Of Air Rams and Flying Stuntmen

new TWTR.Widget({
version: 2,
type: ‘search’,
search: ‘#StuntClass’,
interval: 30000,
title: ‘Interterm Stunt Class Tweets’,
subject: ‘See What\’s Happening!’,
width: ‘auto’,
height: 300,
theme: {
shell: {
background: ‘#2c8cb8’,
color: ‘#ffffff’
},
tweets: {
background: ‘#ffffff’,
color: ‘#444444’,
links: ‘#1985b5’
}
},
features: {
scrollbar: true,
loop: false,
live: true,
behavior: ‘all’
}
}).render().start();

Author Brian Hamilton, Assistant to the Media Arts Division Chair

Last week, Jared provided an overview of the talented people who visited the Stunts and Effects class. This week, he’s asked us to share some of our own experiences with some of the individuals who helped make that week so spectacular. I was fortunate enough that I got to talk with Scott Leva, the inventor of a safer air ram, which allows stunt performers to launch themselves high into the air with very little risk of injury.

For those of you having a difficult time trying to imagine what an air ram looks like, try to imagine a black, bathroom scale welded to a pair of pneumatic pistons, with hoses leading to a box full of equipment that might just as well have come off the Shuttle Endeavor. To activate the device, a stunt performer simply steps onto the scale-like apparatus and it automatically calculates their weight before launching them a predetermined distance into the air:

“Most air rams have you riding on 1,800-1,900 pounds of air,” says Leva, “and if you’re not accurate on them, they will hand you your legs. That’s why they like to call them ‘leg breakers.’ It’s also why my knees are shot. I just thought to myself, there has to be a better way, so I did a little bit of research and came up with a machine that can do the same thing as those other machines, using only 25 pounds of air.”

As for what he wants students to take away from the class, “Make the right decisions. Sometimes what you envision and what will work may be two different things, but there’s a way to make your vision work.”

Check out the whole day on our Flickr photostream (Click on an image to see the description of what's happening!) -JP