Of jitters up high and lords of the sky: the Aussie Skydive Project
You don’t quite know what’s hit you. A previously totally unimaginable sensation is chasing through your body and you have quite literally just had your breath taken. Through the spinning, whirling, rushing, mind-blowing surroundings, you suddenly re-focus your eyes on what’s going on around you. And you realise, that you, little 60kg bundle of human cells, are 4km above the face of the earth, hurtling through the troposphere past layer upon layer of air, clouds and wind towards your home planet at over 200km/h.
Barely able to grasp what’s happening but resigning your body to just go along for the ride you start to really enjoy yourself. Adrenaline’s pumping around your body making you hyper alert to the stunning beauty of Earth, life and generally having a brain to capture it all. The view from 14000 feet is breathtaking, clouds and landscape are lusciously high-def and 3D and there is really no other way to see it but jump out of a perfectly good plane.
Suddenly, you spot something moving from the corner of your eye, and it’s getting closer and closer, circling you as you fall into the abyss. It can’t be your tandem master, who’s firmly strapped to your back and making sure to keep you total beginner from falling to your otherwise certain death. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a dude in a flying squirrel onesie? The being comes closer and closer and you see a massive smile emerge under the rim of some ridiculously cool sunnies. A flicker of recognition and your face merges from your previous ‘wow’-face into a ‘yeeeeeey’-face as you realize this being is Ben, who you met earlier when you were getting all harnessed up. His tell tale double camera rig bolted firmly to his helmet, he flies even closer and you become the key participant of the most epic fist-pump in the history of mankind, at 260km/h, 10000 feet above the tropical North Queensland coastline and the Great Barrier Reef.
These are the moments we treasure the most – moments of unashamed exhilaration, of blowing your comfort zone to bits and experiencing things the vast majority of humans throughout history never dreamed would be even remotely possible. As your favourite maverick film team, we’ll over the next few months have the utter privilege of capturing those moments at 12 unique Skydive Australia drop zones around the country. And we can’t even start to explain how excited we are, how many fascinating aspects of Skydiving we have VIP access to, as well as how incredibly skilled our drop zone camera fliers, tandem masters, ground team and pilots are.
Always wanted to know how to pack a parachute? Fly a plane with the doors open? Use a camera in freefall (no hands, mum!)? And what those Mission Impossible squirrel suits actually do? This is the Skydive project, watch this space…