We’re now at a total of ten episodes from the 2012 Parkour Tour! Its been six weeks since I visited Winnipeg in Canada and since then I’ve been releasing one new video from the trip each week. I’ve compiled them all here along with a little more detail on the episode and my intentions with each one.
Welcome to Winnipeg was literally the first day out upon arriving in Canada. I wanted to use this video as a general introduction to the Winnipeg community, and Marc was keen to ensure I saw as much as possible in that first day. We explored some of the smaller spots and locations, then headed to the gym in the evening for a bit. My general intentions for this film were to use it to get to know the locals, aswell as have an easy general start to the tour that I could build upon as the trip would continue.
The day immediately after was the ‘Summer Jam’, one of Winnipeg’s largest gatherings of practitioners. I’d say this was easily the most crowded day, but luckily the spots actually lended themselves to a crowd fairly well. Here I wanted to replicate the sometimes chaotic and energetic nature of training with so many people, so I opted to use music by LehtMoJoe (who I used before in my video Move ‘Literally Dancing’) . To create some sense of respite, I also used some slow-motion scenes so that the action wouldn’t become too overwhelming.
The visit to Pinawa Dam is where I feel the ParkourTour got a real treat. The feeling of adventure and exploration is probably the most important thing to me when it comes to any new experience. Pinawa was no exception, with the powerful but decaying stone of the Dam offset by the natural beauty around it. The location itself didn’t have a significant amount of potential for Parkour, but it was so beautiful and unique that the focus became the place instead of the movement. I decided to make a departure from the previous two films and go with a slower style, along with some more radical grading.
Fantastic Gymnastics is basically the home of the Winnipeg Parkour community. They were very generous with their time and facilities during the tour, and I can see that during the winters the centre would be an incredibly important place for the local practitioners. Following on from some thoughts about the whole ‘Gym Video’ concept, I decided to shoot the entire episode in monochrome. I’ve been thinking about the nature of capturing moments recently, and thinking back to my days of shooting B/W film, it’s so easy to ‘film everything’ without considering why. Thanks to Canon’s nifty little picture style feature, I made the decision to shoot in monochrome in camera. Knowing that I didn’t have post-production to fall back on, I feel this video is more immediate and raw than the others, and it’s probably my favourite.
I wanted to make the last tour video an example of everyone moving together. Thinking over my past work, ‘Live On’ strikes me as the video I feel shows that sense of community best, so I proposed we produce a video in a similar style on the last day of the tour. Everyone really pulled together to choreograph a series of shots at a range of different spots, and because of that effort I feel that the final video shows that sense of community. The fisheye look is extreme but I think it does have its place in this style of filmmaking when used for deliberate effect.
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