"Recently Jump was the subject of a primetime feature news story by Global Television. The story, a result of the interest that the project has garnered since appearing in film festivals in Montreal & Calgary, profiled the film, its production and included interviews with me as director and one of the subjects of the film. My thanks to Global for their interest and a story which encouraged people to see the film at the forthcoming Canadian Filmmakers Festival in Toronto.

Unexpectedly the only negative feedback we received following the broadcast took the form of heated and very personal criticism from members of the basejumping community who felt that the film and its publicity damaged (irreparably) the profile of the sport and undermined opportunities for its practise.

My response to such criticism is that people should first take the time to watch the film in its entirety. Fundamentally I believe that Jump represents the practise of base-jumping in a very favourable light.

Jump very clearly avoids drawing any conclusions as to whether or not the practise of basejumping is good or bad. It allows the subjects of the film to express at length their own personal motivations for pursuing the sport. It highlights the training, practise and preparation undertaken by its subjects. It not only takes its subjects seriously but also, as I pointed out in my interview on Global television, offers a perspective that contradicts the popular perception that basejumpers are mindless yahoos. Jump is even edited in a manner that avoids the clichés of the "extreme sports" genre that present such activities in the form of vacuous highlight reels and careful and methodically takes the viewer through the process behind the practise.
 
Perhaps most importantly, Jump clearly identifies itself as a personal exploration of three individual relationships with basejumping. It makes no claims to be a broad history or a representation of the sport as a whole. Its subjects don’t claim to speak for or to represent anyone but themselves.

Basejumpers undertake their sport in the public domain; they operate in public space, not in a vacuum. Part of the price of that practice is that they will come under the scrutiny of the public, the media and filmmakers like myself; they cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot have it both ways. We can all be assured that the next person to make a documentary about basejumping is much more likely to create something in the vain of "Jackass 3" than Jump. Basejumpers who are truly engaged in the development of the sport must embrace all serious practitioners and the interest that they invite.
 
It would be easy to criticise basejumping as a highly individualistic, self-indulgent pursuit of self-gratification; a means to get high. It is easy to argue that basejumping does not offer a socio-political argument for bettering the human condition. That said, Jump presents the practice in a highly sympathetic light and, its own small way, offers a positive insight into why one might actually pursue the sport."

Peter Riddihough, Director