Before the first video has even been completely finished and released, a new one we just shot in Seattle is coming out this Friday the 8th. Graciously sponsored by Stoel Rives law firm, this one focuses on a race in a full business suit across Seattle shot in full 4K (about 8 times the size of 720 HD) by the RED ONE camera.
As promised, this is the Director’s Cut from Ken Arlidge of the K-Swiss commercial “Even Playing Field” featuring Tyson Cecka, Victor Lopez, and Anna Kournikova advertising the new Ariake freerunning shoe.
We also had Mark Toorock (from my team – The Tribe) behind the scenes acting as the parkour consultant (scouting, choreographing, managing), as well as Frosti, Skynative, and Xin jumping in whenever needed for additional stunts (none of their stuff made it into this commercial unfortunately, but you can see Levi’s whole other commercial here).
Ken went through around three days of footage to cut together this 49 second version for his personal reel. He even sent me to a sound studio in Seattle to get the first second of audio. But we were doing a lot more than just sitting around for those three days of shooting, there is still some really good footage out there that hasn’t seen the light of day yet.
But no worries, that extra footage is definitely not going to waste. In a few weeks I’ll have both a higher quality version of this commercial (both TV and Director’s Cut) up for download, as well as all of the original footage from every shoot day to put into my new stunt reel! Thank you K-Swiss and Aero Films!
You can find out more about this commercial on my media page, or keep checking back here because the full write-up of the amazing experience is coming soon. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed for automatic updates.
Is now up on http://kswiss.com (as TV commercial #1), which means that it’s showing on TV! Now I just need to get a TV…
The last one showed on ESPN, TNT, and MTV so I’m guessing this one will as well. It certainly was a lot of fun to be in, and the finished product is amazing! I also have the director’s cut (which is awesome) prepared by Ken Arlidge, and I’ll get it up here as soon as I have permission.
Just want to say again how great it was working with Ken and the stunt coordinator Gary Jensen, both are so good at what they do that I actually feel honored to have been there. Check out some of Ken’s other work on Aero Film’s website, and you’ll see what I mean. The other principal in this, Victor Lopez, was also really fun to work with on this spot and on the Taurus Stunt Awards.
You can find out more about this commercial and other work on my media page.
Can now be seen here.
Enjoy!
Shooting at 600p requires an incredible amount of light because of the extremely fast shutter speed. Today we shot inside which means they used practically every single lamp they had. They even specially rented some humongous 20k+ beams of death that I didn’t even know existed. We couldn’t stay in front of the camera for very long because it was so hot that the makeup would melt. Which brings interesting challenges when you are trying to throw flips and things, the lights in your eyes are blinding yet you cannot look away…
I forgot to bring my camera again today so sorry for the lack of pictures. While almost all of my parkour buddies are up in Bellingham training like mad, indoors and out, I sat around today on set and did absolutely nothing for seven hours… Although my call time was at 10:30am I didn’t actually go on camera till sometime after 5pm. That is not a unique occurrence for commercials though, sometimes there are days where I never even go on camera!
But I’m not complaining,
Ah, it feels good to be on a professional set again. This time it’s a commercial for Mervyns fashion. And when the footage comes out for this one you are all going to be blown away. They are shooting at 600 frames per second…in HD. That is 20x slowmotion at perfect sharpness at high resolution!
Today I jumped over some walls, created this new weird two step angled extended sideflip thing, and played on a huge trampoline on top of a parking garage in downtown Seattle. It’s feels really good to work local, this city really is the best.
And good news, I am now eligible for entry into the Screen Actors Guild! Things are getting exciting 
Damn, I really tried hard to get the footage from the show but it looks like it is not coming (need to start writing this stuff into the contracts). I wanted the full footage because the TV edit cut out some good stuff from the floor routine and because I could have edited together something really cool…
Oh well, there are some videos out there, click through for the youtube ones – one from the audience and one from the TV edit. I’m the one on the floor in the stupid bright green pants 
Doh! So I remembered to bring my camera so I could take many wonderful pictures of beautiful Arizona, yet I forgot to bring the necessary memory card which turned it into a rather heavy paperweight because I’m too cheap to buy another. Which is too bad because I could have gotten some good practice at shooting in tricky lighting conditions, which, um, you can see a bit in these photos from Mark Sorry Mark.
Oh man, forget everything I said in that last post. They worked their magic today and that stage was as dry as it was when we were first rehearsing Which meant we ran plan A fully through (the first time we were able to run it all). And it went off perfectly, everyone hit everything they wanted to with no mistakes.
For me that meant a big double kong, an incredibly difficult traveling underbar, some gaps in between buildings and a few flips thrown in some great spots (one great sideflip into the audience’s aisle). The entire show was amazing to watch, but the after party is where all the fun is at Stunt people really know how to party…I’ll leave it at that.
The show is scheduled to air on AMC on the 25th at 10:30 PM ET/PT.
Man, we have been working our asses off preparing for this performance. We’ve been there hours ahead of call-times and even started a few days before official paid rehearsals. The show we choreographed is absolutely sick, the timing, the build-ups, it’s all perfect. Unfortunately about half of it no one may ever get to see.
