This is part of a 2013 Swedish documentary in which the directors paid people $30 to jump off the 10-meter high dive for the first time. If you’ve never climbed the 10-meter and jumped off into the pool it’s probably because you received too many participation awards as a child. If you have climbed the 10-meter platform and jumped into the pool then you already know how terrifying it is that first time you climb up. The key is to jump and get over that fear hump.
Here’s a description of the Swedish documentary, taken from the Vimeo link:
Would you jump? Or would you chicken out?
Our objective in making this film was something of a psychology experiment: We sought to capture people facing a difficult situation, to make a portrait of humans in doubt. We’ve all seen actors playing doubt in fiction films, but we have few true images of the feeling in documentaries. To make them, we decided to put people in a situation powerful enough not to need any classic narrative framework. A high dive seemed like the perfect scenario.
Through an online advertisement, we found 67 people who had never been on a 10-meter (about 33 feet) diving tower before, and had never jumped from that high. We paid each of them the equivalent of about $30 to participate — which meant climbing up to the diving board and walking to its edge. We were as interested in the people who decided to climb back down as the ones jumping.
We filmed it all with six cameras and several microphones. It was important for us not to conceal the fact that this was an arranged situation, and thus we chose to show the microphones within the frame. Ultimately, about 70 percent of those who climbed did jump. We noticed that the presence of the camera as well as the social pressure (from those awaiting their turn beside the pool) pushed some of the participants to jump, which made their behavior even more interesting. (Via)
I’m kind of shocked that Netflix hasn’t picked this up and made it into a full series with Ashton Kutcher hosting. You just randomly pay people on the street to do outrageous things they’ve never done before. Jumping off of bridges. Eating new foods. Swimming with sharks. I’m sure this show existed on MTV at some point in the 90’s but this concept needs to be revisited on Netflix, it has to happen.