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AUSTRALIAN
ACTION TEAM HIT THAILAND FOR NISSAN LAUNCH
by Jerds
REPORT 1 OF
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The
location of the shoot was the artistic outdoor landscape
of States Art Museum.
We were given three abstractly placed walls, and two
Nissan Navara utes to play with. The team minus Scion
(who had taken a later flight and was arriving later
that night) warmed up and scoped the location for potential.
On offer were medium height wall hops, an awkward underbar,
a variety of vault opportunities, a ground level gap
to cat leap (arm jump), some wall tricks and a one story
drop.
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Motorbike
taxis (we affectionately called them Death Taxis).
It wasn't uncommon to ride backwards down a highway,
kneecaps cm's |
Once these had been filmed our attention then switched
to the two Nissan Navaras. We took 20mins to play with
the cars to see what we could come up with. By this
stage, the cars had been placed in an area that was
well lit and we soon came to realization that the car
body was far too hot to touch! Using water and ice we
took some of the heat off the surfaces which we would
utilise.
Vaults were made in and out of the vehicles, the doors
were wall-spinned, the tray was hand-standed, the cab
was under-barred and the bonnet leaped (and impacted,
leaving a knee shaped crater by Swift).
Whilst the days efforts did not seem like much, the
team (besides the boy wonder Anan) was thoroughly exhausted,
dehydrated (40degree heat) and a little broken.
That night Swift and Jerds slept like logs, whilst Anan
stayed up watching TV. Alex had a disturbing night of
explosive diarrhea and volcanic vomiting.
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Alex
contracts a virus and goes to hospital before the
shows! |
This
was the first major blow to the team, and it would be
estimated (as evaluated by the doctor at the nearest
large hospital) to take Alex out of action for at least
5 days.
Lucky for us, the next four days would be used for choreography
and meeting the other performers. We were thankful to
hear that our new friends, the "Nissan Girls",
would take 2 mins off our total performance, leaving
us with the best part of 4 mins to fill.
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The
Parkour Australia Action Team and the Nissan Girls
pose for after show media attention. |
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AUSTRALIAN
ACTION TEAM |
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Leaving
Sydney |
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Big
Dramas in Bangkok |
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But
that was where our luck ran out. Upon arriving at BITEC
(The entertainment centre hosting the Bangkok International
Motor Show) we realised that the surface to perform the
show on was a dust covered polished wood floor. It was
as slippery as shoes on wet pebbletex!
The other dilemma was the rail which was intended to support
our turn-vaults/one story drops – which was intended
for the opening hoorah - was actually very flimsy and
obviously designed primarily with aesthetics in mind.
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The
Nissan Booth at the Bangkok International Motor
Show - before being set up. |
The
next 3 days would be spent planning and stressing over
our options for the shows. The final bomb shell was
dropped when we were informed that the Nissan chiefs
did not want the Lapparatus used for our first performance
on the Thursday - media release day.
On Wednesday night we went home (exhausted as always,
after hard work rehearsing and choreographing), and
decided an early night was required. The best strategy
was to wake the next morning, as fresh as possible in
order to plan how our show would unfold.
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The
closest Scion got to sleeping with a Nissan girl.
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The morning of the press release all five members met
at the indoor gymnasium of Hotel Avana - which was our
new residency just 4 mins drive from BITEC. We had a
CD player with the soundtrack of the performance and
a piece of paper with the layout of our stage and positioning
of cars.
We spent the first two hours nutting out the choreography
and timing, and the next two hours walking through the
sequences out aloud…
To be continued…
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AUSTRALIAN
ACTION TEAM |
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Leaving
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