Too much Sophia... So little Sarah

[chasesummers]

Sophia Crawford if I'm not mistaken has been SMG's stunt double for 4 seasons in Buffy and she did a great job but they put her more then Sarah and without a doubt Sarah is very flexible and athletic as I paid close attention when it was clear she was doing the stunts.

What bugs me is that for the first 4 seasons as I said, Sophia takes over, in the later seasons it's very clear that Sarah is shown doing more stunts/fight scenes.

I then noticed something when Jeff Pruitt (which is the Stunt Coordinator of Buffy for 4 seasons too) started putting recordings of Sophia doing the fight scenes and other, he showed absolutely nothing from Sarah which is very unfair as it's clear she did fight scenes, she said it herself and Joss Whedon said it too.

I read somewhere that Jeff Pruitt is putting the video's together only to give Sophia a good name and ''get her out there'' so I came to a conclusion...

Jeff simply put as little as he could from Sarah just to put Sophia (Which.... SURPRISE! is his Wife!) so I have no doubt about it.

Bugs the hell out of me, simply look at the last episode when Buffy is fighting Angel.
When Angel strikes his sword to her and she grabs it saying ''me''
Sarah gets up from the floor
Sophia comes from nowhere and kicks Angel
in the next scene (milliseconds away) we see Sarah doing that same kick Sophia did so Sophia's appearance was very... unnecessary.

Look that up and tell me what you think, also... how do you feel about this whole thing, do you agree or disagree?

 

[Black Eye Guy]

I think it's quite clear watching the show, Sarah wasn't doing the majority of the action shots in both the first half and second half. Sarah did a lot, but you can tell that anything that didn't require some face front shots were not Sarah.

Which is fine, for insurance and stuff I'm sure she wasn't allowed to do the majority of the stuff. I think the wigs and stuff got better in the later series which helped mask it, but there are still some bad examples of it through the entire run of the show.

 

[chasesummers]

Yeah I agree, Sarah's other stunt double looked younger too but as I said it's clear she did more stunts, you can see in season 6 when she fights her first enemies after being resurrected, there is more Sarah.

 

[JCoatsworth]

The thing is, you often can't let the lead actor do the stunts, even if they want to do them, because if anything happens, the actor can't be replaced for the rest of the shooting, and production has to be put on hold, which is very costly.
I think on the set of Iron Man 3, Robert Downey Jr. did a stunt and hurt his leg or something and the release of the movie was delayed for a few weeks or even months. And a TV series has to keep an even tighter schedule, because they have to air the episodes.

Bugs the hell out of me, simply look at the last episode when Buffy is fighting Angel.
When Angel strikes his sword to her and she grabs it saying ''me''
Sarah gets up from the floor
Sophia comes from nowhere and kicks Angel
in the next scene (milliseconds away) we see Sarah doing that same kick Sophia did so Sophia's appearance was very... unnecessary.

Look that up and tell me what you think, also... how do you feel about this whole thing, do you agree or disagree?

This kick is in the finished episode, yes? Jeff Pruitt is not the editor of the show. He has absolutely nothing to do with which takes make it into the final cut and which don't. He is on set to film the stunts and that's it. And even if the editors put 1% Sarah and 99% Sophia in the show, Pruitt has nothing to do with it.

Now, I don't know about the stuff he uploaded. I just enjoy seeing the stunt doubles do awesome fight scenes. I don't really care why he uploaded the stuff, I'm just glad he did.

By the way, I don't disagree with you. I would love to see more Sarah in the fight scenes.

 

[Blaze]

I think it's not necessarily a bad thing, they just got better at hiding the stunt doubles in later season. It's kind of bothersome that Sarah doesn't get any recognition, or gets some scenes cut in order to have more Sophia. But I also think this is part of the show business. Sarah is paid to act, and Sophia to do stunt, so really it's not a big problem that she is extra used to me, because it's her job. And like BEG said, I'm sure a lot of it had to do with either insurance, or not wanting the lead to hurt herself.

Also, it might seem useless in some scenes to use a stunt double because the fighting seems pretty basic, but don't forget that they have to learn a whole choreography on top of all the lines, plus sometimes they do require technique, so it'd be easier to get the double than to get the actor to learn even more stuff and risk hurting themselves. I'm sure Sarah did a lot of her own scenes, but with the amount of fighting in BtVS, I'm also sure they still had tons of material for the stunt double.

I actually always thought that Angel's double was more noticeable than Buffy's, but I think that's just me.

 

[chasesummers]

JCoatsworth: Thanks for letting me know that he didn't choose the shots and for your opinion, yeah tv shows have much less time.

Blaze: You've got a good point about learning the lines and the fighting scenes. Thats my point in the fight scene with Angel, some shots were very unnecessary and also, Angel's stunt double looked nothing like David! 😛

---------- Post added at 09:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:23 AM ----------

Another thing I'd like to say and acknowledge, we've got one hell of a lead actress besides of these little things, Sarah is amazing 😀

 

[Lyri]

I don't really know what you mean when you say Pruitt putting together recordings of Sophia. Do you mean, like, a collection of works that Sophia has done to showcase her skills, and thus, get her more stunt work?

If that's the case, then OF COURSE he shouldn't put ANYTHING of Sarah in those videos. It's a collection of Sophia Crawford's work, the many different stunts she has pulled off successfully over her career, it has nothing to do with Sarah, so she shouldn't be included in such a collection.

If you're talking about what ended up in the final cut of an episode, then Pruitt would have had nothing to do with the shots that were chosen - that's up to the editors and directors. He was only onset to coordinate the stunts and fight scenes, to make sure everyone was as safe as they could be.

From an insurance point of view, there's no way Sarah would have been allowed to do a majority of the stunts. The close up shots, yes, and she may have been capable of more. But she was the star of the show, the whole thing revolved around her. One slip up, a kick that connected, and she could have been seriously hurt. And for a character who could heal from a broken bone in less than a week and a split lip in less than twenty-four hours, a serious injury would have caused havoc.

And Sarah isn't the only one who had a stunt double, and far from the only one who was seriously visible. James and David especially had doubles that looked nothing like them and were seen in more than one scene. James' double specifically was seen a lot during Spike's fight with Buffy in 'Harsh Light of Day'. David's double did pretty much ALL of David's fight scenes in S5 of Angel because of David's knee injury, which required him to be sitting for a majority of the time.

Sarah may have been capable of a lot, if not all of her stunts, but there's no way the network would have risked her safety by allowing her to do them, nor should they.

 

[The Chosen]

If you're referring to the clips that Jeff Pruit has been uploading to his YouTube channel, then he offers a pretty solid reasoning as to why he doesn't feature much of SMG or other cast members:

or now I'm trying to edit them out and only use bits where the actor chose to speak on camera to the fans. Everyone wants to control their own image. I understand that. My home movies are about Sophia and the stunt people mainly.

He then goes on to say, specifically about SMG:

Most actors on BUFFY were always nice. We had a problem with SMG's ego getting out of hand, but that's not unusual in this business. It's all too common. I have put some of the actors in some of the videos (even though it's supposed to be only about the stunt people) because I knew they would like it. Maybe later I'll make a vid with everyone included. I would just take care not to include anything that would embarrass anybody. That's all.

These are all found in the comments section of one his videos: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F-23zmIyzU]THE WISH[/ame] I highly recommend that everyone check them out -- they're uberneat!

 

[chasesummers]

Thanks for sharing The Chosen, I saw that comment before but not about Sarah's ego thing. They were all very young.

What I wanted to point out was only that certain scenes you can see Sarah doing the stunt and Sophia was still put in and I simply thought it was unnecessary but business is business, don't we all want to see Sarah do some more kicks then we see? 🙂
I understand that especially in a TV series with a 7 year contract it's better not risk the actor but it was clear she did some and she deserves that credit for really working hard. 🙂

Thanks again for all of your sharing your opinions!
and to The Chosen, I saw all Jeff Pruitts video's and yes I'd recommend them to all Buffy fans 😛

 

[BuffyElevated]

I saw an interview one time where Sarah was talking about how she asked to do more stunt work early on in the show, but the producers said no because of insurance reasons. They couldn't risk their star getting injured on set!