INTERNATIONAL: Elton John sings about the “pinball wizard” – but that’s about someone good at playing pinball. No¬-one has written a song about someone actually being a pinball, at least not yet…

Produced by Red Bull, a new film shows a young woman unveiling a pinball machine, but instead of a metal ball, she sees a man, and decides to play anyway. What follows is not a result of special effects or animation. It’s called “freerunning” and its all very, very real, explains the film’s executive producer, Nico Martell:

"This set is gigantic. It's 17 metres high. It's 16 metres wide and 20 metres long and it's an angle of 45 degree. And I don't know if you understand how much 45 degree is. It's a double black diamond slope. It's something you don't go down, you can't because it's more like falling than anything else. So, if he's on top of that thing, I've been on top of that pinball machine and I can tell you it's frickin scary. Like, you look down and it's a four-storey building you're going to fall down if you miss that ledge. That's basically the scope of it."

The human pinball is Latvian freerunner Pavel Petkuns. He learnt to freerun on a bridge in his home country. He’s now a Hollywood stunt double and came up with the idea for the film while playing on pinball machines on a roadtrip across the United States.

^{PHOTO:  LATVIAN FREERUNNER, PAVEL PETKUNS, PERFORMING ON A LARGE CONSTRUCTION THAT LOOKS LIKE A PINBALL MACHINE MAKING OF THE 'PINBALL MACHINE' INTERVIEWS}