04 February 2013

Ultra-fast archery

9 comments:

  1. Very interesting but that commentary was hard to listen to.

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    1. I agree. It sounds like a synthsized voice speaking English as a second language.

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    2. I believe it is a synthesized voice.
      Having worked with such a few years ago.
      I was impressed at how GOOD it is!

      Plus - WOW!

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  2. Lars pull back only 6 in-ches.
    He not pull back ful-ly.

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  3. I also noted that all of the close up shots were from behind his back. What's up with that?

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    1. For one thing, it's a lot safer behind the archer than in front!

      I must confess, I suspected as I watched that he didn't want viewers getting a detailed view of just how he was actually holding the arrows while shooting. Maybe it was an ego-trip thing.He wanted to protect his advantage so no one else could figure out his technique? Perhaps he wanted to be acknowledged as the only expert?

      Then he showed the holding technique later in the film, which pretty much dispelled my above suspicion. I will say, I think he has it figured out. Certainly, the speed at which he can shoot proves that! But more to the point, some of the old drawings they show in the film do match how it looks when he is holding the arrows.

      I'd like to see more filming of his technique from the front, so I can better idea of how it works.

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  4. The voice is Danish, because 'Andersen'.

    I'm happy to consider that some archery may have been like this. But you can't fir an English yew longbow from the medieval era like this - it's six feet from tip to tip and requires too much pull to be able to fire arrows at such speed. The English archers were there like artillery of the modern age - they killed at an enormous distance and hundreds of them fired together, so that there was little the opposing soldiers could do to escape death raining from the sky.

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  5. This is fascinating, but I hope to some day see a video covering the same material but using a high-speed camera and a narration that pauses for background sounds!

    (Currently going through my queue of candidate links and deciding what stays and what gets pruned. This one stays.)

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  6. I am VERY impressed. It is amazing what you can learn if you try.

    The longbow comment above doesn't apply; this wasn't about longbows. And many other archers in the past used regular bows.

    I have a hunch that Lars could take a longbow and find a way to improve the speed of that, too.

    Steve Garcia

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