After a terrible summer for kiting, we managed to get a small window of opportunity to get some flying in. I wanted to try out some new ideas for filming because I’d bought a Hi Def camcorder and wanted to experiment a bit. I took a ladder to the beach for the first session. I wanted to have the rider jump up to be level with me as I filmed. It didn’t really come out as I hoped, mainly because you are stuck in one position on the ladder and the rider has to time their jump to perfection to make the shot work. Also standing on a 8ft ladder in 25+mph winds with a thousand pounds worth of camera in your hand is a bit nerve wrecking(especially to poor Benny who helped with the filming!!) It did show Craig Sparkes going huge though and it was great to see how far he has come from that little cameo in Thrill Spills. The second session was filmed the following day. We built a little ramp to launch off and once again, Craig seemed to be going bigger than anyone else, also throwing loads of technical stuff in with 2 wheeled landings, backwards 2 wheels and I even saw a couple of double kite loops! Also there that day were Goofy, Wayne-O,Mark, Benny and a very talented landboarder, Danny C. Its great that so many of the friends i’ve made through kiting all those years ago, are still flying today. The third session was just me and Lewis. We’d arranged to meet up and the forecast was looking reasonable. What we didn’t expect was the stunning backdrop to some of the footage. The sunsets at Branny can be awesome but they had been few and far between throughout the summer. But here we were, great wind, empty beach and a beautiful sunset. By now Lewis is throwing huge kiteloops, handlepasses and landing everything to blind. He took a quick rest from flying to film me for half an hour. I threw a couple of nice aerial 360’s, inverts, kiteloops and some nice ground rotations. All in all, the perfect weekend!
