Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Shane Alexander. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Shane, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Learning the craft has almost been a lifelong journey really. I started practicing martial arts at the age of seven and never really stopped after that, so I guess really you can say I started when I was pretty young, but I am still constantly learning more and more about the work I do! The skills that help me the most in my career so far I have to say are definitely martial arts, more so on how to hit the ground and keep getting up after you do! The biggest challenges I face with my career now are past injuries I have acquired over the years, they tend to give me a hard time every now and then, but I won’t let that stop me!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I work as a stunt performer in the film industry. I have worked here locally in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Mexico with San Diego as my home base, I love it here! Working in this field has been an adventure, to say the least!

My adventure began in 2017. It had been about a year since my dad had passed away from a heart attack at the age of 62. I realized that our time can come at any moment, and I didn’t want to waste any more time missing out on things that I really wanted to do. So the summer of 2017 I attended the International Stunt School in Seattle where my journey of becoming a stuntman began.

I have recently taken on the endeavor of starting a San Diego-based Stunt team this year, and I am happy to say it has been working very well so far! With a trained and local San Diego stunt team we are able to offer better action and action design for local producers and directors looking to bring more action projects to the area! We also offer training to anyone looking to get into stunt work, which ranges from fight choreography all the way to motorcycle training, with quite a bit of other skills in between, as well as training for actors/actresses who may be trying to prepare for an action role. Our members have been working quite a bit this year! Which makes me incredibly happy and proud of what we are doing!

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Pay your artists! I can not stress this enough. I see a lot of posts going around asking people to work for free, I mostly speak about this from a stunt performer standpoint. I have spent thousands of dollars on my stunt training, this is our job and livelihood.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to bring amazing action movies to the local San Diego film industry and to bring better quality filming to San Diego in general, we have such untapped potential that is not being utilized! With enough work and effort it can be done, I already see improvements in films out here every year, and I would like to help contribute to that however I can.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.facebook.com/SoCalStuntCrew
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/so_cal_stunts/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shane.alexander.3158652/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd4ysNp0vnt29r-s0ADTlRg

Image Credits
Tanner Hueter