Roof Culture Asia

Jis

Well, training on roofs was something

that we always kind of did.

We just kind of enjoyed goin' on roofs,

enjoyed movin' around on roofs explorin',

and doin' that kind of stuff.

It just made me think, "oh, this is...

"This is what we do."

Jis

roof culture was just a

five-minute YouTube video really,

wasn't it, at the start?

People responded to it

really, really well, mainly because they had, like...

People hadn't seen anything like that.

And the whole, like, theme and feel of the video

was like a context that parkour

had never really been seen before.

A renegade style of movement on rooftops

that almost goes back to the original style or

the original reason why parkour

had kind of been created in the first place.

It has always been happening,

since, like, the founders training up high.

It's always been a thing in the sport.

Yeah.

We knew it was gonna be a controversial project

from the start, but, um,

didn't realize how much it was gonna

sort of cause a stir in the community

and in the world outside of parkour as well.

The launch of the clothing and the kind of

"roof cult” branding created this very

sort of anti-establishment vibe,

and it was definitely what they were going for.

And I mean, they do question everything,

and they are sort of the... the rebels,

and they were... They were the ones

in the scene at the time doing something

very different.

Jis

and the amount of sort of rooftop stuff going on

has pushed this

more and more into a cultural trend.

Roof culture is all about taking the skills

that you have developed and learned

to the highest point that you can and

testing yourself.

But the hashtag was being taken away

from where the guys intended it to be.

There are people that are just

going on roofs for Instagram,

just to, like, shock people

that have no experience with height.

It would be arrogant to say that we're reclaiming it,

but we wanna show that it's not about posing.

Then the idea of, like, "maybe we should do

"a roof culture too" emerged, but mainly as a joke.

Just like, "wouldn't it be funny if we could do that again?"

The way to step it up from what we did in the uk

is bigger and better cities.

There wasn't a decision process and like,

"oh, should we do roof culture in like,

"south America or Africa or like...?"

Do you know what I mean? It was just

Asia was the obvious choice.

You have so many incredible cities

and so much culture that is so different

from what we normally experience.

Jis

it's just fucking tall buildings.

It's huge, it's so intense there.

It's the next challenge.

We'd never really put ourselves up against

any kind of mega-city before.

It all kind of made sense,

and before long, roof culture Asia was

the target, and the guys were

just heading towards it.

Jis

There was so much up in the air

and so much that we were unsure of.

Just too many variables to be able to predict

what we were actually gonna be able to do.

We didn't even know if we were gonna be able

to shoot any parkour.

We were just all joking around,

just havin' fun until we actually land and realize,

"shit, we gotta get this done.

"We've gotta actually start makin' a film."

What was your accommodation like?

Oh, fuckin' hell.

Chungking mansion.

Where do I even begin?

You never think about the worst possible situation,

and then we kind of got in this lift and

experienced it.

We've actually had to share some miniature beds

for the entirety of our two-week stay in Hong Kong.

Like, potentially, I'll sleep in the hall.

Now, that's not bad.

Every time I think of chungking mansion now,

it just makes me laugh.

It's the shittest accommodation I have ever stayed in.

There's the toilet.

Within minutes, somebody had sat on a bed,

and it had broken, so the bed was thrown out

into the corridor, and a mattress was just

layin' on the floor.

Blocked toilets reeking of shit.

Oh, no.

We truly believed that they'd messed up our booking.

How many people we have in one room.

It's just like, "oh, shit, this is the start.

"Like, this is day one."

Home, boys.

I fuckin' hate this place.

My feet smell like dead warthog.

So, after the sort of,

the arrival and a bit of planning,

we basically had to jump straight into scouting.

First day was just get out,

climb as many roofs as possible,

and find the most amount of spots I possibly can.

Um, the plan right now, first day,

we're just gonna wander around kowloon

and see if we can get up onto any of these buildings,

just to get, like, the lay of the land

and see what we're workin' with.

We have two weeks in each city, so it was really this...

This race against time to find enough rooftops

that were gonna offer what we needed to make this film happen.

Basically trying to sharpen the knife,

finding the best locations for filming and the movement.

Nice.

We were constantly splitting off into these little groups

to explore different areas of the city.

You go out, you take photos and videos

on your phone, and we had this whatsapp group

and we're all putting everything in there at the end of the day.

Doin' a little video and voicin' it over, and it...

It proved to be incredibly effective, actually.

When we came back to WiFi, everyone could log in

and see the spots of the day.

Whew, finally.

Ah!

Jis

before, we thought we'd be taking rest days

maybe every, like, three days,

but it was so much harder to find buildings

than we originally thought that we just

totally scrapped that plan,

and basically every day was wrecking,

unless we had stuff to shoot.

Jis

before we check out, dude.

Parkour free run, boom, boom, boom.

Yeah, yeah.

How do you say it?

- Yeah, alright. - Yeah.

Success.

Sorry.

Run!

I couldn't even tell you

the amount of roofs we went on

the first few days out in Hong Kong,

but it involved a lot of security,

a lot of running away, a lot of alarms,

and basically getting to grips with the authorities

and the architecture that we were gonna be dealin' with

for the next two weeks.

Jis

I can't even fathom

how many times we're gonna do this

- in this... - I know, yeah.

We should keep a track.

What? How many roofs we climb?

How many roofs we.

The first alarm we encountered...

We'd had enough success throughout the day that

we were feeling cocky.

I mean there's a security camera looking at you, but...

Like the loudest

fucking alarm I have ever experienced in my life.

Fuckin' hell.

Shit.

Kind of laughing, but kind of

deaf in one ear as well.

Fucking hell.

And that was definitely the first bout of, like,

"okay, we're gonna...

"We're gonna be experiencing alarms.

"We're gonna be experiencing security."

Maybe turn left.

About 50% of the time, the alarms went off,

but 50% of the time is always worth a shot.

It could not go off,

and we could find out what's on this roof,

or it could go off, and it will split your ears.

That's how loud it is.