Emmy-Nominated 'Community' Stunt Coordinator Takes Us Inside the Paintball Episode

As final-round Emmy voting gets underway (now through Aug. 28), Yahoo TV is taking an inside look at one of the most fun categories: Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or a Variety Program. We begin with Yahoo’s own Community and nominee Ben Scott, who coordinated the stunts for this season’s paintball episode, “Modern Espionage,” which featured homages to Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Let’s start with the Dean (Jim Rash) and his elevator fight. How did that come together?
The director, Rob Schrab, actually said, “Hey, you know that Captain America: Winter Soldier scene where they’re in the elevator doing all that? I’d kind of like to do something like that in this elevator,” and I said, “All right.” So I looked it up, researched it, put it all together, videoed it with my team, and showed it to him. He looked at it and said, “Oh, that’s great, that’s great. Can you change this and this?“ I said, “Sure.” So we went back, did it again. He loved it.

So Jim Rash really did all that?
I put it together and rehearse it in a way knowing that it’s going to be better if the actor can do it. Of course we do it with the doubles first, to make it safe, and then if there’s some kind of really tricky move, I only do it with the double. But we simplified it enough so he could do his own stunts, and he actually did a really, really good job.

How much time did you have to work with Jim?
Probably an hour or 45 minutes. But we had rehearsed it two or three hours before that and got it all down, and then brought him in.

The big shootout takes place at the black tie event, where Annie (Alison Brie) and Abed (Danny Pudi) do a bit of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. 
I had 23 stunt people in there that day. The first time they came out, I had everybody taking hits and going down, and the director goes, “No, no, no, that’s too violent, that’s too violent. What are you doing? Everybody looks like they’re dying.” So I had to take that down and only have a couple of flip falls and a couple of people hitting the ground so that it wasn’t quite as violent. More funny than violent, you know?

Speaking of flips, can we talk about the opening action sequence with Star-Burns and Todd in the parking garage?
It was awesome. I brought in a parkour guy to double Todd. They had told me about this guy, and I looked him up and got references — I’d never hired him before. We went through the parking structure before anybody else came up, and I said, “All right, this is what we got going on. I need a foot chase here. I want to do this and this and this. Now show me what you got.”

And that guy ran up on top of a few cars he shouldn’t have practicing [laughs]. He leaped over a car and bent the hood and got me in a little bit of trouble. But the thing he did was, he ran up one of them, jumped across the trunks, dipped the trunk on the other car, bailed off with this full-blown huge assault rifle paintball gun with strobes and all this junk on it, and does a full flip in the air and lands off of the car onto the ground, twisting side flips, and then goes to shoot the guy and he was gone. He showed me that, and I said, “We’re doing that. We are doing that right there. That’s awesome.” I showed it to the director and he loved it.

Any other moments you wanted to mention?
Joel [McHale] did a flying dive over a bunch of tables. That was pretty cool. That really was him. I did it with the double first, made sure the tables were supported. He slid around, turned his shoulder, and shot a couple more people. He’s an athlete.

Is there anyone in that cast we might be surprised to know is really good with a paintball gun?
Oh, Danny Pudi is really good at it. Ken Jeong, he loves it. I mean, he doesn’t like to get shot much, but he likes shooting people.

Looking at your IMBD page, I see that you were also the stunt coordinator for last season’s Justified episode that included the epic Winnebago brawl. That was one of my favorite scenes of the year.
Actually, they wanted me to [submit] for Justified, too, so we did a bunch of clips for that, but it didn’t get nominated. It was all scripted, and Jon Avnet, the director, loves action, and he loves to let the action coordinators go with their designs and their creativity. He let me go in that motorhome the day before with my doubles and we played it out completely. That was a really fun shoot. It was tight quarters inside there. It was the real RV.

I still have video on my phone from the rehearsals we did to bring it all together from different angles. I had three cameras on it rehearsing it with my doubles, and they were doing the dialogue and everything. So it was great to be able to have that the day before, and rehearse it all, and smash them onto the tables and shoot the guns into the ceiling and the blood dripping down. Avnet’s an artist. He’s a great director, and he let us do some great stuff.

Is there a difference when you’re coordinating stunts for a comedy series versus a drama?
Well, you walk into a production meeting on a comedy and everybody’s laughing and telling jokes. You walk into a production meeting on a drama or a horror TV show, and everybody’s looking at legs and arms, decapitations — it’s very, very drab and dark. Comedy is so much better in the way of going to work: You know you’re going to get to go and laugh. 

The one thing that gets me though is when you’re setting up a shot, and [one year, for instance] I had six or eight squibs on Joel McHale’s chest, and I said, “Hey, Joel, now you know when these squibs go off, you’ve got to keep your arms away and you can’t be looking down at them, because they’ll blow up in your face and get you in the eyes and stuff,” and he goes, “What squib? What are you talking about, Ben? What?” I had to turn away, take a breath, turn back around, and then say, “Joel, you got it, right?” “Yeah, I got it.” You never know when they’re serious or joking, and they’re always joking.

I just have to repeat myself in the way of the safety factors just to make sure they weren’t thinking about their next joke. It’s not even on camera — they’re on it the whole time in-between shots. All the time they’re joking around. I like to just go sneak into their little groups and listen. What they’re saying is so off-the-wall. Some of the things they go off on, the tangents, it’s like being at an improv.