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.

Scout Day

The project started with a scouting day where myself and Jereme crammed into the production van with the NüRD guys (what the production company is now called), and basically just hit as many different possibilities as we could find downtown. Scouting with another traceur for a video was new to me but I really liked it as you can bounce ideas off of eachother and find new opportunities with more sets of eyes (the production guys still need a bit of work on their parkour vision). We then picked the best of the best and laid out a shoot plan for the next and only shoot day.

The Shoot Day

Was about 11 hours of work in an uncomfortable business suit in the hot summer There were two really harrowing spots we had selected, so we set one for the first shot in the morning to give the most prep time and one at the very end in case I messed up and we had to scrap it.

All considered though, the day went great! There were some setbacks and some last minute changes and improvs, but that’s how it goes and that’s what we’re the best at Plus, a last minute change at Freeway Park got me to revisit one of the hardest wallpasses I’ve ever done (with success in after 30 tries of getting used to it in the suit…)

-Full Flickr set of photos-

See the video!

Credits

Produced by NüRD Productions
Sponsored by Stoel Rives LLP
Starring: Tyson Cecka
Make-Up: Jessica Serna
Original Music: Mason Kaye
Recorded and Mixer: Tyler Westen
Violin: Yousi Ma
Cello: Mackenzie Israel-Trummel
Musical Consultants: Alexandra Forman and Caitlin Anderson

Credits

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).

More to Come!

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!

Check Back

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.

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…

Actually there are a lot of interesting challenges to set-work that mesh well with the adaptability that us traceurs train to such a fine point. When one reel of 35mm film costs over a thousand dollars for example, there is a large pressure to get thing perfect the first time you try them on the first take. Many times you aren’t allowed rehearsals for fear of injury or lack of time. Other times you have to be very precise in your landings and take-offs to hit the marks you need to for the camera while also not running into the immense amount of expensive equipment around (and the other actors too…) Not to mention the amount of body-awareness needed to be able to tell the director exactly what you can do in an area without being able to really practice or experiment much.

But now we’re done, the footage is shot, and I am extremely tired. It sounds like these will be out fairly soon, and there may be as many as 16 different commercials coming out of this footage. Oh and check out my new Mervyns look

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, the crew on this job is full of some really great people who are fun to talk to. I’m making new friends and contacts left and right, and I think every single person on the crew has now heard me personally explain what parkour is (or they will by tomorrow!) Even though most of the stuff I’m doing is just flying through the air in interesting ways rather than real parkour, everyone still wants to know why and how I got into it. The two hours I was on camera were pretty cool though, one shot in particular is going to look amazing I think. It’s going to comprise of a head on shot of a wall’s corner with me doing a wallrun on both sides at once heading straight toward camera (after post production of course).

I also spent a large portion of today wandering around West Seattle after the shoot. I found some really beautiful spots looking on at the downtown skyline, and took the water taxi across after sundown for the first time. Beautiful! I love Seattle! I’m starting to feel really lucky that I live here, every time I come back from some travels Seattle gets even more beautiful

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

Oh and I’m probably one of the few sites that will link the full credits, the performers who deserve credit for this are The Tribe, Team Tempest, and the Urban Ninja. We actually worked very well together, we knew we had to pull together to put on the best show we could – and we totally did

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.

But anyway, the performance went perfectly. They built us some sweet obstacles, and we choreographed a great little run in the day’s preparation that we had.

My favorite part of the performance was that we integrated it with the fashion show they were doing “catwalk” style. The audience had no idea what was coming, they thought they were just watching a normal little fashion show albeit with a few strange structures lying around. They had no idea that Levi and I had snuck around to the back to prepare for our little surprise. As one of the models was jogging down the catwalk to showcase some new shoes, Levi rushes up onto one of the obstacles jumps to an underbar and rolls out of sight – an absolute blur of color. The model comes back acting like nothing happens and the next one comes out to do a bit jogging. I take my cue and dive into a double kong across the stage, rolling out of sight.

The audience is freaking out at this point, the energy in the room is crazy. The next model brings Levi sprinting up the entire length of the catwalk and I follow him up after a quick tic tac. This is where our performance really begins. Huge kongs and underbars onto the stage, flips practically on top of the audience, large jumps over them, coordinated near misses of smacking into each other, and a sweet sychronized catleap near the finale ensues. Video to come soon

Everyone at K-Swiss seemed to really love the show. It culminated in probably the first standing ovation I’ve ever had. We had some great talks with some big executives there, we may have convinced a few shoe designers to come to Mark’s gym, and the bottom-line – we entertained a lot of people. Even after the show actually, as we burned off some extra adrenaline on a sweet cat leap we eyed earlier.

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.

The problem keeps coming down to grip. The awards show is at night, we’ve been rehearsing the most part in the day. At night in LA the air gets moist and the stage practically turns into a skating rink. We’ve used about 2 miles of grip tape and massive amounts of crushed walnuts that were spray glued on but it is just not helping. Thankfully we had a Plan B – the wet plan at wet speed. It definitely isn’t as impressive but the timing and teamwork still shines though and people like it. Tomorrow for the actual show they are going to give one last attempt to repaint and regrip everything, hopefully it will work.

The saving grace is that only the four floor guys have to revert to plan B. Frosti and Victor Lopez are doing an amazing railing manipulation scene on top of a building that ends with a jump to and slide down a massive pole 40ft up. Richard King and Paul Darnell are jumping a few roof gaps, on of which is 52ft up in the air across a 16ft gap. Oh did I jumping? I meant flipping, PD is doing a huge diving front and Richie is throwing a gainer.

So the show will obviously still be fricking amazing to watch and we’ve still been getting great comments. I just feel a bit dissapointed that us floor guys have to run plan B, and it feels ironic that the stunt awards is the most dangerous job I’m been on – not because I’m doing a gainer roof gap like Richie, but because I can’t even turn corners on the floor without slipping…

That’s what happens with professional jobs though, you just have to suck it up and do whatever works the best for the group as a whole, to put on the best performance you can while staying safe.