Santa Paraglides Through the Sky Throwing Cameras at People Below
A flying Santa has been throwing cameras to people from the sky. But instead of using a sleigh, he’s paragliding.
Professional speedrider Valentin Delluc has teamed up with Insta360 to shoot an awesome video of him flying through the skies dressed as Santa Claus.
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Speedriding, also known as speed-flying, is a discipline of paragliding that sees daredevils hurtling down mountains with a parachute and a pair of skis attached.
The video is filmed on an Insta360 X3 camera. The 5.7K 360-degree camera is mounted to Santa’s sack, giving viewers a thrilling third-person view as he flies through the Avoriaz ski resort in France.
“Using the Insta360 Invisible Selfie Stick in my backpack you get some insane third-person angles. I use it in all my different sports: skiing, speedriding, speedflying, base jumping… You name it! It really helps capture the fun I have in the air,” says Delluc.
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Speedriding
Speedriding is a new sport that’s not well-known to the public.
“For those of you who don’t know, speedriding is a discipline that combines freeskiing and paragliding, where you fly through mountains with a small paraglider wing and skis,” says Delluc.
“Exploring the possibilities and limits of my sport motivates me a lot. Some ideas for a run come from my freestyle skiing experience, and ultimately, 99% of the time when you land after a speedride, you’re smiling!”
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Delluc prepared for the shoot by focusing on the special tricks he pulled off in the video. Mindblowing stunts that included sliding on top of a chairlift.
“You can’t really train before as you need a special approval by the ski resort,” he says.
“It’s not something that’s done very easily to be honest [sliding on the charlift]. And, you need to keep enough speed to jump over the clamps and not hit them, but not too much to slide off the cable… It’s all about balance.”
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The Insta360 X3 is the company’s flagship camera. As well as recording 5.7K 360-degree videos, it also takes 72-megapixel photos. The X3 boosts the size of both the sensor and display over the previous model, the One X2.
Image credits:Photos courtesy of Oliver Godbold.