3wayandplane

actionman038

actionman039

actionmanelsinore

angelexit2

angels3

angelsheliexit

Arctic1

bench054

bjf-002

bjf-s033

bjf-s034
Page of 10

Legal Notice: These images can not be altered in any way, nor can they be used in any marketing or advertising campaigns. Such use will be subject to royalty fees to be determined by skysurfer.com. By viewing the images, you hereby accept these terms.


Bird's Eye View - An interview with Joe Jennings
by Jason Dietrich - hermosawave.net

Hurtling earthward at well over 100 miles-an-hour with 25-pounds of deadweight on your head hardly seems like a career with a whole lot of job security. But the working conditions don't seem to bother free fall cinematographer and Redondo Beach resident Joe Jennings.

"Why jump out of a perfectly good airplane? Well, the planes aren't perfect and I have a perfectly good parachute," says Jennings. His job is filming free-fall stunts for movies and commercials. Recently Jennings has been working on ariel sequences for the upcoming Charlie's Angels movie and the I-Max film Adventures in Wild California. His commercials for Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Black and Decker and Visa, show base jumpers leaping from bridges and cliffs, sky-surfers doing ariel acrobatics, and sky-divers floating through space.

In a yellow jumpsuit that could have come from Elvis' bottom drawer, Jennings shot a world-record breaking formation of 240-plus skydivers arranged in concentric rings and captured the second skydive of former president George Bush on film. (Bush's first jump was during WWII when he bailed out of his damaged fighter plane).

And while it may look like jumping out of a plane with a camera strapped to your head is as easy as falling out of bed, camera flyers have to be as athletic as the skydivers they film.

As skysurfers or falling objects pitch and spin, camera flyers have to be able to react to their target and swoop, dive and roll to get the best shots.

"Sometimes I'll be so wrapped up in what I'm doing that I won't realize how hard I'm working. Then I'll open my chute and realize I'm out of breath. That's when you know you were working your butt off," Jennings said.

The right equipment helps keep skydivers falling at between 120 and 160 miles-per-hour in the cross hairs. When he first started flying a camera, Jennings and a friend shaved down the top of an old motorcycle helmet and mounted a camera to it. Now he has a professionally made camera-flying rig that holds still, video and a 35 mm film cameras. Wires run from his set-up down his arms to hand-mounted controls that let him fire the cameras individually or in combination. With the video back up he can show directors on the ground what shots he got almost immediately after landing. Letting people know what went on in the sky was one of the things that has kept Jennings interested in the sport.

"A big part of jumping for me was communicating it. I wanted to tell my friends on the ground what the jump was like. I'd be on the ground, trying to paint the picture of what was going on up there. Before I was even qualified to take a camera up, I was jumping with tape recorders taped to my wrist and screaming into them on the way down. Getting into free fall photography was almost a natural progression," Jennings said.

Learning to fly
Jennings started skydiving more than fifteen years ago. He and his wife (his girlfriend at the time) went out to the dropzone to see what it was like to soar like an eagle, or at least drop like a rock.

"For me it just struck a chord," Jennings said. "Something in it just drew me in. I became kind of a jump addict."

After a few sessions, he was at the jump center on weekends, packing parachutes to get more money to jump. It wasn't long before Jennings knew he had to get into free fall photography. Relative inexperienced, Jennings started flying a camera with only about 80 jumps under his belt.

"When I started flying camera there was a pretty big protest at the drop zone. Having only 80 jumps and strapping a camera to your head is kind of a no-no. But I was very determined and I had the support of another camera flyer who had some influence," Jennings said.

By the time he had 100 jumps, Jennings was filming students on their first tries. He supported himself while in college by spending the weekends filming skydiving students. Over the years he picked up 1,500 jumps filming first-time flyers who wanted their virgin jumps on tape.

"I was in college studying business and minoring in Spanish. Little did I know I was practicing my career on the weekends," Jennings said. "It's more a part of my life than I expected."

Today, with very small, lightweight video cameras, there are a lot of people who can fly a camera. But the equipment required for shooting on film is much more complex. The cameras are bigger, heavier, and far less automatic. A panoramic I-Max film camera tips the scales at 75 pounds.

"Currently in the U.S. there are three of us who do this on a regular basis professionally," said Jennings.

The other two pro-free fall cinematographers were the main camera flyers in the world for years before Jennings moved into the professional realm, he said. Filming professionally since about 1994, Jennings mounted an aggressive promotion campaign that has helped to make him one of the field's top competitors.

Making his hobby into a successful career hasn't taken the thrill out of skydiving. But it has changed Jennings' focus. Now he thinks like a pro. Instead of jumping to jump, his mind is on how to get the best shot.

"I think I get more of a rush out of watching the footage I get. I really enjoy the visuals I can look at on the ground. That to me is more of a rush. I've done 5,000 plus jumps. It can't be an adrenaline rush every time, I'd have a heart attack," Jennings said.

Extremists
Though he jumps off cliffs and airplanes on his head for a living, Jennings doesn't really think of himself as an extremist. He says he gets nervous when people drive fast and doesn't push the limits himself when he's behind the wheel.

"I've read studies about people with the extreme gene. I've heard theories that our normal lives aren't action oriented enough and we need stimulation of one kind or another. I've heard arguments that we aren't exactly sane, that there's a problem and that this is our way of coping. However I don't really buy into that because I know myself. I'm probably one of the less extreme people out there. I'm not into other extreme sports or hardcore putting myself in peril. However, I love skydiving, I understand it. I'm used to it and it doesn't feel so extreme to me," Jennings said.

While he may deny being a textbook-example adrenaline junkie, he admits that there are elements of risk to his job. Base jumping, jumping from a bridge, cliff, or similar perch and parachuting down has its perils. Base jumpers typically open their chutes much lower than skydivers and run the risk of being blown into cliff faces other obstacles by errant gusts of wind. And a lot of the time, the cameraman jumps first.

"People come up to me and say, 'Wow, now that skydiving is your profession, I wonder what you do as a hobby?' I go play with my kids and I work on my garden and do very, very normal things and I enjoy those things quite a bit," Jennings said.

Good stuff
But what really makes flying a camera worthwhile is the good stuff. Those really good jumps where everything goes just right and the shots just seem to line up.

"A really good jump is a normal jump where you just happen to be completely tuned into your surroundings. The smell of the turbine engines, each of the different high tech fabrics have their own scent, the wind blowing. The visuals are incredible. You're way up there, there's clouds below you and you're just looking at this whole ariel playground you can go and goof off in," Jennings said.

As it gets close to the wire, the intensity gets turned up a notch.

"About a minute before jumptime, you sort of feel your pulse picking up a little bit. You get a heightened sense of reality and a little bit of a buzz. The same kind of a buzz that one might try to achieve with drugs," Jennings said.

When the doors open and you feel that blast of cold air, it's a wake-up call, says Jennings. Your body starts to realize that you're planning on throwing it 12,500 feet or more down to the ground.

"Your pulse is really picking up and you're thinking faster and faster," Jennings said.

Climbing outside of the plane, the temperature drops. At altitude, it can be anywhere from 30 to 50 degrees on a hot summer's day.

"A good jump is where you hop out and take it all in. You feel the fall and feel yourself flying with your friends. For me a really good jump is when I'm up there capturing the images I want to get. When I'm flying a camera I almost feel like a fighter pilot finding his target --aggressively attacking it -- only for me it's pulling the trigger and filming it rather than pulling the trigger and blowing it out of the sky," Jennings said.

Delusions of pilot-dom dissolve on opening, as the parachute rig jerks skyward and changes your falling flight into a float.

"When you open your parachute, there's this kind of quiet kind of floating around and being able to steer it wherever you want to go. You're hanging from a harness, there are no windows or anything to keep you in. You're way up there. It's gorgeous really, on any given day it's beautiful," Jennings said.

People who are wired for the sport find it very gratifying. If you're preprogrammed to like skydiving, it can change your life. If not, it can register as a very negative experience. Whether or not you'll like jumping out of airplanes has nothing to do with who's braver than who, Jennings said. Some people can give a speech in front of a thousand people and not have a problem, but they might not necessarily get into skydiving.

How you feel during your 60-seconds of free fall has very little to do with the actual danger involved. Advances in technology have made the sport safer than ever before. Equipment designs have been streamlined and computer controlled parachutes open automatically at a preset altitude if a jumper can't open the chutes themselves. In over 5000 jumps, Jennings has had to use his reserve chute three times.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a sofa!
But the best parachute technology can't help you if you won't use it. Jennings recently completed a skydiving video titled "Good stuff" featuring some amazing visuals of skydivers in exotic locales and a few of the craziest sky-stunts on film.

The harriest stunt is performed by computer-programmer-by-day, Greg Gasson. He stars in "Good stuff" jumping without a net. Not buckled in, Gasson just holds onto the parachute harness during free fall. When the needle on his oversized altimeter reaches the right point, he pulls the release cord with one wrist wrapped through a harness loop. As the chute and the rig jerks skyward, Gasson holds on, hanging from the harness by one hand once the parachute is fully open. Giving the camera a what-me-worry grin he flashes a 'hang-loose' sign with one hand. Hopefully he's not hanging on too loosely.

Filming skydivers going to extremes is what made Jennings' name. He racked up most of his 5000 jumps while training with the late Rob Harris to compete competitively. Harris was a Manhattan Beach native and world champion skysurfer who won ESPN's X-games and other world skysurfing championships. In 1995 he was killed in a skydiving accident while filming a Mountain Dew commercial with Jennings.

"Rob was just starting off as a skydiver when I met him. As it turned out, with his background in break dancing, jiu-jitsu and just being very physically coordinated, he just took to sky surfing naturally. He became by far the best sky surfer in the world," Jennings said. "Teaming up with Rob was an enormous part of the success I've been lucky enough to have."

Skysurfers are judged on the quality of the videos they bring down with them. Harris and Jennings' amazing visuals brought them success in both the competitive arena and commercial arenas.

"People can relate to sky surfers. Seeing someone shredding on a skyboard puts a point of reference up there. Something that's familiar."

Partly for the sheer spectacle, and partly to hopefully inspire film and commercial producers, Jennings has taken to bringing everyday objects into the air with him. Cars, motorcycles, toilets and golf carts have all briefly found their wings as props for Jennings' skydiving videos. He's filmed a couple of divers falling in a living room set up complete with a TV and couch and two old friend who appear to be enjoying a pint seated at a bar table in free fall.

Doing stunts that really push the skydiving envelope is where Jennings wants to go next. For his next shoots, he's trying to set up even bigger stunts. Dropping a mobile home or a bus from an airplane is high on his list. So is having a crew of skydivers abandon a jet before it crashes. But stunts like that will require financial backers with big bucks and even bigger airplanes.

Until then he'll have to be content with where his craft has already taken him. Jennings has flown camera in the Swiss and French Alps, Italy, France and Germany. He's filmed base jumpers snowboarding off cliffs over the fjords of Norway, leaping off the world's highest waterfalls in the world in Venezuela, and jumping off the highest cliffs in the world in the Arctic Circle.

"It's been an incredible journey for me, one that I really feel blessed with. I feel very fortunate to have come across this. It really has taken me around the world," Jennings said.

For more information on skydiving visit www.skydiving.com, www.joejennings.com on the world wide web. The Rob Harris Foundation, a charitable organization benefiting inner city youth can be reached at www.robharris.org or (310) 379-1697.ER


Download desktop wallpapers for your computer FREE!
Friday, September 05, 2008
Email us at info@skysurfer.com


Check out the leading skysurfers Coming Soon!
Copyright 2008 Inadon Corporation Site developed by Inadon Corporation