A stunt person is a man or a woman who performs dangerous acts, usually in the television or movie industry. In this line of work, the person is paid to do daring actions that are deemed too 21 for the regular actor to perform, including jumping from heights, crashing cars, or fighting with weapons.
Stunt work emerged out of 22 over time. In the early days of the film industry, actors themselves shot acrobatic acts and dangerous scenes, until they began to get injured. There were, however, no 23 crew members to perform impressive stunts at that time. If something dangerous needed to be done for a scene, the producers would hire anyone crazy or desperate enough to do it. These people were not trained to perform stunts, so they often 24 things for the first time during the actual shooting. They had to learn from their own mistakes, which 25 some their lives, and almost all suffered light or severe injuries.
Beginning around 1910, audiences developed a taste for serial action movies, which 26 the use of dedicated stunt people to perform in dangerous scenes. Such demand increased with the rise of western movies, and many cowboys with masterful skills on horseback found a new 27 as a stunt person. Tom Mix and Yakima Canutt were among the most famous. The 1960s and ’70s 28 the development of most modern stunt technology, like air rams and bullet squibs. That technology has continued to evolve into the present.
Today, CGI (computer generated imagery) is widely used in filmmaking, and it is now 29 to create very lifelike scenes without using real stunt people. However, CGI has difficulties of its own, and there will always be a demand for the realism and thrilling 30 of an actual stunt. So the stunt industry is probably in no immediate danger of dying off.
21