We’ve been following Luke Stones for a while now, and we took some time to chat to him after he produced his new video ‘Lets Tesselate’ for us.
What does the process of making a video look like for you? Who shoots edits etc.?
First of all I try and make a plan of what sort of video I’m going to make (Point of view, general Parkour or any other video). I then plan a rough idea of how I want certain bits to look, for example the intro. Then I just go out and train! If there is something I think is rather cool, I’ll get one of my friends to film it (usually my friends Jack Newman & Max Barker). The camera I currently use is the GoPro Hero 4 Black edition and I usually film in 4k, but if I want a slow motion shot, I film in 1080p for the 120fps. When I feel I have got enough clips I’ll import it all into one folder and begin the editing stage. I edit in Adobe Premiere and After Effects CC 2014 and I usually always edit to the beat of the music I’m using.
What are you passionate about outside of free running?
Outside of parkour I do a lot of other extreme sports; Snowboarding, Skateboarding, Cliff jumping and Rock climbing. I love getting up really high and having a lot of airtime! I’m also very passionate about filmmaking. I study about filming and editing in school, and I often make short films with my friends on my second channel LukeStonesFilms. I love playing around with creative filming and editing and seeing the expression on my friends faces when I show them the final result! I’m also very passionate about traveling to different places; I love being somewhere else other than home and exploring new surroundings. One of my favorite places I’ve been to is Switzerland, the scenery is phenomenal and the air is so clean. It’s also very quiet and peaceful up in the mountains, because not many people live there. A final thing I’m passionate about is fruit, give me a watermelon and I’ll love you forever!
How did you learn your first tricks when you started out? Did you have somebody to teach you or did you learn by yourself?
When I started, I went to a free running session that was held at my local gym, where we did vaults and threw flips into the foam pit. The session ended about 3 months after I started, so we ventured outside. Luckily we live near the beach so we could learn movements into the sand. After my friends stopped training as often, I found a local team and I started going to a Parkour classes with them at a dance studio. I leant lots of new movements there, including precisions, double Kongs, Kong precisions and the more difficult somersaults. Since then I’ve been training outside and learning with friends while progressing as much as I can!
If you had a free trip to anywhere in the world right now, where to would it be? And who would you take with you?
If I had the chance I would fly to Copenhagen in Denmark and go to the BGI Academy. They have one of the nicest parkour parks in the world and I would love to go there and experience it all. If I had to choose 5 people to come with me they would be: Max Barker, my main training partner, he is epic at parkour and I always usually travel with him! Samuel Lemon, an awesome guy from Ireland, has the biggest jumps known to man and is a unique quirky guy. Lewis Thompson a 6ft giant, truly honest guy who has the best garden setup on the south coast! Tom Rumpf a good friend of mine from Germany, he is hilarious and is a talented photographer! Finally Johnny Donohoe from New York who I trained and met with in London where we had a lot of fun. He is a brilliant guy and makes epic videos, I can’t wait to see him next time he visits!
You can see how awesome the BGI space is in the following video…
Best advice you ever got?
The best advice I ever had is to ‘make every second count’. You never know when you’re going to die, it could be tomorrow, it could be today. If you sit inside all day on Facebook doing nothing, it’s likely you’re going to regret it later in life. So get out there, live in the real world and try and be happy. Have fun and never grow up!
This is a good speech by Charlie Chaplin that really inspires me…
You can invite 3 people out for dinner, dead or alive. Who do you choose?
Firstly I would invite David Belle, as the founder of Parkour, he is a huge part of my life. If he would of never founded the sport , then I probably wouldn’t be here today writing this and WFPF wouldn’t exist. I would love to meet him and chat with him about what parkour is for him and where he wants to go with it, just like the flow show interview he did with Tim Shieff.
Secondly I would chose Daniel Ilabaca, as a big hero and inspiration of mine. We could chat about Christianity and Parkour. And what he thinks about our society today. What we are doing wrong? How can we solve it? I would be deeply sad if I never met him through my life.
The third person I would chose is Jesus, as a Christian, I would love to hear his story’s face to face and see what he looks like. Also I would like get to know more about him, and speak to him about what he wants changing in our current society.
What ís the craziest story that happened to you while training?
I was out with a couple friends exploring on a farm and there was some hay-bales that looked very tempting to jump on. We were there for about 20 minutes and we hear a car coming so we hide amongst the bales. He drove past and we thought nothing of it, so we carried on. 10 minutes later a farmer walks round the corner, and in his right hand he had a double barrel shotgun pointed at us. He asked us what we were doing and we explained to him that we were just filming Parkour & free running. He threatened that if we didn’t get off his land he would shoot us. We left his land.
Who is the most underrated tracer / free runner you know right now?
Back in the summer of 2012 there was a Spanish tracer who came to Bournemouth (my hometown) for a few months to see his mother who lives here. His Name is Arturo Gonzalez and he beasted out on all our local spots with his extremely strong movements. He has a great mental attitude towards parkour! On Youtube he only has a few videos but his parkour is at a very high standard. He only has 75 subscribers so go share the love!
What are your top 3 favorite parkour videos?
My most favorite Parkour video would have to be Chaps on tour 2013 by Storror, Its one of the all time classics. They travel across Europe and have an epic time, with beautiful cinematic landscape shots and epic parkour! I find myself watching more than once, all of these videos to be honest.
My 2nd favorite would have to be the new video by BNE Parkour called BNE // 2014. It shows very powerful movements and epic times throughout Brisbane in Australia.
My 3rd favorite video would be the Hong Kong playground video by flow show featuring athletes Tim Shieff and Jason Paul. It shows there amazing adventure around the beautiful landscapes of Hong Kong with great Parkour & Free running in between.
What’s your proudest achievement in parkour / free running?
My proudest achievement in parkour is to get this far, I never knew just doing what I love could create opportunities like this for me and could inspire others too! When I first started uploading videos to YouTube, I found WFPF and I thought to myself one day I would like have something with them. And now I do, so it really is true that if you strive for something hard enough you can Achieve it! Also another one of my proudest achievements is how many people I have met and became friends with through traveling to new places and events doing parkour! I hope to go further with WFPF and meet new friends in the future!
You can see more of Luke at his YouTube channel
Article By Luke Stones
Thank you to WFPF for this opportunity