Parkour
Also known as: freerunning, urban movement
Moving through built environments by vaulting, climbing and jumping, where the architecture is the obstacle and the scale is the hardest thing to film.
Updated
What it means
Parkour is a line through a place rather than a single trick. A run connects walls, rails and gaps into one continuous movement, which means the interest is the sequence rather than any one jump, closer to a Master shot than to a trick clip.
The scale is the whole filming problem. A gap between two roofs looks like a step on a wide lens, and the consequence that makes the movement impressive disappears completely.
It happens where people live, which changes the practicalities. Permission, security and passers-by are part of every session in a way they are not on a trail or a mountain.
How it works in practice
A Low-angle shot from below a gap is what restores the height. Looking upward as somebody crosses puts the drop back into the frame properly, which no angle from above achieves.
Following the line is the other half. A handheld operator moving along with the runner conveys the continuity of a whole run, and the two shots together describe what actually happened.
A longer lens flattens the distance usefully. Shooting from across a street with some Focal length rather than from alongside keeps the proportions of a gap considerably more honest.
What to watch out for
Filming from above removes the point entirely. A High-angle shot of a jump between roofs shows two surfaces and no gap, which is the single most common mistake in this discipline.
Access is the limiting factor rather than the camera. Being asked to leave mid-session is normal, which argues for filming the important thing first rather than warming up in front of the camera.
One attempt is frequently all there is. A big jump gets done once, so a camera that was not recording or was pointed wrong has removed the only coverage there will ever be.
How RawClip handles it
Continuous runs read as single moments and are kept whole rather than cut into pieces, which suits the way a line is actually ridden. Where several angles of one jump exist, the one that shows the drop is the one that survives.