The ‘We Are Storror’ Guys Say Michael Bay Shares “Weird Similarities” With Their Death-Defying Parkour

“Bayhem” has now hit the streets. Michael Bay, the famed blockbuster director behind Armageddon and the Transformers franchise, is stepping back from his explosive spectacle and turning to nonfiction. Parkour remains as popular as ever, and Bay’s new documentary, We Are Storror, follows the exploits of a daring and exceptionally skilled parkour troupe who push the limits across the globe by jumping off buildings and performing other audacious stunts.

At SXSW 2025, Steve Weintraub sat down with performers Callum Powell, Drew Taylor, and Toby Segar at the Collider Media Studio at the Cinema Center to discuss exposing a mass audience to parkour, maintaining safety while being creatively ambitious, their upcoming video game Parkour Pro, and the honor of working with Michael Bay.

‘We Are Storror’ Aims to Demystify Parkour

“Most of what people see about parkour is just a 10-second clip.”

COLLIDER: Gentlemen, it’s weird seeing you guys in person after watching the doc, especially after having an anxiety attack watching the documentary.

DREW TAYLOR: Do you feel like you know us after watching the documentary?

If you paid me $100 million, I would say no, because I will not do what you guys have done. It’s fucking crazy. Jumping on in, there’s going to be people who are watching this who actually aren’t familiar with you guys and aren’t familiar with what you’ve been doing for years or this documentary, so what do you want to tell people about Storror and the doc?

TAYLOR: First things first, check out our YouTube. There are 10 or 15 years of videos we’ve been putting out once a week, half an hour. If you’re interested to know more after watching the doc, there are hours, years, of footage that people can watch.

CALLUM POWELL: It’s hard for a lot of people to understand how parkour works. In the Q&A yesterday, we still got a question about, “How you do these jumps so high?” Maybe the film failed to explain that a little bit. It’s just 18 years of trial and error, graded exposure at safe levels. What the film did great to show is that I’m so stoked that the old dude, Jeff, 65, American dude, got a round of applause. That was the sickest moment for me. That whole section is showing that parkour is for everyone.

The audience member who asked that question, I don’t understand. I feel like I understood it after watching the doc. It’s called a lot of trial and error, experimentation, and years and years of practice.

POWELL: And, obviously, we didn’t start with high-consequence. That would be completely irresponsible—disclaimer. [Laughs]

TAYLOR: I also think it’s the nature of how media now is all about a 10-second clip for Instagram Reels or TikTok. Most of what people see about parkour is just a 10-second clip of something that you cannot understand. It just looks like somebody throwing themselves off a roof. Hopefully, what a 90-minute documentary about the sport unfolds for people is that, of course, it’s a super fucking high level of skill and athleticism that allows those kinds of feats to be possible in a way that is a lot safer for us than it seems. It’s not this crazy roll the dice and see whether you die or not kind of sport. It’s more meticulous preparation in order to guarantee that you’re going to be safe on the other side of a jump.

That’s the thing I actually didn’t know about the sport that I learned through the doc, which is watching you guys sand down surfaces and clean certain areas to make sure that when you’re grabbing something there’s no loose nail, and there’s no sharp thing. You’re making it as safe as you can. You’re doing recon. You’re prepping, and then you’re performing.

POWELL: We simply wouldn’t be doing it for as long as we have if we didn’t use everything in our toolkit to make dangerous things as safe as possible. That six-week trip that we had in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Seoul? You’d think staying on skyscrapers for that long, for six weeks straight, something would have happened. Just take everything step by step and make everything as safe as possible.

TOBY SEGAR: With the cleaning and stuff like that, we are only doing that because we learn the hard way on ground level. You’re a kid starting the sport. You really are just sort of sending yourself into stuff and finding out if your body can deal with this and deal with that. You’re seeing what you can get out of your body and what is possible. If something goes wrong in a safe space, you might just trip over on the ground or slip on something, that doesn’t kill you, and you recognize that going forward. Once you take it to four feet, to six feet, to stories, to the skyscrapers, that process is years; you just basically hold this data.

When you slip and you hurt yourself, nothing teaches you more than that, really. You can sit in a classroom or come to our screening and listen to us answer a question, but nothing teaches you more than slipping out and landing on your back on concrete from, like, four feet. You just remember that. Then, when you’re up there, and you think about that thing happening again in this circumstance, it’s like, “I can’t let that even be an option.” You get the brooms out, you put in the hours. You look out for each other— “Josh, have you checked that edge? Drew, is that rail sturdy?” It’s a team effort to just make sure everyone comes out of it happy and unscathed.

TAYLOR: It’s controlling as many variables as you can. When you just see a 10-second clip, you’re kind of like, “How could you possibly know that that was going to go right?” It’s because we’ve spent five hours prepping this thing, measuring out a jump on the floor, doing it safely a load of times. A lot of the time, if there’s a roof gap, you go and find a similar-sized jump that’ you do 10 or 20 times to make sure that you’ve got that kind of confidence and belief in the skill set. Then, it’s trying to eliminate as many variables that are out of your control as possible.

POWELL: Reducing uncertainty.

TAYLOR: What’s so fascinating about the film, and what’s interesting about how parkour has changed, is that I think for a long time we’ve had this story that we are completely in control of every variable. I think what you see with Marcio [Filipe] in the first 15 minutes of the film is that that’s not true. There are always things that are outside of your control. I think that’s what makes the sport fascinating is that there is risk. Stuff absolutely can go wrong, and does, but it’s still worth it to us because it’s so meaningful when it goes right.

One of the things I think is so powerful about the film is what happens in the first act because that adds the element of danger to everything you’re watching, and you’re unsure what could possibly happen. I think that that’s an important part of the doc.

29:35

Related

‘Skywalkers: A Love Story’s Director Explains How He Got Clearance for Those Deadly Shots

Filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist shares his six-year journey from the tops of skyscrapers to IMAX screens ahead of the ‘Skyscrapers’ release on streaming.

Talk a little about cameras in your mouth because I’ve seen pictures, and there are definitely shots where you have a camera in your mouth. What is that like?

TAYLOR: Pretty dirty. I feel like it’s very unhygienic, to be honest, with how dirty your hands get, and then you’re picking up a GoPro and just shoving it in your mouth.

POWELL: You’re passing it around to each other, as well. Benj [Cave] will pass his GoPro like, “Here, film this,” and it’s just covered in saliva.

TAYLOR: You just wipe it on your t-shirt.

POWELL: “Yeah, sure, man. Go!” [Laughs]

TAYLOR: Yeah, it’s pretty disgusting. But honestly, it’s not as bad as it seems. We have a mount that is specifically made, so you just bite on something.

Does that actually help a little bit with nerves? Because you’re biting into something like a retainer, but it’s your camera?

SEGAR: [Laughs] The only reason it came about was because when we started, the only thing available was head mounts, which is like an elastic strap.

POWELL: Chest mounts, as well.

SEGAR: They work, sort of, but back then, the stabilization on cameras wasn’t good enough, so the moment you land with any amount of impact, the GoPro bounces around your head, slides off, comes down. However tight you do it, there’s always some leeway. The moment you lock it into your jaw, it’s the best image.

TAYLOR: And your head’s kind of a natural gimble. It’s like where you’re looking as you’re doing the movement; you get the best shot.

It’s a fantastic shot—it’s a holy shit shot because not many people are going to put a camera in their mouth.

Michael Bay Shares “Weird Similarities” With This Team

“I feel like he sort of sees us as some sort of real-life characters from one of his movies or something.”

What is it like for you guys, after all these years of doing this, to have a documentary directed by Michael Bay? It’s pretty effing crazy.

TAYLOR: It’s pretty weird, isn’t it? I still don’t really know what to make of it. It’s incredible. It’s such a privilege for somebody like Michael Bay to trust and believe in us and be willing to even entertain the idea of a project like this. It’s kind of humbling. It’s so sweet. The relationship that we’ve built with Bay through 6 Underground and now this documentary, there are some weird similarities with the way he feels about risk and the adrenaline you feel in his films anyway. I feel like he sort of sees us as some sort of real-life characters from one of his movies or something.

‘Parkour Pro’ Changes the Game for All Ages

The video game allows anyone to try out this disciplined sport.

One of the things the doc talks about, and really gets into, is the fact that things change as you get older. Your body can’t do certain things that it could maybe do when you were 18. For you guys and what you want to do in the future, what are you thinking about? How has age played a role in what the next five years might be?

POWELL: I feel pretty good in my body at 33. I definitely felt worse in my late 20s. I think you can get to a stage where you manage the stress that you put your body through and get really good at listening to your body and not pushing too far with the challenges that you choose, but also how long you train, the intense stuff you do, making sure you’re rested and everything. There are so many examples of people still being able to maintain explosive power like this. There’s a new record of someone, like a 70-year-old, setting a record of 13-second 100 meters or something recently, which is like, “Wow, okay, we can keep going.”

To be fair, for a lot of the high stuff we do, it would be completely irresponsible to do something at high risk with the consequence of death, which is 100% of your physical capacity. None of that is in the film, really. That would be quite irresponsible. But, like, 50% of your max, which isn’t too physically demanding on the joints and stuff? Technically, you should be able to keep doing that later as you age—I can imagine doing roof gaps at 50. But in terms of us keeping going as an entertainment spectacle for the masses with our YouTube and everything, with how fast parkour is evolving, the kids are just going to outshine us.

TAYLOR: But we’ve got a video game now, so we’ve immortalized ourselves virtually, which is exciting.

POWELL: We can still keep pushing in the video game! [Laughs]

There is the video game, and I watched the trailer of it, and it looked so cool. When is it actually coming out? What can you tell people?

TAYLOR: The 31st of March is the early access release, so that’ll be the first time that people actually get their hands on a playable version. Honestly, it is pretty fucking sweet, man. I play that game a lot. It’s so fun.

How long does it take to play?

TAYLOR: It’s kind of like free roam. It’s an open world. There are escapes that you can do from security, there are time trials, it’s online multiplayer. So, me and you can be in a lobby together, and I can set you a challenge that we both have to compete to complete. It’s a whole new world, honestly.

I’m so curious about how the controllers are going to be. Do you need to push A and B at the same time?

SEGAR: That’s the exciting thing because in all these games that are pioneered parkour in-gaming—Assassin’s Creed, Mirror’s Edge, all these ones—you’ve got so many other buttons that you need for fighting or for driving a vehicle or whatever. Here, like, 100% of your controls are entirely movement. They basically designed a whole new way of whittling it down. We start with the motion capture, putting on the suits, so that the moves are organic and real in the game. After each session, we realized, “Oh, there’s a whole other strain of movement we need to capture.” You end up with hundreds of different things you can do just with your two hands, pretty much. Even playing it now, I haven’t played it too much, Drew’s been a lot more involved, but you just get locked in, and you just catch yourself getting locked in. I personally didn’t see it quite getting this good at the start. It’s been fascinating to watch the development team work it out.

Special thanks to our 2025 partners at SXSW, including presenting partner Rendezvous Films and supporting partners Bloom, Peroni, Hendrick’s Gin, and Roxstar Entertainment.

We Are Storror

Release Date

March 8, 2025

Runtime

95 minutes

Producers

Angus Wall, Terry Dougas, Terry Leonard, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis, Jean-Luc De Fanti, Kent Kubena, Kostas Tsoukalas