*music

Adding video to channels (Music) - requested by ant.

Sometimes I admit to wondering: do these people have parents? I mean, people who have the normal level of fear response to seeing someone they care about finding new and interesting ways to potentially hurt themselves? I wonder that about the Russian high tower/building videos too...

Not to say it isn't impressive and artful; just wonder.

>> ^SFOGuy:

Sometimes I admit to wondering: do these people have parents? I mean, people who have the normal level of fear response to seeing someone they care about finding new and interesting ways to potentially hurt themselves? I wonder that about the Russian high tower/building videos too...
Not to say it isn't impressive and artful; just wonder.


There was a short series of programs here in the UK about Danny Macaskill, looking at how he deals with the fear/adrenaline of these type of stunts. They took him to meet other daredevil types and looked at his response to the risks. They also interviewed his parents. His dad is very risk averse, he doesn't like anything his son does, but his mother encouraged him to take risks from a very early age. The result is a mature person with a huge understanding of risk. He really knows his limits and what is and isn't possible.

If you bring up a child without exposing them to risk they never learn how to deal with or understand risk. When presented with a situation which is risky they don't know which decisions to make and that's when it all goes really badly wrong.

One of the other people they interviewed in the series was a specialist action sequence director. He works all the time with stunt men and women, people who do things that look really dangerous to normal people. He said they're the least likely of anyone to do anything dangerous. These things look dangerous to us because we don't know how we would deal with the situation. But to a trained stunt person, it's not that dangerous at all. He said they were the most likely people to back away from a danger. They don't look to do dangerous things, but rather they enjoy mastering the risks, so it's not dangerous.

They talked about a sequence where Danny rode down some steps in an underground station (I say rode down, what I mean is hurled himself and the bike down in unimaginably hectic ways!). They asked him what he was thinking when they were planing the shoot and he talked about all the potential risks he could see. Would his bike fit through the gap between the handrails if he did a twist in the jump? Would he hit his head on a step in the ceiling? Would he have enough space to slow down and so on. You'd think seeing the end shots that he went along looking for dangerous things to do where as he actually did the exact opposite.

As for the Russian crane climbers, I suspect there's a little more vodka involved than perhaps there should be...