We continue the top 10 Parkour commercial countdown with the #7 commercial filmed in
This commercial showcases the founder of Parkour David Belle, and features him repeatedly performing one the most famous jumping sequences in
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3024125420329608868
As the next commercial in our countdown of the top 10 Parkour commercials ever made Coca-Cola takes the eighth position with this short and fast passed TV spot. Well deserving of an inclusion in the countdown for many reasons, this advertisement not only showcases good clean Parkour, it also features the likes of some very well known Tracers including Kazuma, Romain Moutault, and Dominique Lexilus.
One of the first Parkour commercials ever made and an ending that leaves viewers with a smile, this production for Coca-Cola comes in at #8.
http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=4825368866488115366
Making our countdown at #9 of the 10 best Parkour commercials ever made is this 2005 commercial for BONT featuring David Belle. We weren’t able to verify whether or not this production was ever actually used as a television advertisement. Regardless, the prominent featuring of the BONT brand makes this production as good as any commercial, and the score it received from our criteria granted it a spot in the countdown.
This commercial features David sporting a BONT t-shirt and performing Parkour in one of the most famous Parkour destinations in the world; the suburbs of
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4dij1
Some of the original footage…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2932922233800781573&hl=en
Today we are starting out countdown of the top 10 best Parkour commercials ever made. Debuting at our #10 spot are a pair of 2007 K-Swiss commercials.
Featured in order of creation, the first commercial Race to Center Court (made in March 2007) features Levi Meeuwenberg as the Parkour stunt double, and the second commercial Even Playing Field (made in July 2007) features Tyson Cecka and Victor Lopez. Both commercials are quite similar (which is the main reason why we have them grouped together), and both commercials showcase Tracers racing through the city to reach a final destination. The commercials have a typical and somewhat uncreative ‘running and jumping’ structure, but the production value of these commercials is excellent and their influence on Parkour in the
K-Swiss - Race to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qWoR2hDo6U&hl=en
K-Swiss - Even Playing Field - July 2007
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=91629648155391248&hl=en
We watched and rated more than 30 commercials and have narrowed the list down to the elite ten. It was a difficult task to say the least, but deciding on the top 10 Parkour commercials of all time would have been considerably harder if we hadn’t applied specific criteria that enabled us to consistently evaluate the commercials. With these criteria in place, the top 10 quickly separated themselves from the rest and the difficult part became deciding which ones were better. Here are some of the things we took into consideration when evaluating the commercial:
Creativity and Uniqueness – Was the commercial conceptually creative or unique? Was the advertising agency able to effectively show Parkour within the confines of a creative plot or story that augmented the action, or did they settle for the easy and obvious method of simply showcasing “running and jumping”?
Production Value – What was the production value of the commercial? How did the concept, action, cinematography, music, and production all come together to create the piece? Did anything in the commercial seem out of place or uncalculated?
Tracer(s) Featured in the Commercial – Who was/were the athlete(s) in the commercial? Was he/she a well known Tracer or someone that you may not recognize? A commercial with David Belle would obviously rank higher than the same exact commercial with an unknown Tracer.
Quality and Prevalence of the Parkour - What was the quality of the Parkour performed and how prevalent was the Parkour in the commercial? Just because a commercial was full of Parkour didn’t make it good, and just because it had great Parkour didn’t necessarily make it a great commercial either (see rest of criteria).
Influence of Commercial - Did the commercial have (and/or is it having) any influences on the development and expansion of Parkour and/or are there other cultural significances that the commercial was a part of? For example being the first Parkour commercial would be much more significant to the 28th because of the precedent of the first and the affect it had on the brining recognition to Parkour.
Product Utilization - Did viewers remember the product advertised or was the action so overwhelming that the commercial lost sight of its purpose? Also, how was the product featured in the commercial and incorporated into the Parkour?
Intentions of the Parkour – Was Parkour utilized or exploited to make this commercial? This criterion was very tricky to evaluate because it is more implicitly understood than can be explicitly defined. There is a fine line between the two no questions, but it’s like David briefly explained in his interview with Lina Manso. It’s the whole idea of ‘utilizing Parkour to sell [a product] vs. using [a product] to promote Parkour.’ More than anything it comes back to the heart and intentions of the advertising agency. The other criteria (especially the Creativity and Uniqueness and the Tracer(s) Featured in the Commercial) influenced our judgment on this part of the evaluation immensely.
And last but not least…
Overall Quality of Commercial - Was the commercial good or bad? Did it grasp a viewers attention? Did it have a staying quality so that someone wanted to watch it over and over again, or was it just another commercial that you wouldn’t pay much attention to or remember?
After all the commercials were watched and rated we found that the top 10 stood out because they were the ones that effectively a) utilized Parkour in a creative way beyond simple and purposeless jumping and running, b) combine Parkour into the marketing of the commercial so that the product was remembered, and c) were “awesome” and had viewers wanting to watch them over and over again.
Stay tuned in to MisterParkour.com as tomorrow we start the countdown with the tenth best Parkour commercial of all time.
#1. We want your videos! Since MisterParkour.com was founded we have crammed the site with the most well known Parkour videos from the founders of the art. The majority of these have of course featured David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux, and the Yamakasi. However a website dedicated to the discipline would not be complete without showing the influence Parkour is having around the world. We have decided to feature just that by creating a series comprised of videos of Tracers from all locations and all walks of life. Parkour isn’t about who can jump off the tallest building or who can do the biggest saut de bras. Absolutely anyone can do Parkour! And regardless of whether you have been training for one week, a month, or five years, we want to include your video in our feature! If you have a demo tape, an annual Parkour achievement reel, or any other video of you doing Parkour which you would like to submit, please send us the link at Contact@MisterParkour.com. We will sort through the submissions and post as many videos as we can in our future series which will be dedicated to highlighting Tracers from all around the globe. Please also provide your name, age, location, and how long you have been practicing Parkour so we can make sure to include this information in the post. As always thank you for being such an integral part of MisterParkour.com!
#2. There are still a handful of well known Parkour videos that are missing from our library which feature David Belle and other famous Tracers. If you have been wondering why we haven’t yet added these to MisterParkour.com it is because we have been saving them for another special series which we will be launching tomorrow. Starting tomorrow we are going to begin an unprecedented series that will last almost two weeks titled the Top 10 Parkour Commercial Countdown. As the title suggests it will be comprised of a countdown of the top 10 Parkour commercials ever made. We have been working diligently to find these commercials and view and rate them in order to create the top ten, and we know you will not be disappointed with the results. No less than six of theses commercials feature David Belle, and other Tracers included in the commercial countdown include Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux and Kazuma. This is an unprecedented Parkour feature in any form of media and we are excited to be the very first to ever conduct the countdown. Stay tuned to MisterParkour.com for the Top 10 Parkour Commercial Countdown and a few extra surprises we are planning to throw in as well.
The following information is from an interview with David Belle’s brother Jean François Belle. The details are a little hard to understand, but if you focus on the concepts then it will become very clear. We initially found this text on Parkour.net, but that site is temporarily closed so we are not able to provide a link to the original context. Jean François Belle is also mentioned in David Belle Teaches Parkour to Firemen in Paris and No Obstacles by Alec Wilkinson.
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The Parkour is:
1 - A utility sport that serves you in first place, you move, climb, jump, you don’t continue to be blocked by a wall or by an obstacle that hinders you to advance.
2 - A training method that aims to make you stronger, then, is normal that you have to train very strong.
3 - What must make you more agile, you jump, recoup, roll, co-ordinate your movement as a monkey… agility…
4 - The work force that allows you to increase gradually your physical and psychological capacities to cross step by step what limited or what hindered you to advance and to continue your Parkour… the strength. To carve with that you diminish your fears and your apprehensions to the will of progressive work in jump’s with gap’s, the more distant jump’s. Your body must become accustomed gradually but it is a long work and difficult and, diminished the fears, you learn (and you must) to know your body, its possibilities and its limits.
All of this is Parkour.
But it is also to know to suffer and to know if you made badly (not too much badly) but is also to become hardened… the warlike spirit and determined that one must learn… David it lost some time because it was the only one… nowadays he allowed many to follow much more fast and to prevent all its former errors and all being a constant search and trainings to be able itself to say that I know my body and that I develop an above average physical condition.
David for example, he’s 34 years old and he’s stronger now then when he was 20, but that’s because (Parkour) it’s his life and he lives it every day, because it is an art of living but is also physic… it’s difficult for that who doesn’t know and that doesn’t understand the effort and the physical suffering… because if Parkour is pretty, it is because it is dominated, and that is the result of very effort and suffering…
To train it is enough to find educative exercises (in which) you work regularly and gradually, your physical capacities will increase, it’s automatic, the exercise must be done to the more extreme possible. It is normal and logical, one does not have nothing without nothing.
Later, all people speaks in the acrobatics, if yes or not… for us, the gymnastics and the acrobatics it has the base of trainings in the gymnasium and are also a base of the coordination of the movement of the body. To carry through a jump demonstrates that you know to command and that you dominate your body, and, if making 4m of height, you demonstrate that you have the force, the crave and the physical power to carry through this type of exercise that a specialized gymnast couldn’t do. But one should not chain acrobatic movements on a wall or an automobile, this become only acrobatics for the show, it’s not the useful Parkour, is the “Parkour acrobatic show of.”
If one day you will be in difficulties in the roof of an apartment in flames or you are to be pursued by people how want bad things for you, you use Parkour as in the B13, if you don’t know what to do, then you make pirouets, you make as the Yamakasi on the automobiles or walls as in its film.
We spoke with (non-revealed) brand. They want that David’s Parkour becomes (non-revealed brand Parkour)… they had said that don’t want freerun from the UFF, they know that are we and that we know better than no nobody to speech (about our Parkour), to form, and pure and simply to show what we created.
Parkour is free for he who practices it… is for you, later, if to want to make of this your mark, it is only necessary to be good at it, and not to hide behind the movement that you transformed. But well, the objective is that you understand the spirit and that you (must) advance in security, without useless risks, therefore the goal is also the security. The important thing is to advance in this world with the idea of a basis of an action art that is Parkour… it’s enthusiastic to create an economic sporting movement that can allow many people to live its passion. But we guard so that the ones that live it, deserve it… it’s very simple.
We are going to federate the Parkour of DB, to form instructors with 3 levels of formation with periods of training in France and events in the foreigner so that all and each one of us speak only about one and the same Parkour.
1º period of training will be in (dates not divulged) and only the formed people will be able to form people for Parkour. The objective is to be able to have a national representative for country in contact with us, he will be the judge of what’s happening in his country and to form new practitioners.
One will not try to stop the people who make “extreme Parkour” but this will be practiced on the responsibility of the one making the extreme, such as the person who makes ski out of the ski track.
One will not try to stop that who wants to do Parkour by himself, but if some accident happen and this person doesn’t belong to our organization, it’s a matter of protecting us so that we are not responsible for all the accidents on hearth, and, if that person it’s affiliated, during an event this person will have complete insurance, but if out of the event is on its responsibility.
The goal is to transmit and transmit well.
-Jean François Belle
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In April of this year David had the opportunity to teach Parkour to firefighters in
http://www.sportmediaconcept.com/parkour/index.php?subaction=mois&annee=2008&mois=6
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
In the last few weeks we have been working very hard to add some great new features to MisterParkour.com. In addition to some new unprecedented series and some rare and unknown Parkour videos which we will be posting soon, three recent changes to the site are well worth noting.
#1. We added a sweet favicon that is consistent with the design, colors and themes of MisterParkour.com. The favicon can be seen in a Mozilla Firefox browser but we are still having problems making it show up for Internet Explore users. Nevertheless, we hope this addition helps you keep track of your favorite post on the site!
#2. We have added a search bar to the site! Now you don’t have to rifle through our crazy library of “David Belle” posts to find the video you want. You can now simple type in the name of a specific subject or video you are looking for such as “Accroches Toi”, or you can type in key words that pertain to the video and moves/techniques performed with in it and the search will bring up exactly the videos, posts, and pages you are looking for. Go ahead, try it for yourself!
#3. And last but certainly not least, MisterParkour.com has recently partnered with one of the most prominent Parkour websites in existence. We aren’t going to tell you which one because that would be too easy, but do a little searching online and you are sure to stumble across it.
Thank you for being a part of MisterParkour.com and encouraging us to develop the content and organization of this! If you have any questions or comments you can always send us an email and we are happy to get back to you as soon as we can.