hanging question

[dein]

"I need help with this. In my upcoming film, a character is hung from
a lampost on the street . The guy is all trussed up, feet and hands -
hanging by his wrists." How to do this safely, cheaply and minimum CGI. At leaset not involving anything more tasking the FCP or Adobe premire in post. It is a Low budget film, shooting in Africa, No access to stunts men (so will find the fittest), we are looking to use a Tower rigger (folks that build telecoms towers) as our onset rigger. Any ideas?

dein

[Capt Quirk]

Most stunts like that involve a harness that takes the stress, not the body. The harness is worn under the clothes, so I'm thinking you could run the cables or ropes up the victims sleeves to their wrists, where it goes up to the lamp post. Then you just have a little bit of wire removal to do, if any.

[GenJerDan]

You could probably get away without a harness. String him up with the rope going down a sleeve, though the shirt, down a pant leg, to a loop of rope he can "stand on".

[MattinSTL]

Don't forget that once that loop is weighted that the rope will be pulled tight, so as long as his body can conform to that nearly plumb line from heal to wrist you may be okay visually... but I'd be wary of skipping the harness just in case something went wrong with that foot loop... if his foot slips out of it or through it you could get a snapped wrist in half a second.

In your opening post you said you're going to use experienced climbers and riggers... I would expect them to offer equal or better advice then we can here.

[mikkowilson]

And you may be able to get away with a simple green box for the actor to stand on that you then replace with a "clean plate" - all presuming it's a lock-down shot.


- Mikko