The elegant movements and athletic prowess of five twirling trampolinists are captured in photographer Steve Harries’ new short film, ahead of this weekend’s trampolining World Cup Series event at China’s Taiyuan City. Inspired by German photographer Andreas Gursky, American minimalist Robert Morris’s Mirrored Cubes, and the typography and graphics of British vorticist magazine BLAST, Harries constructed a floating set to capture the multi-perspectival reflections of the bouncing athletes. Performing up to 7.5 meters in the air—shot from a tall camera tower beneath a rig suspending the set, mirrors and lights from the ceiling—professional gymnasts Nathan Bailey, Kat Driscoll, Bryony Page, Emma Smith and Steven Williams’s bodies were broken up into fragmented forms and motions by a bank of six mirrors. “It was always really important that these mirrors existed somewhere that was ambiguous, but also that you could see they were in a space,” explains Harries. “It was a set suspended. We could control the way in which the mirrors were angled to abstract the movement as the athletes passed through them.”

STATS FROM ON SET

Number of athletes
Five.

Height of camera tower
Five meters.

Height of mirrors
Six meters.

Height of the studio
Ten meters.

Distance from mirrors to camera
Twelve meters.

Distance from athlete to mirrors
4.5 meters.

Designers used
Adidas, Calvin Klein Collection, Raf Simons, Sunspel, Wolford, Y3.

Bespoke clothes made for the shoot
Six gymnast leggings, six gymnast shoes, and 12 sports vests designed by stylist John McCarty with patterns made by Fiona Ransom.

Hair products used
Five elastic bands, 25 hairpins, Bumble and Bumble wax.

Snacks
Celebrations.

Camera used
Arri Alexa.

Stills film
Kodak Portra.

Soundtrack on set
The trampolines.

Average number of bounces, per athlete per take
Fifteen.

See the magic behind the scenes at Steve Harries' gymnastic shoot in our Facebook-only video, here.