What do you get when you have a skydiving enthusiast who wants to make a movie about skydiving, skydivers, skydiving teams, skydiving hangouts, skydiving heists, skydiving competitions, and airplanes labeled skydiving?
A movie called Drop Zone. "Clever" titles are overrated, it should have been simply called SKYDIVING!!!
Quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen, and my dad will buy ANYTHING he sees at a truckstop for $5 or less.
Specially when you make a film full of false skydiving facts?
- You don't make a tandem jump without coaching (the passenger) first.
- You don't throw out a tandem passenger and go catch him/her later.
- You need to make a course (AFF) to get to jump alone.
- You can't (shouldn't) jump with other skydivers without an A license.
- You don't have an A license (right) inmediatly after your 1st jump alone.
- You can't talk (because they won't hear you) to other skydivers while in free fall.
- Same thing even once the canopy is open unless the other skydiver is really near near (which wouldn't be wise) to you.
- You don't make a canopy turn right or left by pulling horizontaly toggles in the direction you want to go. You pull down the toggle, the more down it goes, the more closed the turn to that side is.
- We skydivers are not freaks who ignore other people. In fact, we tend to be quite opened people.
- It's a common practice contracting the slider after finishing the opening procedure.
- You must wear a helmet, a SOLID helmet (of course that's up to you, I've seen experiencied skydivers with soft ones).
- Its funny when in films they jump at night over random places and never have problems for landing, flying besides buildings, always with the wind blowing in the right direction all the path along. In real life, in drop zones, wind speed and direction are critical for each jump's planning even in those open environments we jump over.
- Reserve canopies ("reserve parachutes") don't have strippin desings in their cells, they're color flat.
the list could span more and more items... but the worst of all of them is seeing how suposedly experienced skydivers in a big way show deploy their canopies all at the same time without tracking away first. You NEED to be separated enough from the nearerest skydiver to avoid colisions while the canopy opens and after the first seconds of the opening cos you can (and many times you do) get dragged towards one side or another a considerablea amount of meters.
Many of those facts are not as simple as complying with regulations. Slydiving is funny and cool, but no doubht you put your life at risk every time you jump. Skydiving is just about knowing a few things you have to do, and a LOT of things you do NOT have to do. Apart from those freaks that jump without the parachute, who is carried by other companions who jump with him, people who jump naked, and weird whings like that (that, anyway, are done by very experienced skydivers who are tired of the normal stuff and look for new ways of enjoying the jump), skydiving is an activity (I don't think you can call it "sport") carefully defined in every thing you have to do, when to do it and how you do it.