Videos and Parkour
I started training because I saw a Ripley's Believe It or Not with the Yamakasi featured in it. It was brought up in conversation with Brian while I was in college, but it wasn't until I saw videos of it online that I started thinking "maybe I should go out and try this."
Part of the fun of training when I started was filming what we were doing because we loved editing video and I think we all wanted to be Jackie Chan at heart. I look back now and think "Why would you even film that, it is so ... bad." The answer though is very simple ... because it was fun.
When we started, training was all about fun. We had a good time together and we were getting better at something we enjoyed. As we got more serious, the training became more serious, but it was still fun to train and to do it together. We stopped filming as much because it got in the way of the training, but every once and a while we’d pull the camera out to review what we were doing.
I have heard and read a lot of comments saying that internet videos (usually YouTube is singled out here) are a leading proponent in the defamation of parkour and the creation of negative viewpoints on it, but I can’t help to think where I’d be if there weren’t videos (and quite a few that we saw when we started were not good by any means) on the internet to spark interest and lead people to find more or better information on what we do.
I bring this up because Brian and I read about the film festival that Skipper is having at (b)EAST Coast this year and we thought, "Why not have a little fun?" I don't know if we'll be able to get together and film and edit anything between now and then, but we will try. It actually makes me kind of excited because this activity has made me remember all the good times had when we were just jumping around trying to be creative, both with training and with filming. And while I can guarantee we won’t be putting out an amazing video like those from Levi or Frosti, perhaps something we do will inspire someone on some level.
Regardless, we’ll have fun.
Part of the fun of training when I started was filming what we were doing because we loved editing video and I think we all wanted to be Jackie Chan at heart. I look back now and think "Why would you even film that, it is so ... bad." The answer though is very simple ... because it was fun.
When we started, training was all about fun. We had a good time together and we were getting better at something we enjoyed. As we got more serious, the training became more serious, but it was still fun to train and to do it together. We stopped filming as much because it got in the way of the training, but every once and a while we’d pull the camera out to review what we were doing.
I have heard and read a lot of comments saying that internet videos (usually YouTube is singled out here) are a leading proponent in the defamation of parkour and the creation of negative viewpoints on it, but I can’t help to think where I’d be if there weren’t videos (and quite a few that we saw when we started were not good by any means) on the internet to spark interest and lead people to find more or better information on what we do.
I bring this up because Brian and I read about the film festival that Skipper is having at (b)EAST Coast this year and we thought, "Why not have a little fun?" I don't know if we'll be able to get together and film and edit anything between now and then, but we will try. It actually makes me kind of excited because this activity has made me remember all the good times had when we were just jumping around trying to be creative, both with training and with filming. And while I can guarantee we won’t be putting out an amazing video like those from Levi or Frosti, perhaps something we do will inspire someone on some level.
Regardless, we’ll have fun.
Labels: american parkour, freerunning, parkour, ripley' believe it or not, videos, Yamakasi
posted by Sam Slater at
11:05 AM
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