Justin Pearson Interview, 28 Weeks Later

We had a chance to sit down and talk to Justin Pearson the Stunt Co-ordinator on 28 weeks later.   28 WEEKS LATER, the follow up to the hugely successful 28 Days Later, picks up six months after the rage virus has annihilated the Mainland Britain. The US army declares that the war against infection has been won, and that the reconstruction of the country can begin. As the first wave of refugees return, a family is reunited - but one of them unwittingly carries a terrible secret. The virus is not yet dead, and this time, it is more dangerous than ever. Here is what Justin had to tell us.

Q. How does the amount and difficulty of the stunts in 28 Weeks Later compare with those in 28 Days Later?

A. We’ve got a little bit more in this one. I performed on 28 Days Later, so I did the fire sequences, explosions, and bullet hits. We haven’t got as many explosions in this one but we certainly have more fire and bullet hits.

Q. When there is a big scene with a lot of extras, who is coordinating their movements?

A. I will be, yes, there are about 20 stunt men involved with the extras in large crowd scenes. We’ll put them in prime positions among the extras so we can physically see them perform the action, like getting shot. So after we put the extras in, we put the stunt men in prominent positions so the camera can see them.

Q. What has been one of the craziest stunts on this film?

A. The guy hanging off the helicopter that we shot last week was one of the best ones so far, and fire is always really exciting, but the helicopter was the big one so far.

Q. As a coordinator, do you look at the list of stunts to assign them to specific stunt people?

A. Of course, I have quite a few stunt people men and women to choose from, but generally I choose the people who I’ve worked with growing up within the industry, and I know can do the job, so they don’t necessarily have to look like the person we’re doubling as long as I know they can do the stunt on the day.

Q. How does one start with stunts?

A. The majority of stunt people you see are probably very fit people anyway, who have generally been doing sports for a long time--since probably their middle teens. Predominantly everybody has one forte, but to become qualified as a stunt person you have to qualify in certain sports. So really what you’re getting at the end of the training is someone very agile, very fit, very capable who know where they are upside down, back to front, and can do anything. A lot of the training you do for sports qualifications don’t really have anything to do with when you do stunts. A double back on a trampoline isn’t really a stunt move, effectively, but when you’re getting blasted and thrown up through the air on jerk rams you’ll know how to respond to it.

Q. So the training is like a musicians training, where you’re not really going to be performing classical music, but you’ll have a reference for it when the job demands it.

A. Absolutely.

Q. SO if someone were to say, and 18-yr-old-kid, that’s the field I want to get into, that stunt work looks really exciting, what would be your message?

A. I get a lot of comment similar to that, a lot of people come up to me saying they’ll be a good stunt man but are a complete nutter, and they’ll be the worse, it’s so far from the truth. We’re all human; we all have fears and are scared of things. It’s like anything in terms of the industry, it has its glamour moments and it doesn’t. Once you qualify as a stunt man you have to sit at home and wait for the phone to ring, be recognized. Sadly, there are a lot of people on the stunt register now, and I worked with a gentleman last year that had been on the British stunt register for 3 years and had done 3 days of work. So it’s one of those things where you have to sit and wait and the newer guys are not being used.

Q. What happens if someone turns up to be reckless, or not as cautious as he should be?

A. IF we take the chance and get someone on board and it doesn’t work out the way you want it to, then the word gets around and you soon learn who to use and who not to use.

Q. How has CG impacted your work?

A. They said to us 10 years ago that CG was going to wipe the stunt man out, but it’s not, really. They said we’d be out of a job soon, but it’s never really come to that. We were worried when we first heard that, and I think everyone should have been worried when we hear that 10 years ago, because of what they were saying was going to happen. Personally I hate blue screen, ha-ha, for the fact that it takes things away sometimes. But like the helicopter sequence last week at the beginning of this film they said to me that they’re going to use a lot of blue screen on the helicopters, but I said we wouldn’t need to—which they were surprised about, until I broke down the scenes for them. But thankfully blue screen comes into it’s own because we had to take the real pilot out, but since we used them you can still see the real pilot in the shot.

Q. So while the stunt person is still integral to the scene, technology and blue screen can make the shot safer?

A. It does, I mean we can’t really have a big explosion on a helicopter, or where you get shot at or something so that where visual effects come in. You can have a smoke machine, some after effects, and crazy flying from the pilot, but yeah, so blue screen plays a big role sometimes in stunts. But they always turn around and say don’t worry about putting him on fire, we can put him on fire, I say no you won’t we’ll do it for real.

Q. Is there a first job, a right of passage?

A. With things like you just have to spend a lot of time learning over the years, and you have to take you time doing it, like fire…which is one of the big stunts we do, a full body burn. My first job was probably my arm, and then my legs, and you see someone go on fire for the first time, so you know how it works. SO eventually down the line it will be your turn.

Q. Do you find that stunt people have a real camaraderie or kinship? Is that because what you do is dangerous?

A. You do, you have to work very closely. I hadn’t worked before with the guy who did the helicopter stunt last week, I took a chance on using him, we only did a day’s rehearsal, but he did a great job.

Q. Can he lift his arms this week?

A. Laughter, probably not, he’s probably resting a week now. But yeah, you do get close; you don’t use someone you can’t get along with. If you can’t see eye to eye with someone in this industry, then you don’t work with them. Even if they’re the best in the world, there is so much talent to choose from that if you don’t’ get along with them you won’t use them.

Q. How many stunt people do you have on your crew here?

A. We’ve used about 10-12 so far, I don’t have a fulltime crew, were basically bringing them in when we need them. I have to call about 20 more, so we’ll use about 30 for this film.

Q. What’s your favorite stunt, car chase, fire?

A. All of it, anything aviation.

Q. Your most dangerous stunt and were you injured?

A. I broke my leg a few years ago, but I was getting kicked by a horse. I was showing off on a horse, and the horse won.

Q. Stephanie was telling us that you have to start out with 6 specialties as a stunt person, how long before you are qualified and can be the stunt coordinator?

A. A minimum of 5 years. Which is 3 years a probationary member, which you cannot work without a coordinator, and if in that 3 years you’ve done a certain amount of stunts, identifiable stunts, then you can approach the committee to upgrade to an intermediate member, where you can work by yourself, no coordinator but you cannot coordinate any other artists, and within those 2 years as an intermediate you have then have to qualify with an amount of bigger stunts, but that never takes only 5 years, it can take 5 years and another 4 years on top.

Q. Do you think that’s an adequate amount of time in order to coordinate the crew?

A. Yes, if you’ve done films. A lot of guys who are coordinating now have done nothing other than TV, and TV normally has a very low budget, and with a low budget we normally do not get to do the big stunts.

Q. How do you compare the UK stunt union to the US stunt union?

A. I’ve never worked in the states so I wouldn’t know, we’re not allowed to.

Q. Any injuries on this set?

A. No, and there won’t be.

Q. What about young people making independent films, with dangerous stunts, who may be trying to imitate Jackass?

A. They have a stunt coordinator on Jackass, and they know what they are up against, but I’ve done talks at school about my job and one of the first things you have to say is that you don’t try this, you don’t do this, it takes X amount of years of training. But that doesn’t work always, because you always see people on the Internet doing these wacky things using lighter fluid and lighting their hands on fire and stuff like that.

Q. Do you have a favorite car chase?

A. I did like the one in Bourne Identity. One of their people was on 28 Days Later.

Q. Can you predict fads in stunts, like how after the Matrix everyone started using wires?

A. You see a quiet period every 6 or 7 years where everyone starts doing period films, where you’re lucky to get a job as a horse rider or a bit of sort work or something, but yeah they come around, I got to say that the last 16 years have been very busy.

Q. Is there a particular stunt you’re not fond of doing?

A. Yeah, being a naked body in a canal floating down, those naked dead body jobs always seem to come in the wintertime.

Q. Is there a fear that you have tried conquer through stunts?

A. I think it would be unhealthy to try to conquer a fear, because silly things can happen.

Q. What if you have a stunt person who is great and willing to do anything, but has one thing they just won’t do?

A. They wouldn’t be on the set to begin with, because I would have spoken to them before then. Something that’s never done is that you never turn down a stunt, even if you’ve never do it before.

Q. DO you find that, with your job being invisible, you often don’t get noticed for your work?

A. Yeah, actors do all their own stunts right? No, but they can to a certain degree but insurance won’t let them. A lot of actors get incredibly frustrated because they know they’re physically capable of doing it. They can’t even really jump off a table, because if they sprain an ankle production stops for 2 weeks, but can do stuff like some driving and things like that.

Q. Do a lot of actors have a favorite stunt person to work with?

A. The stunt talent who doubles for Robert Carlisle in this film has worked with him before, but that doesn’t happen very often.

 

Here are some fantastic 28 weeks later Clips for you to enjoy.

 

28 Weeks Later Clip: Escape	28 Weeks Later : Rage is Back Part 2	28 Weeks Later: Code Red	28 Weeks Later: The Infected	28 Weeks Later Clip: Mom
28 Weeks Later Clip: Hungry	28 Weeks Later: Rage is Back Part 1	28 Weeks Later Clip : Kill It	28 Weeks Later 3minute Clip	28 Weeks Later International Trailer
28 Weeks Later Trailer	28 Weeks Later Behind the Scenes