Horses in action film scenes - musings!

Bav

Bav

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Just busy watching a film when I find myself wondering about the horses.

I'm hoping some lovely HHO'er can shed some light on the life of a stunt horse!
Just how do they get them to rear up and flip over and fall to the ground quickly whilst mid gallop? You all know the scenes when there are horses charging only to be gunned down or what have you.

Is this not detrimental to the horses? Surely it can't be good for them to apparently have their mouths jabbed and flipped over onto the floor?

Just musing and trying to pass the time.
I'd love to get into stunt riding!!
 
It depends on how old the film you were watching was. At the start of the movies the horses were entirely disposable. Remember that horse that jumped over the cliff into the river below? It died. Also horses were made to fall by having them gallop into a trip wire and many were injured. Fortunately a group in the USA got together and insisted that the animals in films were treated humanely and you will now often see "no animals were harmed in the making of this film."

A stunt horse now is a valuable animal. They are trained the same way that any animal is trained to do unusual or difficult things, by gradual and repeated practice and trust in their rider and trainer. There are some people who specialise in supplying stunt animals for films. One of our Pony Club members went on to become a film stunt person and she came to Camp once to give the members a talk. I think you have to be pretty good at all sorts of things to make a living at it, not just riding.

When the horses fall, it is onto a soft surface and you won't see the gut wrenching falls that occured in earlier films. Horse will still sometimes die in film making, but it will be an accident.
 
I saw on the making of game of thrones that they had some horses that were trained just to "fall and roll". They usually had a soft surface down for them and they seemed to use a lot of horses for a variety of stunts.
 
i have talked to the evils horsemen on several occasions, they train horses for film work an events, and todays training is usually pretty safe and not as harmful or potentially painful as you would expect
 
As others have said, stunt horses are highly valued animals, and very highly trained. Falling horses are a speciality and only certain horses will perform this stunt. They will fall at any speed, but it takes a long time to get them happy with falling from a gallop. They have to fall on a specific mark, and the landing area is a prepared soft surface over a mat. Horses will occasionally get fed up with going over and so they will be reassigned or sold. Life for a stunt horse can be hard work; they are often out for 12 hour days and have to face a lot of scary stuff (wind machines, rain machines, actors who can't ride), but they are working animals that are well cared for.

We provide horses for film and live work, but I don't have a falling horse at present as none of mine are happy doing that particular job. Some horses are sent around the world to perform just one action.
 
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I would kill to be a stunt rider and have watched a few demonstrations put on my 'the devils horseman' as they are based relatively close to me and was in totally awe of both the horses and riders!!

I find it fascinating so thankyou for the replies to this pretty pointless thread haha!

I was actually watching The Mummy (1999) and it wasn't CGI it was actually numerous horses dropping and flipping to the floor mid canter as though shot! It just got my bored self wondering!
 
We had a few of Steve Dent's ex-film horses, when they got fed up, they came to the riding school. My mum's favourite hack, had been a carriage horse in a number of films but had an accident and wouldn't go between the traces again, she had a lovely second home as a hack horse, completely bombproof. The stunt horses are very well looked after and prepared for the work they do.
 
A lot of the really bad falls and stunts are CGI nowadays. Take War Horse for example... They used a lot of motion capture technology to get realistic movement in the CGI models. Check this link out... http://vimeo.com/47377755

I am not sure if you will be able to watch this (not sure if it is available outside Australia), but it is an episode of a program called Australian Story about a lady called Zelie Bullen, the lady who trained the lead horse Abraham in War Horse. It takes about 15 mins to get into the stuff about War Horse, but it is worth a watch to see how they got the horses to do all they needed in order to get the shots needed for the film. http://www.abc.net.au/austory/specials/underherspell/default.htm
 
I rode a stunt horse a few weeks ago, had me howling as he kept spooking at tree wells. I can only assume he was shocked because nobody jumped out in costume brandishing a sword.
 
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