Practicing on the trapeze without a safety net won't get you to Carnegie Hall, but it will keep you in shape for the next season with the circus. This typically good Pete Smith short subject shows circus acrobats on their vacation time -- not in Sarasota Florida, which is where circus people are usually to be found, but a bunch who take their time off on Southern California.
There are lots of well composed long shots to give you the full effect and some slow-motion sequences of acrobats leaping over teams of horses, stagecoaches and similar obstacles, as well as one showing an acrobat taking a deliberate fall of a hundred feet -- that last was into a safety net.
Although the now standard way to shoot acrobats was set a decade later with DeMille's THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, this emphasizes the difficulty of the stunts better.
There are lots of well composed long shots to give you the full effect and some slow-motion sequences of acrobats leaping over teams of horses, stagecoaches and similar obstacles, as well as one showing an acrobat taking a deliberate fall of a hundred feet -- that last was into a safety net.
Although the now standard way to shoot acrobats was set a decade later with DeMille's THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, this emphasizes the difficulty of the stunts better.