Darron Ta and company fill unique entertainment business niche
Darron Ta springs backward into the air, whipping his legs overhead, and thumps onto the gym mat in a front sprawl.
“There are many different ways to fall,” he tells a group of students gathered on a Monday night at The Stunt Garage, a gym in a central Edmonton business park. As they practise tumbling safely but convincingly to the floor around him, he cautions, “pain is okay. Injury is not.”
“Try to spread out when you fall. That sells it more,” adds Ta (Management ’18), a professional stunt performer and one of the gym’s co-owners, which include fellow grad and stunt performer Jonathan Nickerson (Emergency Medical Responder ’12).
They were among dozens of Alberta stunt performers tapped to play terrified civilians and infected attackers on HBO’s The Last of Us, the wildly successful, post-apocalyptic series that was filmed across the province.
“I think that’s the moment that I realized film was possible.”
Ta and a group of friends opened The Stunt Garage in March of 2021 after becoming frustrated with the lack of space to hone their craft. Today, Ta says their gym is one of the only ones in Alberta dedicated to training and promoting stunt performers for the highly competitive film and television industry and to fostering this creative community. They also do motion-capture work used to create video games, host workshops by seasoned stunt coordinators and performers from across Canada, and offer classes that include martial arts, acrobatics, breakdance and stunt-based falls.
Despite his background in martial arts and tricking – a discipline that combines martial arts, gymnastics and breakdancing – Ta never imagined he’d one day make a living from those skills. His big break came in late 2021 when he got the chance to perform stunts in the TV series Kung Fu, which films in the Vancouver area.
“I think that’s the moment that I realized film was possible,” Ta says.
He spoke with techlifetoday about running a niche business, stunts as art, and the “glamour” of the film and television industry.
Techlifetoday: What drives your passion for stunt work?
Darron Ta: I love creating content. If we take it back to the original days, we started making viral videos and that was fun for me. And even taking it back further, I loved watching Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen – all those old Hong Kong action stars.
I love martial arts and it kind of brought all my passions together. Creating a fight scene, for example, I’m doing everything that I like. I like creating. I like martial arts. I like the action.
Do you view it as an artform, a sport, a performance?
100% an artform. For example, fight choreo[graphy] – it’s not actually martial arts, really. You’re dancing. You’re with a partner, you’re moving to the beat. You’re not actually trying to punch them, right? It doesn’t look good if you’re actually trying to do a fight. So, I view it as an artform, like a dance.
What role have you carved out for yourself in the business?
One of my roles is to figure out all the expenses at the gym, all the cash flows and making sure we don’t lose money. For example, how do I price [classes] so that it’s affordable for people. A lot of it was just trial and error … and being flexible.
I think the biggest strength for all of us as a team is that we’re all flexible, so that we can problem-solve really quickly and collaboratively.
Many people view film work as glamorous. What’s the reality?
You have to really enjoy what you are doing. You might be working all night, you might be lying in mud for 12 hours, you might be in the cold in -30 C. Then you’re waiting to do a sequence, your body is already cooled down and it’s like super cold, or it might be super hot.
How did your role on The Last of Us come about?
Essentially, they were looking for all the stunt performers in Alberta. A couple individuals – Jodi Stecyk and Martin Cochingco – who knew the TLOU Stunt coordinator, Guy Bews, from before put some of our names forward. We are all very thankful for the opportunity that we were given.
What was it like being on the set of TLOU as a stunt performer?
We’d show up early. We’d get into wardrobe, and then [crews] would put on the prosthetics and the makeup, because that would take two to three hours. Then we’d go on set, we’d work for however many hours. They wanted to shoot at night, so we’d start right at dark, go until sunrise and repeat [the next day]. The days were between 14 and 16 hours ... so, it was very little sleep over that period.
What were the actual stunts they required you to do?
A lot of falls. There was a lot of background fighting, where the infected would chase the rebels or whoever.
Let’s say you were on the street, and you’d get pushed or dragged down and thrown into a weird position. There’s a lot of different types of falls, so you might be contorted or whatever.
Can you pick yourself out in the episodes you were in?
No, absolutely not (laughs). The way they cut it, I have no idea where I was. It’s hard because there were 60, 70 stunt performers working at the time. We had a lot of [stunt performers playing] infected people.
What reaction are you getting from friends and family?
It’s really fulfilling to see everyone watch the work that you did. A lot of my extended family actually were kind of looking down on me for being in film until they realized I was on shows like The Last of Us.
Actually, my cousins watch Kung Fu, so they were watching an episode and they were like, “Wait a minute. Is that Darron?” And they messaged me.
What’s your latest project?
We did some motion capture for a fighting [video] game. And then, a TV show – I don’t know how much I can say – coming out later this year.
