Stunt

A stunt is an unusual and difficult physical feat or an act requiring a special skill, performed for artistic purposes usually on television, theatre, or cinema. Stunts are a feature of many action films. Before computer generated imagery special effects, these effects were limited to the use of models, false perspective and other in-camera effects, unless the creator could find someone willing to jump from car to car or hang from the edge of a skyscraper: the stunt performer or stunt double.

Types of stunt effects

Practical effects

One of the most-frequently used practical stunts is stage combat. Although contact is normally avoided, many elements of stage combat, such as sword fighting, martial arts, and acrobatics required contact between performers in order to facilitate the creation of a particular effect, such as noise or physical interaction. Stunt performances are highly choreographed and may be rigorously rehearsed for hours, days and sometimes weeks before a performance. Seasoned professionals will commonly treat a performance as if they have never done it before, since the risks in stunt work are high, every move and position must be correct to reduce risk of injury from accidents. Examples of practical effects include tripping and falling down, high jumps, extreme sporting moves, acrobatics and high diving, spins, gainer falls, "suicide backflips," and other martial arts stunts.

Stunt (gridiron football)

A stunt in American football and Canadian football, sometimes called a twist, is a planned maneuver by a pair of players of the defensive team by which they exchange roles to better slip past blockers of the offensive team at the beginning of a play.

The purpose of a stunt is to confuse opposing blockers, which is an aid to the defense in rushing an opposing forward pass or kick. The main weakness of a stunt is that it is more vulnerable than average to running plays by the opposing team. In most cases, the defense will not use a play incorporating stunting if it expects a running play from the offense.

There are two main types of stunts. In one, a line player, who would otherwise try to charge forward, instead drops back, and a nearby linebacker or defensive back charges forward instead. In the other, which is known as cross-rushing, line players, instead of charging straight ahead, cross paths. One of them may follow a looping path that goes behind the other before moving forward (in which case the stunt is called a "loop"), or one may wait for the other to penetrate slightly first, and then cross behind, their paths angling across each other. In some variants, a rushing player will run around more than one rushing teammate.

Stunt (disambiguation)

A stunt is a difficult or unusual feat performed for film or theatre.

Stunt or Stunting may also refer to:

See also

Mic (media company)

Mic (Formerly PolicyMic) is a media company focused on news for a generation known as the "millennials". The company reaches 19 million unique monthly visitors and has a higher composition of 18- to 34-year-old readers than any other millennial-focused news site, including BuzzFeed and Vice.

Mic received early attention for its on-the-ground coverage during the revolution in Tunisia, and The Hollywood Reporter remarked that Mic features "stories that intelligently cover serious issues important to young people".

History

PolicyMic was founded in 2011 by Chris Altchek and Jake Horowitz, two high school friends from New York. Since then, they have raised $15 million from investors, including Jim Clark, the founder of Netscape, who said that Altchek and Horowitz "remind me of my younger self". Other investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Advancit Capital, Red Swan Ventures, and The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2014, PolicyMic announced they would re-brand their organization to target millennials, and renamed themselves as "Mic". The company will not disclose its valuation. According to The New York Observer, Mic currently does not make a profit and "is in the increasingly rare habit of actually paying each one of its writers, editors and contributors".

Book of Micah

The Book of Micah is a prophetic book in the Tanakh / Old Testament, and the sixth of the twelve minor prophets. It records the sayings of Micah, Mikayahu, meaning "Who is like Yahweh?", an 8th-century B.C. prophet from the village of Moresheth in Judah (Hebrew name from the opening verse: מיכה המרשתי). The book has three major divisions, chapters 1–2, 3–5 and 6–7, each introduced by the word "Hear," with a pattern of alternating announcements of doom and expressions of hope within each division. Micah reproaches unjust leaders, defends the rights of the poor against the rich and powerful; while looking forward to a world at peace centered on Zion under the leadership of a new Davidic monarch.

While the book is relatively short, it includes lament (1.8–16; 7.8–10), theophany (1.3–4), hymnic prayer of petition and confidence (7.14–20), and the "covenant lawsuit" (6.1–8), a distinct genre in which Yahweh (God) sues Israel for breach of contract, that is, for violation of the Sinai covenant.

Microsoft Comic Chat

Microsoft Comic Chat (later Microsoft Chat, but not to be confused with Windows Chat, or WinChat) is a graphical IRC client created by Microsoft, first released with Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996. Comic Chat was developed by Microsoft Researcher David Kurlander, with Microsoft Research's Virtual Worlds Group and later a group he managed in Microsoft's Internet Division.

Comic Chat's main feature, which set it apart from other IRC clients, is that it enabled comic avatars to represent a user; this character could express a specified emotion, possibly making IRC chatting a more emotive and expressive experience. All of the comic characters and backgrounds were initially created by comic artist Jim Woodring. Later, tools became available that allowed user-created characters and backgrounds.

Comic Chat started out as a research project, and a paper describing the technology was published at SIGGRAPH '96. It was an experiment in automatic illustration construction and layout. The algorithms used in Comic Chat attempted to mimic some basic illustration techniques of comic artists (particularly Jim Woodring). Character placement, the choice of gestures and expressions, and word balloon construction and layout, were all chosen automatically. A widget called the "emotion wheel" allowed users to override the program's choice of expression.