JUMP!
Director's Statement

Among the many questions that plagued us during the production of JUMP! the following stood out as the most uncertain of ever being answered: How do you make a 1 hour film about something that lasts a second in a country suffering from a communist hangover where 'no' means 'yes'?

While researching a film idea about the role of the Czech climbers in the fight against their Nazi occupants, my partner Allen Hill showed me a picture of a climber in flight between the summits of two rock towers. The visual tension in the image stunned us and an idea took root ...

Vladmir Prochazka, Allen's contact with the Czech climbing community, introduced us to Petr and Zorka Prachtel who turned out to be wonderful characters. He then tracked down other jumpers, old film footage, and helped us organize everything except the weather. 'Vladimir, is the weather a problem?' ... 'No problem'.

On the first shoot trip, of the four weeks we had the 6-7 man crew on location in the town of Mala Skala, rain prevented us from filming climbing or jumping for all but 6 days. We shot other things, but mostly fretted over lack of jumps. (We have all of 20 seconds of jumping in the can!) What jumping we did shoot, we covered usually with 3 cameras rolling at various speeds. Our 'money' shots were taken by a hi-speed Arri 35mm camera. Sync scenes we shot on 16mm with an Aaton, and a Bolex was the roving camera.

Camera positions were determined partly by scouting the jumps and partly by the geography of the location-mother nature often determined where we could or couldn't set up. With the help of local climbers, we managed to rig ropes for the cameramen to hang and shoot from.

The Czech people and culture are hard to predict and understand. Most are friendly, but many remain distrustful of strangers (must we serve you?) -small wonder considering their recent history. Their language is extremely difficult to crack, but we did learn a few key phrases ... . Pozor Vlak! (Beware of train!), Yedno pivo prosim (a beer please) and polib ma prdeli (a useful phrase which rhymes with miss the pass). Despite our growing vocabulary, the communications gap remained unbridgeable at times. Working with labs and studios in Prague was problematic, but we coped.

Four years and couple more shoots later, we were finally cutting a story and not just a trailer. Getting to this point was very difficult. Allen and I had drifted apart and JUMP! was stagnant. Making the mental leap into post-production mode required letting go of past problems and moving forward. Slowly, the story started to take shape. With the talent and patience of Oscar-winning editor, David Emrich things started to really look and sound good and Allen and I were working together again.

The film debuted in CZ at the Teplice International Mountain Film Festival and received gratifying praise. The most satisfying and unexpected moments of the whole process was seeing the generation gap closed by youths talking with and admiring the older jumpers and vice-versa. This is the power of filmmaking-not just the ability to entertain, but also to teach and bring people together.

By this time, we had learned that the Czech word for 'yes' is 'ano' and it is frequently shortened to 'no' or 'ya'. We'd also learned that patience, understanding, and compassion will open many a door: especially if you hear 'no problem'.