Who fires, who aborts – and why trust is the real technology

The release is done by an operator, usually a fellow stunt performer. It is coordinated through the stunt coordinator, who works closely with the director: the director owns camera framing and the set, the coordinator knows when to give the operator the signal – in agreement with the performer. Timing is agreed beforehand, partly through audio cues, partly through floor marks.

As the performer you concentrate on exactly one thing in that moment: your agreed trigger point or your cue. Everything else sits with the others. The operator watches performer, scene and coordinator – and his most important skill is being able not to fire when something is off.

“You are quite literally placing your life in someone else's press of a button.”

Anyone on the team who sees something can call an abort. It just has to happen in time, because once everything is running – camera, pyro, performer in motion – a great deal is in play simultaneously. If health is at stake, you abort, full stop. Otherwise the rule is: see it through, because a half abort mid-movement is more dangerous than a take carried cleanly to the end.

That is why it matters so much that the same people keep working together. Between performer, coordinator and operator a basis of trust builds over years that cannot be manufactured at short notice. What that feels like in practice is in the case on Kalte Füße, where I worked on ice with those same Face Off colleagues.

Body position: flying motionless is hard work

The most important part of the performance happens in the fraction of a second after the release – and it consists of doing as little as possible. If an explosion is to look real, the body has to fly motionless through the air. A person being torn away does not tense up; they get thrown.

So I keep everything loose and surrender to the pull. Anyone reacting on instinct tenses too much – and your own movements look unnatural on film, you see it instantly. You still need a certain baseline tension in the core, otherwise the body folds at the attachment point. That balance of “core holds, everything else is loose” is the part you have to train.

A second point is counter-intuitive: the performer has a big influence on the distance. If you actively jump with the pull at the right moment, inertia means the load on the system drops enormously – and you get ripped considerably further or higher. The same ratchet pull ends up looking twice as spectacular.

Related systems: fan descender, wire work, Skywalker winch

A ratchet is not the right tool for every movement. The most important neighbours in stunt work:

• Fan descender – for higher falls. The rope unwinds from a drum that can be conical, so the rope pays out at varying speed and cushions the fall. A fan wheel sits on the drum, looking like a windmill, braking the rotation speed; the angle of the blades controls the fall speed. Classic use: jumps and falls from high roofs.

• Wire work – here practically everything is done by hand: several stunt performers haul a performer through the air manually via a pulley system. Slower and less brutal, but far more finely controllable.

• Modern computer control – ratchet systems now come with controllers that regulate speed, release and cylinder movement far more precisely. That makes several higher jumps in sequence possible, for example.

• Skywalker winch system / Spidercam – the top tier: four winches at four positions that move an object, a camera or a stunt performer in the middle three-dimensionally and under computer control through space, via deflection pulleys. That is how you genuinely make people fly. From football stadiums you know the principle through the cameras floating above the pitch. My stunt agency Face Off works with such a system – here is the Skywalker demo video by Face Off: it is old, from 2009, but it still shows impressively what such a system can do.

On top of that comes a development outside film: winch systems in sport are spreading. There are winches for wakeboarding and for towing skiers; I own a motor winch myself. Electric cable winches are used more and more, for instance to tow paraglider pilots up from a fixed point. If they are strong enough, they pull not just objects but people. What a tow system feels like when it really picks up speed is in the case on aircraft skiing behind an airplane.

What a ratchet stunt costs a production in effort

This is the question productions actually care about – and the answer is rarely “one afternoon”.

• Lead time: one to two weeks. Not because the equipment takes that long, but because a larger ratchet stunt has to be rehearsed and the capacity for that rehearsal has to exist. The team must be available for the rehearsal too.

• Setup: around half a day if rigging construction is already in place. If it has to be built from scratch, budget one day of rigging plus a further day of rehearsal.

• Takes: a single take goes relatively fast, and one air bottle lets you fire the system several times. After three or four takes a break is due in any case – for people and for equipment.

• Parallel departments: a ratchet rarely runs alone. Usually explosions, pyrotechnics or soil shot up by compressed-air cylinders hang off it. All of those systems and the entire set dressing have to be reset for every single take. That is the line item most often underestimated in schedules.

• Testing and maintenance: everything gets tested extensively, plus the technical maintenance of all equipment.

I deliberately do not quote budget figures here, because they depend entirely on the setup. The relation can be stated cleanly though: a ratchet stunt is considerably more expensive than a normal stunt – and in turn considerably cheaper than a larger winch system. How that kind of effort fits into a realistic shooting plan is covered in the complete guide to planning an outdoor shoot.

And perhaps the most important information for productions: a ratchet stunt belongs in a professional team and should not be scheduled lightly, because the injury risk is high. The alternative is normal rigging setups where stunt performers pull the performer manually – and there a non-professional or a model can be pulled through the air safely.

Sometimes the alternative is not shooting outdoors at all. For a commercial production for Lidl I shot ski clothing – not on the mountain but in a studio in Hamburg, suspended on ropes with skis on while artificial snow was sprayed in the background. As a ski professional that was a strange experience. But that is exactly the alternative, and sometimes it is done that way because it is cheaper.

Preparation: fitness, rehearsal and bruises

For this job baseline physical fitness is a requirement, not a bonus. I train regularly in the gym and with my own bodyweight methods. Because deep core musculature matters most to me there, I developed my own training device for it: the inflatable training cushion BOLSTair – my own product, born from exactly that need. Deep musculature is not only athletically relevant: it strengthens the inner muscles and protects the organs. And muscle protects generally – in a job where you land on mats at high speed on a regular basis, that is not an academic consideration.

The second part of the preparation is rehearsal. In the own training hall in Seeshaupt at Lake Starnberg – a large hall with plenty of mats and equipment – every scene can be recreated before a shoot. That is exactly what you see in the reel further up in this article: training and timing rehearsals in that hall. I execute ratchet stunts together with the stunt colleagues at Face Off, and because there is always a great deal of rehearsal beforehand, nothing has ever gone wrong.

Bruises still happen. If you re-enact an explosion realistically, it has to look realistic – and that hurts too. You land on mats, but across many consecutive rehearsals it is decisive to stay fit and to warm up properly before every rehearsal and every take.

What a client takes away

A ratchet stunt is not a courage topic, it is a technology and trust topic. It delivers exactly the image an explosion is supposed to produce on screen – five to ten metres, in real time, over in a fraction of a second – and it delivers it reproducibly when lead time, rehearsal and team are right.

What I bring as a performer is experience in this field: execution together with the stunt colleagues at Face Off, rehearsing every scene beforehand in our own hall, and the ability to stay loose at the decisive moment instead of reacting. On top of that comes the judgement of when a ratchet is the right choice – and when a simple rigging setup delivers the same shot more safely and more cheaply.

Are you planning a scene with an explosion, a vehicle impact, a hit or a fall – or a show number on stage, in circus or in acrobatics? Send a booking request.

FAQ

What is a ratchet stunt?
A ratchet stunt is a stunt in which a performer hangs off a compressed-air cylinder via a Dyneema rope and a full-body harness and is ripped away with very high force at the push of a button. On film it mainly simulates explosions, vehicle impacts, hits and falls.

What is the difference between an air ratchet and a ratchet pull?
The air ratchet is the device – the compressed-air-driven pull that can act backwards, upwards or sideways. Ratchet pull describes the event, meaning the moment the performer is ripped away.

How far and how fast are you pulled in a ratchet pull?
Five to ten metres is typical, filmed in real time and over in a fraction of a second. At the final moment it feels like 50 to 80 km/h to me – that is my personal perception, not a measured value. If it has to go considerably further, you need a winch system.

What is the biggest danger in a ratchet stunt?
Slack in the line. The rope has to be fully under tension before the release. If a ratchet fires at full force into a sagging line, the pull acts as an impact instead of a pull – and that breaks bones.

How much lead time does a production need for a ratchet stunt?
One to two weeks. Plus half a day of setup with existing rigging, otherwise one day of rigging plus one day of rehearsal. A break belongs in the schedule after three or four takes, and parallel effects have to be reset for every take.

Can a model or a non-professional do a ratchet stunt?
No. A ratchet belongs in a professional team, the injury risk is too high. For non-professionals and models there are normal rigging setups where stunt performers pull the person manually via pulleys – considerably slower, but cleanly controllable.

Read on: sport double or stunt double?

A ratchet is the extreme end of the scale – a stunt that has nothing to do with any sport any more. Where the line between a sport double and a stunt double actually runs in everyday productions, what a separate booking costs and why one face is usually cheaper than a model plus a double is in that article.

Who does what around a ratchet

A ratchet is never operated by one person alone. The rigger builds the rig, the coordinator decides whether it runs and gives the signal, the performer rides it, and a safety watches the whole thing from outside. Who exactly is responsible for what — and who books and invoices whom — is broken down role by role in Who is who on a stunt set.