Lights, camera, parkour: on the road from street subculture to Hollywood

If you went back to 1895, met Max Skladanowski in Berlin or the Lumière brothers in Paris and asked them the question: “Do you have any idea what the cinema will be like in 126 years? But they would hardly have imagined that this snowball would have gotten so big. It’s true. What scale and what importance in the life of modern man takes the film industry and its production, not everyone realizes.

Entertainment industry, which includes cinema, every second tries to find something unique, something interesting and fascinating to continue to carry its heavy burden – to entertain us, ordinary mortals. And it does this by completely different methods: for example, it scans and takes to itself what becomes popular in society. That which has a particularly loud resonance in society, gets the opportunity to get on the blue screens. It’s like a golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory. Remember that movie?

Faster. Higher. Stronger

Scandals, major incidents, stories of triumph and defeat – there are countless examples. All this becomes the basis for movies. They’re interesting because they’re made by and for people. It is like being late in the evening by the fire and listen to the stories of a friend about his adventures.

A separate place is occupied by sports and what is associated with it. Watch any documentary about athletes – we assure you, there will definitely be some drama there. Goosebumps are guaranteed.

Sports that have reached the peak of recognition – the Olympic Games – also started somewhere. You don’t have to go far. The disciplines of the last Games included skateboarding, BMX freestyle and surfing. They created quite a furor in the media and in their own way, they “cheered up” the Games. Where do you think they started? That’s right, the street. Interestingly, apart from the above-mentioned disciplines, another one – parkour – was also competing for a place in the sun. But, unfortunately, not this time.

Parkour is the art of rational movement from point A to point B, which originated in France. Rationalism is about finding the shortest route, the most energy efficient. Parkour was and still is a completely altruistic discipline (altruism is the willingness to act selflessly for the benefit of others, without regard to one’s own personal interests).

Back in the past. How did parkour get on the screen?

But parkour was not saved from the fate of getting into the movies: it is hard to pass by such a diamond. Let’s travel back to 2004 in our time machine. One of the first movies in which tracers (not parkourists, parkourists or parkourites) appeared were “Yamakashi” and “District 13”, shot in France.

From that moment on, the world learned that, it turns out, the human body is capable of more. The subculture began to gain momentum, taking over new cities and even continents. The movie industry evolved, trying to take everything possible from parkour.

No matter how much we deny it, the desire to make a statement to the world is inherent in almost every person on the planet. Don’t think anything bad – traceurs can tell stories and shoot content too.

One day, traceurs from Russia started making a big movie

tracer, cameraman of the short movie Trash story

I decided to start making videos while practicing parkour. I managed to combine my hobby with professional activity, and that’s what I dedicated my life to.

Mikhail: First of all I was attracted by the aesthetics of beauty of a naturally built athlete. A professional tracer is a harmoniously developed person, whose functionality includes training of almost all muscle groups, and he does not do any super accents.

In the second place is the training ground. Many street sports have this in the city. But, unlike them, parkour is not tied to equipment or a specific location (like skateboarding, for example). Basically, any place a person can physically get to will do. So the artistic content is impressive.

Documenting, much less artistically capturing an achievement in parkour is very important. Reporting video files can be compared to performing at the Olympics, where you show your maximum. But, unlike them, you broadcast not only the athlete’s physical abilities, but also his worldview and “style”.

The Tracers have always stood apart in the community in terms of building the filming process and a comprehensive approach to the realization of ideas. By the way, they brought parkour to Russia. In their movie “True Story” the team told the stories of guys living in different cities, but united by one idea. The film was presented at various competitions and was honored with big awards:

Special Prize of the President of the ROC for the film “True Story” at the forum of the International Olympic Committee in Moscow (2010), victory in the nomination “Best Film” for the short film “True Story” at the XIII International Mountain and Adventure Film Festival “Vertical”, nomination “Best Short Film” for the film “True Story” at the “X National Laurel Branch Award”.

If you’re thinking, “What’s the big deal? Guys in the yard something filmed something and posted on the network, what is there cinematography?”. We answer: it’s not like that. Our world is a huge sandbox where you can accidentally meet very unexpected people. For example, with Timur Bekmambetov, and then life will play with new colors.

tracer, founder of Cameraptor and cameraman of the movie Hardcore Henry

At that time we didn’t have any ambitions and opportunities to create a movie of such scale as Hardcore.

Sergey: “After the release of the BM video (music video for the song by Biting Elbows – Bad Motherfucker – Editor’s note) we woke up famous. The whole internet was buzzing, discussing the audacious clip in the aesthetics of first-person computer games. We were even reposted on Twitter by Samuel L. Jackson.

After seeing the clip, Timur Bekmambetov found Ilya Naishuller’s contacts and called him on Skype. Timur offered to make a full-length movie in the same style. It’s funny, but Ilya wanted to refuse at first, not understanding how it was possible to make a movie in this format and with a time limit of 1.5 hours.

I think he was humanly afraid that he wouldn’t make it, as he had never made a movie before. Timur, however, being an experienced producer, managed to persuade him, saying: “If you don’t do it, someone else will.”

Intersections of parkour and movies now

Parkour has always been a great platform for the realization of any ideas, even the most daring. Perhaps its philosophy is to blame: “There are no limits – there are only obstacles. And every obstacle can be overcome. It turned out to be close to others. Those who are able to give themselves to their work to the last, fight to the end and win.

KAMAZ-Master team leader

I am devoted to motorsport, but I found the philosophy of parkour about the absence of boundaries close to me. Any obstacle can be overcome, there is almost nothing impossible in life.

In August 2021, the KAMAZ-Master sports team together with Red Bull published a new video called “Employee of the Month”. Its main character is Archie Aroyan – a famous Russian tracer and winner of the bronze medal in the Red Bull Art Of Motion – 2021 championship. The video tells the story of an ordinary mechanic from the factory. For high performance in his work, he was recognized by the management. And everything would be fine, but one day he was late for his shift, and it was necessary not to get in the eyes of the boss. It is noteworthy that a large movie crew participated in this shooting.

Guram Gabunia

Producer of the “Employee of the Month” project

Initially the idea originated inside Red Bull, and later it was finalized on the parkour part by Archie himself. From the beginning it sounded like: “Let’s shoot parkour in the workshop at KAMAZ-Master”.

Guram: “At the start there was no more detailed description, so, yes, the idea in its original form is 100% realized. The main difficulty during filming was timing, we had to shoot a lot in a short period of time. “KAMAZ-Master was preparing for the Silk Road, and we didn’t want to distract the team too much with filming.

And since the time was short, the load on our athlete increased a lot, he had to work in a very intensive mode and produce a lot of stunning stunts in a limited time. What would normally take 3-4 days to shoot, we shot in one day”.

Director of the “Employee of the Month” project

The project was not an easy one. The difficulty was that the workshop was located in Naberezhnye Chelny, and it is a working enterprise, where you can’t come at any time.

Mikhail: “So 95% of the preparation was done remotely. We had two expeditions of two days each, during which we had to think and rehearse everything. During the first expedition we studied the space and drafted stunts. Then I spent almost three weeks writing the script. On the second expedition we tested it, trying to understand what works and what doesn’t. But even after that there were a lot of white spots, so we had to improvise during the filming.

The scene where Archie would jump in after noticing his form and doing a bunch of tricks on the table was originally thought up. For me, it was inspired by Jackie Chan movies, where, in addition to elaborate stunts and fights, there was a lot of domestic and spectacular action. We made a special form with wide pants to Archie to jump into it, but it turned out to be impossible – feet and knees moved with such a large amplitude that for normal jumping pants should be a meter wide, no less.

P.S..

The movie and entertainment industries continue to evolve. It’s hard to imagine what can stop them. With parkour is a slightly different story. The peak of attention to it has already passed. Young guys have grown up and the vector of interests has shifted a bit, it’s normal.

Parkour itself has changed. In different cities of the country sites oriented to the subculture are being built. Schools are opened where experienced instructors teach correct and safe movements, and children’s groups are particularly successful.

Now one of the main directions of development is the Olympic Games. And the work to realize this is already underway.