So how does Santa really get from roof top to roof top? In this fun video I am dressed up again, but this time as good old Saint Nick who happens to use parkour and epic free running moves to get from roof to roof.
Besides getting me into the Christmas spirit I had a lot of fun with this video. It was an interesting experience being a young athletic kid dressed up as Santa Clause. I never realized the mantle Santa carried until I was walking around in public dressed up in the costume and people would come up to me to get photos and one lady even gave me a hug and told me she would like to see her kids for Christmas. I don't feel like my personality makes a very good Santa Clause and that's why I mostly stuck to the parkour but I did my best to throw out some belly "ho ho's" and various other Santa related sayings.
I am actually rather impressed with myself in this video. It's not normally my nature to brag or anything, but I was proud of what I was able to accomplish in the difficulty of filming this video. Here are some interesting things you might not have realized in this video and some you may have realized.
1. It's freezing cold - Body movements are slower and more difficult to move as quickly.
2. It's night time - Less visibility means more reliance upon feel.
3. Snow and ice - Obviously makes everything more slippery on take offs and landings.
4. Wearing costume with fat padding - Additional weight and restriction.
5. The Beard - Almost every single flip trick you see in this video I did completely blind when the beard I was wearing would flip up into my face and cover my eyes. So most landings were blind and relied completely on experience and feel to be able to land each of the tricks as successfully as I did.
What I also feel this demonstrates is my ability as a stunt man. Something I would like people to understand is I don't just do these types of videos for the "views" but also to demonstrate my ability as a stunt man to work as different characters and in different situations. Luckily with only minor slipping I had no injuries while filming this video. Though there was a close call.
One of the last nights of filming the parkour scenes, we were on 3 story roof of an apartment complex. Doing something rather simply where I slide a sloped part of the roof onto another awning over a walk way, I clipped my foot on a cord just before starting the slide and started to slide towards the 3 story drop instead of the platform. Luckily I gained control in time to make it to the platform, but it was quite the scare for me and Cameron Manwaring who was filming me at the time.
As we walked off joking about it I mentioned how that could have been a real life incident of "The Santa Clause" movie. Immediately that sparked the idea for the ending of the video and Cameron said "I think we have our ending" and this was completely different then what we were planning on before.
The next night we went to my parents house to film on their roof and I got my little brother Rennon to play the part of the poor kid who has to experience killing Santa. This was actually really fun for me. With some big crash mats I have I was able to tumble off that roof over and over again. I had to have fallen off that roof in different ways almost 20 times. You can see quite a few of those and some other fun behind the scenes footage on the B2C Pictures Channel. Brett and Sam Seegmiller the creator of that channel played a big part in the planning and filming of this video. Check out the video and be sure to subscribe to their channel
B2C Pictures.
I hope everyone enjoyed my Santa Parkour video, but I know for sure know will enjoy it as much I did making it. As hard and cold as it was I had fun. This is my life and I love every moment of it!
If you did enjoy this video the best thing you can do for me this Christmas season is share this video!
Thanks Everyone for watching and sharing. I wish you all a Merry Christmas, an awesome New Year, and Happy Holidays!
-Ronnie Shalvis (Santa's Helper)
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I grew up with a fear heights, a fear of being under water, a fear of being in tight spaces, fear of spiders and a fear of flipping upside down. Kind of strange based on what I do for a living, good thing these fears don't effect me nearly as much as they used too. So where did these fears come from? Well I could fall off of something high and get injured or die, I could drown under water, I could get stuck in a tight place, get bit by a spider and I could land on my head doing a flip. All of them were fears because of the reality that there is potential danger in them. The first thing I want you to understand about fear is that fear isn't bad, it's a defense mechanism our mind uses to help us recognize potential dangers and prevent anything serious from happening to us.
