Review [Issue 70] Masters Of Parkour 2017 - Team Apollo

[stanzhang 3,291]

 

Hello dear Newspaper readers. As you might know, last month we had the yearly Master Of Parkour 2017 Finals. Luckily enough, I was part of one of the top ten finalists and had the chance to compete in the final livestream. In this article, you will discover an eyewitness review of my team, from the beginning to the end.

 

 

This is our final video; it took us around nine days to complete the tricks, five days to render with three different drafts.

 

Here is the official Master of Parkour livestream, just in case you missed it.

 

 

The beginning of our journey, how did we made our team?

 

The thing is that for this contest you must prepare in advance. In my club's chat, they started to discuss for making MOP teams at least two weeks before the contest had been even announced. I guess everyone predicted that the contest was going to be announced shortly. At that time, I did not have a team yet. So I knew it was crucial to make the team before the contest's announcement otherwise it will be too late. On Tuesday, September 26, 2017, I made my team with @emrakul and .

(Sorry, my Skype is in French)

 

 

I tried to ask my leader, @darrrex to come with us, but he declined my suggestion and went to another team instead. After one day of searching for a new member, we picked @govenier to be the last member that our team needed. Then, we were ready to go.

 

 

Recording tricks

 

After waiting for a whole week, the contest had finally started. Our trick ideas mainly came from (big thumbs up to him), but as a team, we all came up with our own ideas. Of course, we did not wait until the beginning of the contest to think about tricks; we planned at least half of those a week before.

 

In order to make those tricks as fast as possible, you must have all four members active. For my team, I had that recurrent problem from my last year MOP which is only to have three people online. I don't know why, but it is always like this. That is also probably why in our video, we had mainly tricks containing only three people.

 

We tried each trick at least 20 times before making one successfully; it is definitively not like in the finals where most of the teams do the tricks under five attempts. Moreover, we had pretty complicated setups, so sometimes, it required more than 5 minutes to make something correctly.
 

We used spectator for every recording in our video. We had one in our Fight&Flight team, but it was really complicated for all of us to find a good time because he had to record all FnF teams (3 in total). We also had a plan B on finding a spec, we went into the topic "Hire a spectator" and we submitted our request, within a few hours, someone replied us and agreed to record for my team. Unfortunately, the spectator that we rented didn’t record very well, so we had to remake some of the tricks again. In the end, we only used 1.5 clips of the spec that we've rented. (You will know what does the 0.5 means if you will watch our last trick.)

 

Everything went pretty smoothly, we were able to finish our recordings within around nine days.

 

 

The Editing

 

None of my teammates were good at editing, moreover as a matter of fact, I knew that editing was a pretty significant criterion for this contest based on the previous year's winners. I tried to contact , the editor that worked on my last year's Master Of Parkour video to see if he was still alive, and luckily he was. (Last year, he pulled out an amazing editing for my team, and that was probably why we got the consolation prize because our tricks were pretty bad. :ph34r: )

 

When our recordings were done, he had around eight days to edit our video which was definitely enough. That no-lifer finished a draft under two days. It was not just a simple edit; he added color correction, special effects, synced music and much more. 

 

This image below is part of the first draft's video. Some of us didn't really like it, as a consequence, we requested to remove the blur on the borders and to insert less color correction.

 

 

Then, we had a second draft where he modified the video based on our suggestions (less cc, blur...). He also changed some sequences in order to add a hidden nickname in that trick above.

 

Furthermore, we had a third draft for minor corrections.

 

All of this editing and rendering took us around five days. Apparently, 's PC was broken or something like that, and it took an eternity amount of time (about 12 hours) to render a minute video. We had to wait between one and two days before having a result. We sent our final entry three days before the deadline.

 

 

The Waiting

 

We waited and waited... I was on holidays during that last week, so I was extremely impatient to get the results.

 

 

The Results

 

Finally, the results were announced on Friday, November 3rd at around 14:30 UTC+1 (my timezone). My heart was pounding in the chest while scrolling down in the results page, but I just couldn't see our video. When everything seemed lost, my teammates brought me the good news on Skype that we were the finalists. I was so confused in that moment, but when I checked again, our video was really on that list! 

 

 

What happened is that when the results were out, I scrolled down too fast in the topic and skipped our video. The video that we sent as the final entry was on 's channel, I totally forgot that he made a different thumbnail than the video that we uploaded on our Fight&Flight channel.

 

 

 

I was searching for this thumbnail instead of the other one. :ph34r: 

 

 

Pre-Finals

 

We had 1 day/24 hours/1440 minutes to prepare the finals; we were given a list of 24 potential houses to conquer. My team and I went through all of them and tried to search for some ideas. Here is a little brainstorming that I did on paper.

 

Don't try to read it, you won't understand.

 

We did prepare some tricks for most of those houses, but we were pretty scared of those big white towers considering there are no spectacular and easy tricks to do on them. We did the preparation phase with mostly three players since the fourth one couldn't come. 

 

 

The Finals - Team Apollo

 

The finals should have occurred on Monday, November 6th, due to the complaints of some players saying that Monday wasn't a good time, they shifted the time to Friday, November 3th, 5 UTC. 

 

You might be wondering, why did we name ourselves Apollo even though we aren't doing tricks in space? Well, the name originates from our Master of Parkour video. We had one trick which we named "The Launchpad". That trick looked like a space rocket launching from a launchpad. The jumper went straight up and corrected himself when he landed.

 

One hour before the finals, the two buildings that we had to do were given to us. Just practice, practice and practice all over again. We had a lot of problems with server stability issues due to the tripe funds. Furthermore, creating a map was a pain, we had a 1/10 chance of actually joining the one that we've created. I am sure this issue disturbed most of the other teams as well. 

 

 

First trick: Chernobyl

 

Our original idea for the first method required the Twins below me to lift my back up, then I shoot the ground with a Hammer that lifted my tank up, and in front of me, there would be a Railgun shooting me on to a house.

 

was getting in and out with 999 ping, so we had to do it without him. 

 

On the cliff near our first task, we didn't have enough space as we wished to have, but we adjusted first trick surprisingly well with the environment. It worked great for us during the testings with a 70% favorable landing rate. 

Maybe because of the amount of pressure, the first attempt was a fail, and then @emrakul completely lagged out. The organization put us on hold and went for the other team; they came back to us when @emrakul did manage to reconnect back again. We made it successfully on the 4th try, and apparently right after I landed @emrakul got disconnected again.

 

 

 

Second trick: Novel

 

We were almost convinced that they were going to ask the finalists to conquer one of those white towers, but we had no plan on how to get on one. Therefore, we had to work with the available surrounding structures. With only three people, @govenier, @emrakul and me, there weren't many choices of different tricks for the big tower. We went for a basic method, and luckily it worked for us. All the other teams were pretty unlucky for this one. only GTT and Apollo landed on top of this white structure. 

 

 

A small gold rain after our successful landing  

 

Third trick: Canyon

 

After over 3 hours of parkour, we were exhausted, I was totally dead and lackadaisical about finding another trick. We already knew that first place was not possible for us anymore since we had a huge score difference between us and GTT. I just told them to make a Viking tower, and we went for it. In our first attempt,  was lagging so we all fell, and during our second attempt, I ran out of speed boost. If you look closely, I was inactive for over 20 seconds between the tries because the garage during that laggy day wouldn't load. @emrakul with Magnum/Wasp was trying to OMP. In short, the last trick was rather a desperate attempt than a serious thing.

 

 

I went to watch the stream when our last excruciating task was finally done. I was expecting to finish at least second in that contest. But after seeing how much points the judges gave to Russian Power, my heart stopped. I definitively rued about my decision of making that tower. We thought about that trick, but we didn't know that it would bring a team so many points. 

 

There wasn't anything interesting after that except for the last team. The Dutch Flyers went for the same strategy as Russian Power with the mine jump. At that point, we knew that we were screwed. R.I.P 3rd place? No, because a weird thing happened after two of their attempts, they withdrew and went to make the tower, exactly like how we did it, thus giving them fewer points. 

 

Here are the final scores:

 

 

The Podium

• 1. German Tanki Tutorials (@Adiela, @Skull, , @Spy)
• 2. Russian Power (@VVhy, , , )
• 3. Apollo  (@stanzhang, @govenier, @emrakul, ) That's us! ^_^
• 4. The Dutch Flyers (@Flyer, @I.Legend.I, ,@Mr.SkiIIZz)
• 5. German is my city 63 (@Feelings, @jox99, @SKILL.NooB, @O_White_O)
• 6. Fighters (, @Olymp, @Traffic, @MOR4RL3)
• 7. 63FlyingParkourists (@Intellect, @Hate, @Spirit, @Jan)
• 8. Cowgirls (@williew, @sterre933, @SwiftSmoky, @SkIlL-PaVlIToS)

 

Some Feedbacks And Suggestions For The Finals

 

There are some things that I would like to point out on how can we improve the next edition of Masters of Parkour.

 

I think creativity in addition with the difficulty of the tricks should bring teams more points instead of the timer and the number of tries.

 

During the finals, the teams mostly got points for completing the tricks the fastest despite using really simple techniques to go onto the buildings.

 

The last challenge might be an excellent example.

 

For the last trick, GTT definitively pulled out a more creative and more difficult trick than Russian Power, and they got a lower score than them. I don't know why the judges put a 97 score for Russian Power since what they did was just a simple mine jump even though they made that first try.

 

Furthermore, my team had fewer points from the judges than the other teams for the last trick. Despite the fact that it was not a really creative one, but we still made it with a Viking (medium hull should bring more points since they are heavier). 

 

What I liked:

• More time than last year, having five minutes instead of two was very helpful and definitively enough.
• The commentary was nice; I am happy that we surprised them with our first trick because we did something else than what they initially expected. ^_^
• It is nice for the viewers to pick the last target to have more interactivity with them.
• The organization was great; the planning went surprisingly smooth.
• Sergei as a judge was not that bad; it is always good to have an external point of view.
• I truly appreciated that they gave my team a second chance because one of our teammates lagged out.

What I disliked and what should improve:

• The scoring system as I explained above.
• The choice of which buildings to conquer was terrible. I think that the second and third spot was not adapted for having different tricks for each team. In that list of those 24 potential houses, they were all tall buildings (which limited the approach of most of the teams). There were no small houses like last year. Like seriously, those big white houses in Novel, Year 2042 and Pass, we do not have time to set up a fancy trick. Therefore we were mostly forced to use those basic ones. If you look at the statistics, only 2/7 teams made it on the big white tower in Novel. 
• As a live stream, it is probably better to have more interactivity with the viewers and prepare some prizes for them to keep them entertained. (Promo codes, betting on a team [like in eSports], and occasional giveaways during breaks.) 
• You should probably take off points for bad landings (landing sideways).
• Any way to create a separate server just for tournaments? Just like the test server, we would require a code to get in. There will be only the participants of the tourney in it. Thus they can have a better performance.
• Last year, MOP 2016, winners had a week of premium, there was no special treatment like that this year. 

 

Bonus clips

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed reading the story of my team, we had a long and fun journey throughout the competition. I would like to thank every member of the team: @emrakul, @govenier and  for the amount of their time and effort invested in this project. In overall, this year's contest was better than the previous ones, but it still had some major flaws. Please leave your thoughts about this contest below!

See you in a parkour battle!

F&F

[marc.jp_44 20,837]

Fantastic read! It’s always nice reading from the perspective of the participant. Good stuff! ^_^

Btw, shoutout to StuntmanJadside, he’s an amazing editor. I’d recommend any of the AreaTO peeps for some crazy editing.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Marc

[govenier 1,202]

I wanna thank the whole team 2, without them this would not have been possible :D

[Mjro7 2,837]

Waw i really enjoyed !
btw stan you and your team deserve the best you worked hard ^^
Nice article ;) 

[stanzhang 3,291]

Waw i really enjoyed !

btw stan you and your team deserve the best you worked hard ^^

Nice article ;)

Have you received the keyboard yet?

For me, it took around a month before getting my package ^^.

[Mjro7 2,837]

Have you received the keyboard yet?

For me, it took around a month before getting my package ^^.

Not Yet :P

[shibe123 136]

Well done on the white house in Novel.

[Jade 1,420]

Amazing!! I'm really proud of how far you guys have come, and you guys really, REALLY, worked hard throughout this whole contest. It was awesome getting to work with you and the team last year, and it was even better getting honoured to help you guys again this year :3 I really loved how descriptive you were with your explanations, and I liked a bit of humour now and then, sorry about the thumbnail haha I really gave you a scare xD :) Anyways hope I'll be getting to work with you guys again sometime soon :D

Fantastic read! It’s always nice reading from the perspective elf the participant. Good stuff! ^_^
Btw, shoutout to StuntmanJadside, he’s an amazing editor. I’d recommend any of the AreaTO peeps for some crazy editing.

 

<3 Thanks Marc!! Ahh remember when TTW and you did that Let's Play? I was dead laughing, been ages since I've seen you, hope you're doing well :D

[marc.jp_44 20,837]

<3 Thanks Marc!! Ahh remember when TTW and you did that Let's Play? I was dead laughing, been ages since I've seen you, hope you're doing well :D

Yeah, I've been doing pretty good, thanks.  ^_^

Hbu?

[Jade 1,420]

Yeah, I've been doing pretty good, thanks.  ^_^

Hbu?

I've been doing quite well too, I started my first year in high school recently and mann have I ever been busy haha, can't wait for my winter break next week :D

[Mr.lnvincibIe 667]

Well written!

Small note: Jade's pc wasn't broken at all, that's just Adobe Media Encoder that likes to take his time :ph34r:.

Anyway, very well done, deserved that second place.

[Jade 1,420]

Well written!

Small note: Jade's pc wasn't broken at all, that's just Adobe Media Encoder that likes to take his time :ph34r:.

Anyway, very well done, deserved that second place.

Actually it was somewhat broken, my drivers were broken and none of my applications could detect my graphics card for using OpenCL to render, so it took like 10 times longer than what it should have  :(