NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
A podcast about acting, filmmaking, and the improv scene in New Orleans.
NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
Ashley Landrieau: Part 2 From Stage To Stunts
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The curtain rises on craft and courage as Ashley Landrew joins us to chart a life that moves from grade‑school plays to LSU’s performance program and straight into the calculated chaos of stunt training. We get honest about what changes when the audience is a lens instead of a live room, why stage work demands continuous presence, and how a solid dialect becomes a lifeline between takes.
https://www.ashleylandrieu.com/
Voiced by Brian Plaideau
Follow us on IG @nolafilmscene, @kodaksbykojack, and @tjsebastianofficial. Check out our 48 Hour Film Project short film Waiting for Gateaux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pFvn4cd1U . & check out our website: nolafilmscene.com
Welcome to NOLA Film Scene with TJ Play-Doh. I'm TJ. And as always, I'm Play-Doh.
SPEAKER_00:Ashley, welcome back for part two. We're going to talk about your stunt work and how you got into that and what some of your training looks like. So thanks for coming back.
SPEAKER_03:Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming back this week. I don't know why none of us changed our clothes, but you know, we had a chance to wash them, folks. Yes, we did.
unknown:But I didn't, I didn't wash.
SPEAKER_03:So when when did you start acting?
SPEAKER_01:I started acting as a child. I did plays from grammar school all the way through college. I loved it. I I still love it. And I do want to get back on stage. It's it's been calling my name, so I need to get back on that stage.
SPEAKER_00:Did you study theater in college? Or was it just something you did on the side?
SPEAKER_01:I did. I went to LSU where I studied theater with the concentration in performance. Had many classes, had to do three semesters of dance. I did many acting classes, had to do directing classes, and I even got to do aerial silks and be a TA for aerial silks, which was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01:So much fun and a great workout.
SPEAKER_00:That's really cool. I personally have not done a lot of theater. I've done a couple as an adult prior to that, nothing since high school, like church plays and just small stuff. I've done a little bit of improv and I love being on stage. It the feeling being on stage is for me completely different from film acting. And I really enjoy it.
SPEAKER_01:I would agree with that. It's different in the sense because your whole body's in it. You're in the moment. You have to keep going and continuously tell that story. Whereas when you're in a film, you have the scene, you cut, you might go back. And so you're you're stuck in that one moment for longer. Whereas for a film, it's like, hey, we're here for two hours. We got to continuously tell the story and be in it the entire time. Where I think you get a little bit more of a break, unless you're a completely method actor who likes to stay in character the entire time, which kudos to you. That is exhausting, I bet. I couldn't do that. That is not for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I couldn't do it either. The only, the only time I do a little bit of method is doing an accent. I did a film where I had to stay in an Irish accent and I had to kind of do it in between to keep it going. Otherwise, I would drop it. I just don't have enough practice and experience doing an alternate accent, but it it was fun trying to figure that out.
SPEAKER_01:I had to take dialect classes in college as well. So I I understand. There were definitely times in the school year where people were going around speaking in different accents because we were learning one in class. And I was like, okay, you gotta, you gotta figure out your words that get you there. And then how do you how do you stay in that accent? European act actors do that incredibly well. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so many of them. Tom Holland.
SPEAKER_03:The keywords and phrases. I play with my Cajun accent a little, even though I'm not Cajun. I did one audition, self-tape, and I shared it with Hick Sheremy to show, hey, how'd I do? And mine's usually tubado and boodrup. Or go get a ghetto out in the swamp, you know, you keep it kind of like there, that kind of chop kind of weird. He's like, Oh, you kept it good. He liked to take my first take, and I like my third. And I didn't book any of those.
SPEAKER_02:Well, you have fun.
SPEAKER_03:I haven't had you have fun. Exactly. Exactly. I just haven't had a role where I've had to do it yet. TJ and I were talking about this before. I'm about to go do an audition, which might be a little New York, you know. You got that guy, he's kind of kind of connected, you know what I'm saying? So we'll see if I use that.
SPEAKER_01:Might as well if they give you an opportunity to improv, maybe.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. If I can keep it going through the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01:Also true. Also true.
SPEAKER_03:So you you touched on your stunt work, and I I can't remember the phrase you use, but I love how it's it's all storytelling. The biggest thing we found out here, which people may or may not think of stunts, makeup, writing, acting, editing, intimacy coordinator is all focused towards a story to make it better.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:So I just love that. Tell us a little bit about your stunts and where you started and how you got into that, please. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I've always been an adventure seeker, tomboy growing up. I grew up jet skiing and water skiing and slalom skiing and wakeboarding and weight skating and jumping off the roofs of a pier and jumping in the lake, you know. I like dangerous things. And I've always I've always loved action films in Indiana Jones. God, I love those films. But how do they do the stunt? How do they do it? I've always wanted to know how. And I looked up some short films of how to do stunts when I was younger, and I just thought it was a cool thing. Again, it's finding the magic, the movie magic. This is the magic, the how to do it and make it look real. Because it's fake. How do you make fake look real? That's magic. So I have just been training in stunts. I have not done, I have not been cast in a film where I had to do stunts. I've helped stunt coordinate little, little things. Not that they're not important, but I would like to climb that ladder because I do love stunts. So I did my first training was with John Zuriman stunt camp in Florida. That's where I did my first body burn, my first partial body burn, 40 foot ball, fight scenes, and honestly, the bug bitney. Uh, a lot of those instructors are also stunt performers in Universal. It's like the Indiana Jones stunt show. Um nice. And doing stunts in front of a live audience is also different than doing stunts for a camera. It's about your eyelines, it's about your sidelines. You have to make sure that you're still selling it without hurting someone. And within that training, we were doing fight choreography. And the person I was training with was a martial artist, very good martial artist. I almost got hit in the face. I mean, I felt his fist touch my nose. He's like, Hold, hold. He's like, Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Fighters are used to making contact. So if they don't feel contact, it's weird for them. So it's kind of funny because they had the right moves now, but I could continuously do it without hitting the right marks without hitting them, if that makes sense. They need something to hit, whereas the goal is not to hit. So it's you have to rewire your brain almost. Um, so in that camp, we also did body burns, which is a lot of fun. Uh, we did uh 40 footfall again, a lot of fun. I mean, the thing that you climb this ladder that's just going straight up. It's just a single ladder that's going up. And then when you get there, there's a little plate that big.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:My feet, my foot size, I'm like a six or seven. I had a little bit more space for my feet on that thing. And the only way down is to jump. So you have different goals. You have a suicide, which is going face first, you're always landing on your back. Then there's backfall. I did not do the backfall. There is a header, which is like you're going on a headstand, and then you flip and you land on your back. And then there's face off, which you're going face forward, last second, flip on your back. I only did suicide. I was not confident doing the backfall or face off or header, which there's nothing wrong with that. I had friends who did it. It was very cool to watch. Um, I would I'm gonna stick with the fights, fist bites, and wire work. That's that's my favorite. I mean, that's hard fault.
SPEAKER_00:Sorry to interrupt. What is the margin of error going off that ladder platform onto? I'm assuming it's an airbag that you're falling onto. What's the margin of error for that? How big is the airbag?
SPEAKER_01:The airbag is huge. And so they've gone through quite a few versions of the airbag. Originally, people just used mattresses. You need something softer than that. So what they have now, it's you know, like those play, the jump playhouses, you know, the blow up ones. Imagine that base. I mean, that's huge, it's a huge thing. In the middle of it is a red square, which you want to land flat on. But within it, they have the trapeze netting. So it kind of catches you instead of you bouncing off. So it's more of a cradle, and then they have these air flaps on the side, which air releases from, and you have to wait for it to come back up. It doesn't take long. But they put a lot of work into developing those things. But I'll tell you, if someone was at the top of that ladder and wanted to jump off the side, it's a choice. I mean, and look, if you're not jumping straight, there were some times where someone would jump and they would land and they would get off. The next person would climb, and because they landed on it, the airbag might have shifted to the right or shifted to the left or shifted back. So you gotta tell them, hey, bring it forward, or hey, bring it to the right, or hey, bring it to the left a little bit, just so it's there, but it is pretty big, and you can get a headache.
SPEAKER_00:My fear would be hesitating and getting hurt. Just I'm completely terrified of heights.
SPEAKER_01:Safety is a state of mind, even if you feel safe, you can get hurt.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Stunt coordination, like intimacy coordination, is all up to perform to the performer. Yeah, and the team. Right, right. But I'm saying it boils down to if you don't feel safe on either side of that, pause. There's a problem, I can't do this, yada yada yada.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:You have to be able to speak up for yourself a little bit and your team should speak up for you.
SPEAKER_01:But you have to be brave. You should definitely speak up for yourself because if you lie about something, let's say you're on a stunt and you don't know how to do that, and you've never done it before, and you say that you're gonna do it, and then you do it and you do it wrong, you can get hurt, you can hurt someone else. You also, if you're in the middle of filming, someone gets hurt. That is production time that is now stopped. And as we know, the most expensive thing on a film set is time. You're not gonna get that back. And those people want to keep going. That's why stunt coordinators are very particular about who they hire. They need to trust you, which is completely understandable. And you people have died on film sets. We've seen this with Rust. You know, I also didn't mention this earlier. I have worked with firearms, handguns, shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles, and working with armors. If you're gonna use a firearm on set, you better be comfortable with it. And you better know how it's gonna be treated on set. They are so serious about it. Yep, you can die, plain and simple. Yeah, you gotta be a little insane to want to do stunts.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would agree with that. I did twisted metal not long after the rust incident, and the weapon I was carrying on my back was an M14. It's a wooden frame weapon, very heavy. And when they handed it to me checking the chamber, they actually had the barrel plugged, so ammunition could not be loaded into it. They were very, very careful and very particular about it. And 20 years in the military, weapons handling, I can really appreciate that. Because my my background is treat firearms, all of them, prop ones or real ones, it doesn't matter as if it's loaded. I can really appreciate being careful with firearms on set.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I would make the argument you have firearms and you have blanks. I can make the argument that blanks are more dangerous than a firearm. When people handle a firearm and there's bullets, they're like, Oh, I know this can kill someone. They have that. But when someone says, hey, this firearm has blanks, they say, Oh, it's just fake. It's not real. Uh, no, a real explosion still happens. And even if there's not a bullet in it, if that gun is on the ground, and let's say a little pebble goes into the barrel, there is now a projectile in that gun. And when that explosion happens, that thing is going wherever you're aiming it. And that little pebble can kill someone.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:You have to be so careful. And I love the armors I work with, the petways. They're very knowledgeable about guns. I got my gun training from them. I've also just gone to the range and shoot with them. So I know how it feels to shoot a blank and a true firearm, but safety, safety, safety, safety.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. There was an actor in the late 80s. It was a TV show. I can't remember the name of the show. The guy was really fit and he was playing around on set with a firearm with blanks, and he thought it's just a blank, nothing's gonna come out, and he lost his life, you know, because he put that weapon really close to his head when it discharged. And like you said, there is still an explosion that's coming out of the end of that barrel. Pressure has to release, and it releases through the end of that barrel, and it was too much pressure for a human body, you know, a head to take. We used blanks in training uh in the military. And for a full automatic weapon, at least the ones we were using, you had to have a blank firing adapter on the end of it, you know, so that gas pressure would cycle the weapon at the speed that you need for full auto. I I'm digressing a little bit, but I definitely understand what you're saying. There's a different feel when you fire a firearm with a blank versus a live round.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, there is.
SPEAKER_00:I think you're talking about Bruce Say that again, uh from Bruce Lee's son.
SPEAKER_03:I don't think Bruce Lee shot himself.
SPEAKER_00:No, he Bruce Lee's son, Brandon, he was actually standing on a table. Uh I'll I'll look it up.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I thought it was a scene where like he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, and there was I've heard of that, but I don't think that was brand.
SPEAKER_03:The the good thing to come out of that is when I work background on a show, when I do some 48-hour films, some indie movies, people are now hyper aware, again, that they should do a safety check. We did a western, we got guns that can't even be loaded. We still did the safety check.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_03:And we proved it to somebody, you know. Not that I need to prove to TJ at the gun I'm home, but it's a good habit to be in and just a good practice. I had one where 48 where I was, and I've talked about it before, a gun was to my head, can't be loaded. It was but it was a metal prop that could easily be switched and go, oh yeah, that's our that's our fake gun.
SPEAKER_01:Once that camera starts rolling, that gun is real.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And that's where your character, you as a person, your mind knows that it's a film, but your body doesn't. Your mind knows we're playing make-believe, but your body is like, there's a gun to my head and a discussion. That's what it thinks. And here in America, where our culture is we're so used to guns being around, we need to do a lot more gun safety. We have kids who play with guns with toy guns, and they just shoot people like they think it's not a big deal. If we start teaching people at a younger age gun safety, I think we would have a much more safe community. And even with film, people see a firearm, they say, Oh, it's fake, it's not a big deal. They accidentally grab the live one because they look even a plastic one that is you can hit it on something. I mean, truly fake, fake, fake, fake. It looks just like the real one.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Firearms are not a toy, they're not a toy. And I appreciate that y'all are being really respected for the firearms on a film set. Even if the even if the firearms are total plastic, they're toys. They came from Kmart and you unwrapped them. It's just the best practice to be in, just to make sure everyone feels safe.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, when what he's referring to, that western that we did, we all bought period correct revolvers from the late 1800s, and I checked all of them. We checked them all every day just in case somebody had a real weapon that was a stand-in. No live ammunition was allowed on set. I did have non-firing dummy rounds that were in the weapon, and we all double-checked them. You can tell a dummy round versus a live round. And the weapon I bought, I bought my setup from a prop house. And there were options to buy a firing prop and a non-firing prop. And the firing one would fire either caps that would simulate the firearm sound or blanks. And I bought the non-firing version.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, but even when you have something, we're still not putting a gun at someone. That is another movie magic where you can have the camera make it look like they're offset shooting at that person. The whole thing with intensity within film that I talk about stunts and intimacy coordinating, it's still about being safe and making sure everyone goes home physically and mentally well from work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Still work.
SPEAKER_00:The actor I was talking about was named John Eric Huxman in the TV show was cover up.
SPEAKER_03:Nice. Nice. Yeah, you're talking about Rust, the uh she was the cinematographer, and she was behind the camera while the gun was being pointed at the camera. And the thing that kept striking me when I worked on a set, and they could broadcast what was coming onto the camera to all the crew's phones so everybody could see it. So if you can do that, no one needs to stand behind the camera when a gun is being shot. Yeah, you could still have and just point it off to the side, and they can shoot it into a pile of sand or whatever it was, and you could still get the same look.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Also, if something comes out of that gun, those cameras are so expensive. You don't want to shoot that camera. Let's be real. No one wants anything. You've ever seen the camera guy take care of a camera, how gentle they are with it. They don't want anyone pointing a firearm directly down the barrel of the camera. You shoot that glass breaks. I mean, your phone day is gone. It's just it's not even worth it.
SPEAKER_00:An Aria Alexa body by itself is 90 grand and then lenses and all the attachments.
SPEAKER_01:You break it, you buy it.
SPEAKER_00:So don't do that. We can and a lot of DPs own their own kit, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you want a DP to be pissed at their equipment. You will not you will not work for them again. I can guarantee that.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Well, we are coming to the end of our second episode with Ashley. And we're gonna go to a third. No, we're gonna have to cut it off. But I'm gonna ask you one last question. Sure. And we've asked it in different ways of different people. What would a dream role be or a dream job? What like for me? I want to be an action figure. So if I can make Star Wars, they make me an action figure. I'm done.
SPEAKER_02:I'm happy.
SPEAKER_03:Well, not done. I still want to get more money and more roles. But what would be a dream job for you?
SPEAKER_01:Dream job. I I really want to be in an action film. Like, like Marvel was so heavy in action. I yeah, I want to do that. I want to do my own stunts as much as I can and bring a superhero to life. That would be incredible. Oh my gosh, that's fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I'd even do DC, James Gunn, you know. I'll I'll take the hit and just go to the distinguished competition.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe you'll be the one to bring DC back. Who knows?
SPEAKER_01:Let's get some good DC movies. Let's let's bring those back.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I think Gunn is well on the way, and I'm not just sucking up maybe a little bit, but his first outing creature commandos, fantastic show. One of my favorite comics from growing up. It's a little adult. Superman looks great, and I think he's found the key of how to deal with the all-powerful character, and he won't be boring.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, see, see, that's that's the issue with Superman. How do you how do you defeat perfection?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Kryptonite.
SPEAKER_01:Right. I grew up on Batman Animated Series. I love the comic books. That's my bread and butter. Let me let me be the next Batgirl.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. As long as they release that film.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Because the other one got shelved, folks, for tax write-offs and blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_01:Blah, blah, blah, blah. All the other stuff that I know nothing about.
SPEAKER_03:It's a great answer. I I love the DC animated universe too. Whenever they say who's your Batman, yeah, that's my Batman. I'm I'm animated all the way. Animated series, yeah. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
SPEAKER_01:Definitely.
SPEAKER_03:So thank you for joining us. Do you have any socials you want to share?
SPEAKER_01:You can find me on my website, AshleyLandrew.com. I'm also on Instagram, Ashley.landrew. Come follow me. I'll post more.
SPEAKER_00:Very cool. Yeah. Thanks for joining us, Ashley. We really enjoyed it. Yeah, thank you all for having us. My voice cracked. Let me say that again. Thanks for joining us, Ashley. We really enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you all for having me. I really enjoyed my time here. I had a great time.
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