Take Flight

With only the top two commercials left in our Top 10 Parkour Commercial Countdown we have decided to take a short break and post some exclusive behind the scenes footage from the Nike Presto ads.

As we mentioned yesterday in the featuring of Le Chat Effravant (Scary Cat), the commercial that came in at #3 or our Top 10 Parkour Commercial Countdown, in spite of the commercial’s unsurpassed creativity and humor, the one drawback to the ad was the brevity of the finished product. With only a 30 second final commercial it was difficult, if not impossible, for any viewer to fully appreciate the true athleticism that was required of David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux and the other Tracers involved in the production.*

Luckily we were able to locate some exclusive behind the scenes footage from the Nike Presto shoot which we have embedded below. This edit, with a wider variety of footage, wide angle shots, and movements such as those at :53, 1:00, and 1:05, reveals an incredible level of athleticism that was not developed in the shortened Le Chat Effravant (Scary Cat) commercial.

*Example: The jump performed by David at :05 in Le Effravant Chat (Scary Cat) is the same jump featured at 1:00 in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9inly-ZfcY

The #3 commercial in our countdown of the Top 10 Parkour Commercials ever made is the second of three ingeniously designed Nike Presto commercials created by the advertising giant Wieden+Kennedy.

Featuring both David Belle and Sébastien Foucan as well as a slew of other famous Tracers, this commercial titled Le Chat Effravant (Scary Cat) is the action packed result of nothing short of pure creative genius. Incredible from its high flying beginning to its laughter educing finale, one of the only drawback to the commercial is its brevity.* At 30 seconds in length this advertisement leaves the viewer wanting much more, and the short edit also undermines the incredible athleticism that was required for a majority of these shots. Nevertheless, the presence of David and Sébastien, and the utilization of some of the most famous training locations in Lisses, France overshadows any downside to the commercial and makes this production extremely enjoyable for the everyday consumer and especially entertaining for the knowledgeable Tracer.

As the most talent packed, the funniest, and one of the most historical Parkour-featuring advertisements ever made, the Nike Presto Le Chat Effravant (Scary Cat) commercial is well deserving of a high position in our countdown and comes in at the #3 spot.

*Another ‘drawback’ to this production was the inadvertent injury that Stephane Vigroux sustained during the commercial’s filming. You can hear Stephane speak first hand about this incidence in Urban Freeflow Vol. 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj8Cw9WuHMQ&hl=en

This video is an old TV report from March 2001 that has just about everyone! It features David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux, Johann Vigroux, Kazuma, Sébastien Goudot, Rudy D., Jerome Ben Roues, and Michael Ramoani, and they are all doing Parkour in and around Lisses and Evry, France. Because this video is rare you are likely to see exclusive footage of David and the others that you have never seen before. With that said you may also recognize the first person perspective footage of David from the videos we posted in and David Belle x3 and David Belle “Live” – Take II.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KnfFG9WNxY

Today we were planning to embed a rare video of David Belle from 1998. Unfortunately when we were reading the webpage that features this video in its original context we saw this:

“Avertissement: Tout le contenu de ce blog est propriété réservée de DB Productions. Toute reproduction est formellement interdite.”

Translated this means:

“Warning: All the contents of this blog are reserved property of DB Productions. Any reproduction is formally prohibited.”

In our commitment to Parkour by David, we do everything we can to represent Parkour and David in the way he would want himself and the discipline represented. Although posting this video would not provide any misrepresentation of Parkour, we respect this request and have decided not to post the information.

Even though we will not be directly embedding this video on the site, we have provided a link that will take you to where you can view the video. Follow the links below to watch the video in its original context and/or to view the site translated into English. And make sure to check back in tomorrow with MisterParkour.com as we finish the countdown to our 50^th David Belle post with David’s most moving film.

http://www.sportmediaconcept.com/parkour/1998-le-parkour-en-demonstration-au-POPB_a34.html

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&tt=url&intl=1&fr=bf-home&trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sportmediaconcept.com%2Fparkour%2F1998-le-parkour-en-demonstration-au-POPB_a34.html&lp=fr_en&btnTrUrl=Translate

Featured here is another European news report from Focus TV. It is not in English which is especially unfortunate because this report features some very unique footage. Not only does it have Guy Janodet, it also has Jérôme Lebret who comments on David Belle’s fall at UCLA. One other unique aspect of this news report is that it showcases Sébastien Foucan practicing his performance for Madonna’s Confessions tour.* In a repetitive nature you will also recognize clips from Casino Royale, and old footage of Austrian Tracer Andreas Kalteis from the first Focus TV Report we posted a couple months ago.

The more time goes by the more abundant news reports on Parkour are becoming. In order to attain our goal of being “A succinct compendium of the most relevant and important Parkour videos, articles, and information…” we do our best to include all of these reports on MisterParkour.com. Unfortunately the content of these news reports is routinely repetitive and therefore frequently boring. For that reason, when posting a news report like this (although this one on the contrary is no so repetitive) we will do our best to augment the footage with more information such as a correlating video or possibly a relevant interview or article. This time we have decided to include Madonna’s music video Jump* in this post since clips of it are featured in the news report. The music video is an important milestone for Parkour history because it was the first prominent music video in the U.S. to feature Parkour.

Finally, with the last four days of posts referencing Sébastien Foucan you may be wondering were our commitment to David has been. Although sometimes we deviate from posts featuring David in order to have a collective representation of the Parkour world, we never stray far from him or his ideology. Over the next three days we will be posting three phenomenal videos of David (two of them are very rare), as we make a final run to reach our 50^th David Belle post on the site.

*Note: David’s opinion on Madonna using Parkour on her tour and in her music video is straight forward and does not express a negative or positive view. He says, “I simply think she uses Parkour to sell her music, not her music to promote Parkour.” To read that interview between David and Lina Manso in its entirety please click here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE43uvihqis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPqOVdDUqL4

Three years after the success of the 2003 Jump London documentary ignited the Parkour movement in Britain, the film was followed by its sequel Jump Britain. Even more riveting than its predecessor, the Jump Britain documentary took Parkour to the next level by exploring 9 locations across Britain’s four countries of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. This film brought back Sébastien Foucan from the Jump London film and introduced a wide mix of London based “Freerunners” including predominantly showcasing a few of the core members of Urban Freeflow.

Not only does Jump Britain bring Parkour to monumental locations in Britain, the film also takes a couple Urban Freeflow members back to the birthplace of Parkour (Lisses, France) where they are shown around by Sébastien himself. Sébastien can also be seen wearing Nikes which is a rare occasion given his most recent associations.

The criticisms we have of this film involve its misrepresentations of Parkour. First of all there is no mention of David Belle in the entire 49 minute documentary. This is obviously a problem. If you’re going to make a documentary about Parkour you need to at least mention David even if he doesn’t perform for you. Second, the film freely uses the words “Parkour” “Freerunning” and “The Art of Movement” interchangeable. Granted, even David says that these are all the same discipline (New Yorker Festival), but he has also expressed on many occasions the differences between Parkour movements and those that constitute an “extension of the art.” No attempt to explain this difference is made in this film. If someone did not know anything about Parkour and then watched this documentary it is feasible to expect their definition of Parkour to be, “Running around the city and having fun by jumping off stuff.” This is obviously not the original intentions of the discipline as passed down to David from his father. Lastly, Urban Freeflow promotes Sébastien Foucan as the “head ambassador” of Parkour. This is also fallacious for obvious reasons. As a note, Sébastien’s personal website (Foucan.com) endorses Freerunning and only mentions Parkour as it pertains to history and Sébastien’s upbringing.

In spite of our seemingly harsh criticism of Jump Britain we do give the makers of this documentary some slack. A lot has happened since this film aired in 2006, and many ideas and perceptions of Parkour have changed since that time. Back then it was still widely believed that Parkour was founded by Sébastien Foucan (although there is no doubt that this film had something to do with perpetuating that misconception). Also, and most notably, the abundance of readily available information regarding Parkour and its origins has changed. At the time this information/knowledge was still very unknown in comparison to today when it is widely understood. This is another viable explanation for the erroneous reporting.

We said “seemingly harsh criticism” because above all we really like this documentary. In fact, when putting these slight slips in journalism behind us we have to say that this film as a whole is absolutely incredible! It showcases amazing locations, dazzling cinematography, and features a host of incredible athletes that should be well respected for their talent and the hard work they’ve put in to achieve their level.

Before the documentary below we have included two excerpts from the film. One is a clip that shows Sébastien at the Millennium Stadium in Wales doing a jump that is now recognized as one of the most spectacular in Parkour history. The second is a brief quote from Sébastien that counters some common misconception about Parkour training.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwJXb1RC30o

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“Practicing it always, is best practicing it when you are alone because you need to be focused on yourself. You can do a jump with a friend, you know woosh, it’s ok. But when you are alone it is different. You are a little bit afraid. And you need to find why and you need to find the solution.”

-Sébastien Foucan

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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5901806041431700202&q=Jump%20London&hl=en

Because of the prominent role Sébastien Foucan played in the Jump London documentary, we wanted to follow up that post with this interview he did with Urban Freeflow. In order not to interfere with the content on MisterParkour.com we have only included the introduction to this interview and a few selected excerpts from it. (The comprehensive interview is 11 pages long!) If you wish to read the complete version of this interview you can download it below or select the web link which will take you directly to its original posting on UrbanFreeflow.com.

Sébastien has done a great deal of work with Urban Freeflow including facilitating many of their visits to Lisses, France and collaborating with them on the Jump Britain documentary. Anyone who has spent any time with Sébastien or seen any of the footage of him from UFF knows how laid back he is and much fun he is to be around. He’s always joking and laughing, and a lot of this personality comes out in this interview.

Although Sébastien is, at times, difficult to understand, we did not want to take the liberty to edit the text at the risk of possibly distorting some of his answers. Reading his responses multiple times will help comprehension, however more important than understanding the specific details we recommend comprehending Sebastian’s heart and the vision he has for the discipline.

This interview between Sébastien and UFF paints a different picture of the originations of Parkour than that which David Belle expresses in his interviews at the New Yorker Festival. Nevertheless, Sébastien does shed light on some of Parkour’s history and provides a never before told explanation of David’s father’s philosophy and how his guidance influenced the development of Parkour. Sébastien also shares his personal views on Parkour parks and potential Parkour competitions.

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UFF – Hello Seb thanks for taking the time out to talk to us in depth. Let’s start off with the beginning. How old were you when you first started Parkour?

Seb – How old? Erm 15 years old.

UFF – And who was with you. Was it a big group or was it just a couple of guys?

Seb – A few of guys. You had Yahn Hnautra, David Malgogne and Frederic Hnautra. When I started to practice, the first basic Parkour, these guys begin before me.

UFF – How many people in total?

Seb – Oh, 5 or 6 of us.

UFF – Did you meet David Belle through parkour or were you friends already?

Seb – No no no. At the beginning my friend was the brother’s, the younger brother of Yahn Hnautra. It was my friend and after I met David. But my first friend was Frederic – hello Frederic. <laughs>

UFF – Why did you start doing Parkour? What was the idea behind it?

Seb – At the beginning it wasn’t like now, it was for move and practice and practice a sport. Just practice sport. And you have a kind of like child’s play, like a game.  Yes, like a game, and I started to practice this kind of game with them. It was just like a small parkour like game. (Jumps about). The first time it was very, very basic.

……..

UF – Does it take a long time to build to that level?

Seb – Yes. Big level yes, because it’s like everything, the horse. Dance horse. It’s an image, picture. That horse follow everybody. But for me always, when you think you are always alone. It’s a good way you are alone. It’s a bad way when a lot of people. It’s always for everything. Everything was invented when somebody was alone. It’s one of, it’s a key. It is a way.

……..

UFF – At the time, when you started parkour, what was the aim or vision of the whole PK thing? Where did you aim to take it, what was the general idea?

Seb – I have no idea? <laughs> For me when I started I don’t have an idea, I don’t have a personality, I don’t know where is my way. I am like every kid and after I speak with David and we speak about our dream.  Our dream like if you can fly if you can dream like a kid you imagine if you can to touch the wall and you know blah blah blah (waves about laughing). And David speak to me about his father you know, his father was a good athlete and he told me that you can do anything you want to do. I asked him if I can to meet him. After I met his father and he explained to us the discipline and how you… it was very interesting because his father, when he speak, he speak like you don’t have limits you know like, it’s very important for me this kind of vision because he opened for all of us our vision because we were in our dreams, ‘yes you can do boooom, you know like dragon ball Z you can do rrrr’ it’s a dream for kids. But he try to explain to us you can do what you want if you train seriously if you have a good discipline if you have time if you have moderation if you have determination if you have something blah blah and you need to train train train train. and for me it’s one of the one of the piece of my personality now, one of the pieces of the jigsaw. It’s not what I explain to you yesterday it’s not just one person, da da da, this is one of my pieces of my guide.

UFF – Everybody reads about the start of Parkour and it’s always David Belle and Sebastien Foucan. What is the true story?

……..

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For a complete transcription of this interview please select one of the following links:

Sébastien Foucan Interview with Urban Freeflow.

http://www.urbanfreeflow.com/the_core_level/pages/archives/foucan_interview.htm

With Urban Freeflow Vol. 3 as one of our first posts on MisteParkour.com we have been waiting for the right time to add a series of other impressive documentaries to our library. After a few months we feel that now is that time.

Today we post the first in this series, one of the most impressive Parkour documentaries to date, Jump London. Starring Sébastien Foucan, Johann Vigroux, Jerome Ben Aoues, and including Stephane Vigroux* Jump London was filmed almost exactly 5 years ago in June of 2003. It aired for the first time in Britain latter that same year.

With Sébastien, Johann, and Jerome running and jumping across the rooftops and architecture of 14 different historic and monumental locations across London, the film is enough to make anybody want to try Parkour. As such Jump London, the predecessor of Jump Britain, is widely credited as the match that ignited the Parkour movement in Britain. From minute 25 to 40 this film features nothing but pure Parkour footage, and it includes Sébastien’s famous jump on the battleship HMS Belfast.

Although Sébastien does mention “Parkour,” the term “Freerunning” is the emphasis of the film and the word Parkour is never uttered by the English narrator or during the English translations. Regardless of the verbiage, the stunning cinematography, athleticism, dialogue, and Parkour history discussed in the film makes it well deserving of an addition to this site and a place in history as one of the most influential Parkour films ever created.

*As explained in the film, Jump London was intended to be filmed with Stepahen Vigroux as the fourth Tracer. However, Stephane was not able to participate because he had not yet fully recover from his ACL injury which occurred during the Nike Presto shoot in 2001. Stephane discusses this injury more thoroughly in Urban Freeflow Vol. 3. Even though Stephane was not able to perform for this film specifically, a majority of footage of him and Johann was taken from the Vigroux Brothers (2001 – 2003) video and utilized throughout Jump London.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=461185990931808314&q=Jump+London&ei=nYpMSLeHFY-WrgP-l9jIDA&hl=en

A short 1 min video with David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux, and Romain Moutault. Even though we have searched the internet we still have no idea what “On r’met ça!?” means. If anyone has any idea please let us know.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6063563397164320878&hl=en

We have recently added four new blogrolls to the site, and since only two of these directly represent Parkour I wanted to explain our reasoning for these additions.

The two blogrolls that directly represent Parkour are www.ParkourGenerations.com and David Belle’s personal website kyzr.free.fr/davidbelle/ The Parkour Generations blogroll was included because Parkour Generations is the most prestigious Parkour academy in the world. Located in London it is directed by Stephane Vigroux, Forrest, and Dan Edwards, all three of which are incredible Tracers who deserve the utmost respect for their knowledge, skill and contribution to the instruction and spread of Parkour in Britain and throughout the world. David Belle’s personal website was included for obvious reason.

The other two blogrolls are www.Foucan.com and www.MajesticForce.com. Although these two sites do not perfectly represent Parkour, the founders of these sites, Sébastien Foucan and the Yamaksi, are inexorably linked to Parkour through their childhood relationships with David and their influence on the development of Parkour. David Belle started the Yamakasi, but when disagreements arose regarding the true meaning of Parkour, the group split up and since then three disciplines have emerged: Parkour, Freerunning, and the Art du Déplacement. Sébastien is the founder of Freerunning and the Yamakasi are the leaders of the Art du Déplacement.*

In the near future we will be posting more information and videos that explain the differences between these arts -even though some contend that they are the same-. However, for the sake of highlighting the similarities and connections of Parkour, Freerunning, and the Art du Deplacement, we will point out that the movements in all three disciplines are rooted in dynamic movement of the human body and encompass interacting with and/or overcoming obstacles in your environment. As such, many of the movements in all three disciplines are very much the same if not identical. In many cases the training methods and principles, including both the mental and physical aspects, for these three arts are the same as well. Regardless of which art you study/adhere to, the founders/leaders of Parkour, Free Running, and the Art du Déplacement are all incredible athletes that have uncovered ways of movement that were previously unimagined in modern society, and they have reached levels of athleticism that supersede any previous beliefs of man’s capabilities and/or limitations to move.

You will learn a great deal from every one of these sites, and although the primary focus of www.MisterParkour.com is the philosophy of Parkour, from time to time we will include videos and information from www.Foucan.com and www.MajesticForce.com to supplement your training methods, enjoyment, and imagination.

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*“The founders of the Yamakasi group haven’t invented anything! However, with what they have agreed to call the << Art du Déplacement>>, they affirm that they have reached a very high level of research and performance with the aim of bringing to a life a simple form of expression that is capable of reaching out to everyone’s imagination.

Having succeeded it making their Art known and achieving a certain popular recognition, within a few years they became real ambassadors for the << Art du Déplacement>>, their own discipline…”

-Quote taken from www.MajesticForce.com.

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