hard way that the mattress bottomed out. He was sore for a week.

I'm glad to hear you take safety seriously. Shoots are dangerous for a variety of reasons. Directors and producers get a little too excited and put shots ahead of personal wellfare, equipment and cables are all over the place, things are constantly moving, stuff is suspended overhead, people are driving tired while talking on the phone...

The point is that because it's so, so easy to put our own welfare and safety aside it's that much more important to make it the key activity when shooting. It comes before the shot. This is not to say we don't do dangerous and hazardous things, just that we take every precaution to be safe while doing them.

I won't go through the list of on-set injuries I've suffered, witnessed, or heard of annecdotally, but I will say that about a third of them were totally banal, humdrum things that resulted in broken bones (mine), injured backs, and eye injuries.

'nuf said.

Rob

OK, so my buddy and I go to do the "fall off the ladder scene", get some pillows and mattress ready, and I fall off the 2nd rung to test it out.

The fall was a lot harder than what I expected.... so I didn't go any higher to fall, and pretty much scrapped the whole falling off a ladder idea.

I did some green-screen stuff to edit, but honestly it just looked stupid.

So, we're still trying to think of some way to die with a ladder or power tools...

Thanks for the info, and thanks for caring.

I'm sure on other kind of forums I'd get a bunch of "go for it dude!" responses. :)

We're older here.

What about electric shock from the power tool's overloaded extension coard? Or a nail gun shooting a nail through a vital organ? Or a paint bucket falling off a ladder on your head? or a drill falling off a ladder in your head? Or......

Just some thoughts,

j razz

I agree, power tool electrocuting you is way easier to 'fake' with no risk to life and limb.

How's this pan out for you.
Standing on metal ladder you reach out to drill hole in something but the lead is too short, so you give it a hard tug, the sharp edge on the bottom of the ladder cuts through the insulation making the ladder live.
Not realising this you grab hold of the metal gutter or whatever and get zapped. You die ON the ladder, adds no end of drama, someone has to turn off the power, get your body down off the ladder and then they lay you down on the ground and then the ghost thing happens. Bear in mind it takes a few minutes to actually be brain dead.

This is realistic, SFXs that look good can be added in post etc.

Hm, maybe I should be a screenwriter. Oh, and I've just put my 'script' in the public domain, feel free to use my ideas.

Bob.

climbing a ladder, leaned up against an oak tree with a chainsaw, in a thunderstorm, with a steel hardhat ......

Bob, that's pretty good. This way there are opportunities to tell a story with a number of shots. In fact, you can have enough foreshadowing here that a viewer knows what's going to happen: we've seen the closeup of the cable being yanked through the sharp bit of the ladder, the insulation shaving off, he reaches out, we see the hand on the metal gutter and maybe in the closeup of the hand we get all the information we need. The hand clenches and then it's obvious through body language that he's fallen off the ladder. The next thing we see is the body on the ground, heck, maybe even from the ghost's first person POV.

Dibkd, glad you did some tests. To me it says you need more than a mattress. You could go to a moving supply store and buy a stack of small boxes and tape if you want to pursue the actual falling shot. It's worth figuring out how to do it safely, but it's even more worthwhile to figure out a way to do it in the edit and add more drama to it.

Rob Mack

Here's an idea

Why not climb up the ladder with a heavy powertool like a chain saw? Pull the cord to start it on the ladder... then rrealize you left your safety glasses on the ground. So you place the running chainsaw on the roof and climb down the ladder to get your safety glasses. Just as you go to pick up your safety glasses, you bump the ladder, knocking the chainsaw off the roof...

The chainsaw falls, catches you in the head....

you dead.

Dam safety glasses :)

If you'd been wearing the safety glasses you'd have saved your eyes!

Sounds like a gruesome comedy :-O

Rob Mack