While images produced for Hollywood appear slick and controlled, a stunt performer's testimony in Crashing Waves reveals otherwise, as they parse out all of the elements that go into a car crashing off a cliff and diving into the water for a TV show. Though the image produced and edited creates a split-second moment of violence for the viewer's pleasure, Crashing Waves uncovers the months of labor, training, and danger that the stunt involved, contingent on capitalist, patriarchal hierarchies in the film industry. The film meditates on the stakes of the real in the dominant culture's production of images and emphasizes the importance of the ethics of care.