It was quite a week in Professor Andrew Lane’s interterm class. Two men brawled, hurling sucker punches and groin kicks during one morning class. The next day a guy got set on fire — twice. And at one point enough guns appeared that a campus security officer was put on standby.

All in all, a pretty good week for a first-time course on the art and science of stunt filming, taught by Lane during this month’s interterm session at the Dodge College School of Film and Media Arts. Because of the risks and expenses associated with the staging and filming of stunt work, a course like FTV 271 Location Filmmaking: Stunts/Fx, is a rarity for film schools, Lane says.

“This has never been attempted before. It is so much a part of motion-picture-making, and it’s sort of the elephant in the room. For cost, safety and insurance reasons you can’t really do this at the student level. But we want them to understand what it takes,” Lane says.

But by using interterm’s compressed schedule – four meetings a week in four-hour sessions – and coupling it with the college’s unique film industry relationships, Lane was able to pull together an eye-popping course for students that included fire, falls and fisticuffs and guest lectures by a host of movie professionals. Kicking off the course was a week’s worth of demonstrations by Hollywood stunt legend Buddy Joe Hooker, whose twin sons, Houston and Kanan, are freshmen at Dodge College and themselves experienced stunt performers.

Read the full article at Chapman News.