Thyme & Roses
Trailer
Alec (@riqbic) sat down with Callan (@callanbiddle), George (@george__prior), and Max (_empi__) to chat about their new project:
Alec: This video is fucking amazing. (Not a question.)
Alec: A full 15 minutes of action… What a crazy output. What’s a typical filming day for you guys? Are you ever walking away with more than one clip? How long have you guys been filming for this?
Cal: When going out to film we always would make the most out of the days and stay out for as long as possible. Some days I would get a few clips and others none. However normally if I got none George would get some or vice versa.
Alec: In a recent Instagram post, you mention that this video has been in the works for a long time. You can change a lot over the course of a year or two, especially when you’re so young. How old are all of you guys? Cal, George, did you find yourselves picking out “old” clips to remove as you progressed as athletes?
George: I’m 17. Yes we have taken a few clips out that we shot, but didn’t quite match the standard. That’s the only problem I have with shooting a longer project; the clips I shoot during the early stages end up being less hard-hitting in my opinion as I’ve leveled up as an athlete during the filming process.
Cal: I’m 18, a year older than George. I agree with George — trying to make sure the level is at the best of my ability has meant some clips from early filming have been taken out and replaced with stuff that I definitely couldn’t have done when we started filming.
Alec: Max, you came to us with test footage well over a year ago now (obviously, we liked it). Where were you as an artist then, and what areas have grown since then?
Max: This project honestly made me take parkour much more seriously as a creative outlet — I really treated it like a job this time. I feel like now I have such a better idea on how to put a video part together, and Turf as a team has really evolved into what I think it should be.
Max: As an artist I think that I’m way more passionate if anything. This project has helped me massively within my personal practice, and I’m eternally thankful to you guys for the kick-start with taking my parkour work much more seriously. It’s now my main practice to photograph these boys, as I landed a major photography bursary from some of the pictures I made for this project, so it has all snowballed for me quite quickly. Can’t be more thankful for how it’s all gone, really.
Alec: Can you speak to how the rich history of British parkour influenced your styles individually? You guys have a leveled-up traditional parkour style. Strong parkour, strong acro, but definitely the most emphasis on spot use and selection.
George: I would say I’m heavily influenced by “pure parkour,” but as I developed as an athlete I introduced more flips, and combining the two really suits my style.
Cal: I wasn’t as influenced by pure parkour originally and preferred more flips and connections. But recently I’ve enjoyed the pure-parkour style more. That could be from training with George since he did a lot more jumps early on. I think we influenced each other.
Alec: Who were your training partners growing up? Who were your teachers? Mentors?
George: When I was younger, and before Turf, I didn’t have many training partners. I mainly trained with my coaches Karol, Majik, and Josh, and one other friend. They helped me massively during my earlier training and are the reason I was able to meet many others and eventually join Turf. More recently, Turf has been who I train with most and helped me level up.
Cal: All my early training was in a gym with my coach Alex Grinter, who taught me from age 8. I met Max there, and after a while he took me outside for the first time to train when I was about 14. After going out a few times with him, I met George and other parkour athletes. This then led to Turf being formed, and now I mainly train with Turf and they are the ones that help to push me.
Alec: Max, what artists and filmmakers do you look up to?
Max: Most of my inspiration comes from photography and how both me and Will construct shots on long lenses is influenced by how we would frame a photograph. When it comes to the fisheye stuff I’m still such a novice, but I really pay attention to the way the Manor guys do it. We’ve spent a lot of time with Naomi over the project and she’s been so helpful with learning how to shoot effectively and honestly just all around with getting everything done the way we want it — so thanks Naomi!
Max: Being honest, I’m definitely less knowledgeable about filmmaking than most, but I tend to just put things together and see if they work. I’m much more aligned with the photo side of stuff, but I do enjoy video when it goes together nicely.
Alec: One of my favorite questions to ask people is always: who inspires your movement? It’s really interesting to see if it matches up with what we take away as a viewer. Not to conflate you two, you each have a pretty unique style, but I see some Verky, some Connor P., maybe like some Joel Larsson? People who can put scale and athleticism into really technical acro, have lighting quick transitions, and really strong roots in trad PK.
George: For me, who I’ve taken inspiration from in the sport is a difficult question. When I was younger I was heavily influenced by the Scruffy Boys, as they were close to home and lived where I did. I also was inspired by Travis Verky, Ed Scott, and Tim Champion. I loved their movement and think that their styles combined influenced my movement. But more recently, it’s harder to pinpoint, as you have so much access to parkour media online and more exposure to the sport, so a lot more people have influenced me.
Cal: When I first started, I mainly took influence from my coaches, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve taken influence from lots of different people — like members from Kipa as well as more recent American athletes like Josh Malone. I really liked watching Atonement; I watched that quite a lot. He twists so well — like he can twist anything — and I just want to be like that. I also watch a lot of urban skiing.
Alec: [shameless plug] Speaking of which, if you haven’t watched Atonement or our other Volume 1 releases, we just released a physical copy which includes a video game! There aren’t many left, and we won’t restock them. The purchase also gives you access to all the videos on our site!
The Commons VOLUME 1
A physical release of our first year of videos on a custom pre-loaded USB. Every video is included in an old-school DVD style menu as well as a custom Commons themed video game. Purchase also grants access to all Volume 1 videos on our website to the account of purchase. The video game is very…
Alec: Who’s the person who pushes you over the hump when it’s time to commit to a big challenge?
George: The main people who help me commit to challenges and break mental barriers is Turf. Training with people who know my capabilities is reassuring, and if I’m struggling with a mental battle they will help push me on and commit to the challenge. Also when growing up, my coach Karol would help me commit to challenges, and him having recently passed away, I try to use this as motivation to almost prove a point. However sometimes this mindset puts too much pressure on me and I struggle when I set the boundary too high for myself.
Cal: Turf is the main group who will push me to commit to something if I am struggling. Like George said, it’s reassuring to train with people who know your ability really well as you can learn to trust them and yourself to commit to scary challenges and push your ability.
Alec: The video makes it seem like you guys have somewhat similar styles; do you agree?
George: We both started with very different styles, with strengths and weaknesses. The more we trained together though, the more we tried to adapt each other’s styles. Cal started off doing a lot of flips, and I started off doing a lot more jumps and big kong pres and stuff, and we both taught each other.
Cal: When I see George hit a huge kong, I’m like: “Crap… God, I need to get better at kongs.” It always pushes me.
George: One thing that pisses me off is that you can do all the off-axis stuff, bro! I try to do that stuff and I can’t. I can only rod to my ass…
Cal: They’re easy! Just lift your hips up, George.
Cal: Oh yeah, one more key thing — we both push side pres as big as we can. When we met each other, we would compete a lot on them.
Alec: You guys make really easy tricks really hard with spot use and scale. Do you guys train acro to a much higher level in a gym, or do you mostly find it fulfilling to put these “easy” tricks into really hard lines?
Cal: Yeah, I do train way harder stuff in the gym, and I try to bring it outside, but there’s lots of stuff that just doesn’t get outside.
George: I do train harder stuff in the gym, but Cal probably experiments more than me. I’ve got doubles, triples, trying to work my kong gainers too. I am trying to push that stuff outside, but lots didn’t make it into this video.
Max: I don’t want to talk for you boys, but both of these boys can kong gainer outside, they can both double outside, but when we were shooting for this video I definitely encouraged them to take what they could do to the biggest level instead of taking hard stuff outside. We were so focused on spot use and making this a good style piece.
George: We wanted to make an impact, and even though some single cool tricks might be hard for us, it wasn’t going to turn heads in the broader parkour scene and it was hard to put it in an interesting spot or into a thoughtful line.
Cal: Also, filming under pressure is fun, but hard obviously. I think when we get back out, when the weather lets us, we’ll be ready to take more stuff outside without the pressure of filming. There’s a certain aspect of filming where like “If I do this it’s cool, but I don’t want to get injured and have it be a George solo video.”
Alec: What Turf cam is in the works? Is the whole group still in one place right now?
Max: I think Turf’s in a really exciting place at the minute. This is easily our biggest and most thought-out project, and I feel like we all need a short break; however, we’ve got a couple of new video projects in the works and some crazy ideas for how we can show them in the future. It’ll be nice to have some old-school training days without the cameras soon, though.
Max: We’re all pretty close now, me and Will live together right around the corner from George so that’s really helpful. The furthest person out is Riche, as he’s been in Asia for a few months, but he’s back super soon.
George: At the moment me, Max, and Will live near Plymouth and can meet up often, but the others live a little farther away. But this doesn’t really stop us from training much as we are only a 1.5-hour drive away at most. But living together or much closer as a group would be really nice.
Cal: I currently live an hour and a half away from George, Max, and Will; however, this doesn’t stop me from training with them and the rest of Turf most weekends. I normally drive down for the weekend and crash at George’s or Max and Will’s place for the night. I feel like this helps bring us all closer as we don’t just see each other when training.
Alec: Where can people get some merch?
Max: Coming soon, keep an eye out on our Instagram for updates!
Alec: Any final thoughts or shout-outs?
George: The more we film videos, the more we get to do cool stuff and travel, and we’ve been able to do these things just because of Turf. Like dude, we climbed a skyscraper in New York — that’s tough!! Come on, man.
Cal: Without Turf, we probably wouldn’t have ever gone to America. Turf has made it so we can go so many places.
George: I’d still be doing parkour without these boys, but it was like a butterfly effect. I feel like it allowed us to progress really fast and well.
George also wanted to give an extra special shout out to his former coach Karol, who passed earlier this year. “He really pushed me training growing up and introduced me into the wider community, any time I get a clip I think of him now.” Rest in peace, Karol.
Total masterpiece all the way through. Can’t wait to come back to this one over and over again
Feels like a new Motus video just dropped, beautiful wonderful stuff, love love love it <3
killer work
Turf is kicking ass and taking names 😍