In the clip you linked. Cliffdiver jumps off cliff into water. Water is replaced by desert scene in the bottom half of the scene and when the diver crosses the line a puff of dirt was added. It's probably a bit more complex than that but I think that's how they did it.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Yeah, there are a few ways of doing it. As long as the guy doesn't need to be moving during the dive, it's not that hard. First you'd shoot your main shot. It's going to be a lot easier if you don't move the camera. Shoot the guy getting ready to dive, and then he jumps up and just stands still without actually diving. Then, you mask him out (should be easy if he's just against straight sky). Then you can use a still photo of the guy diving and just run it on a path. Or, if you really wanted to get fancy, you could set up a big green screen at a 10m diving board, and then use that footage. Does that help?

http://www.connectedtvfilms.com

Although the still photo idea sounds kind of cheezy you'd be surprised how well it can work. In the movie Undead they wanted more zombies in the foreground of one scene, backs to the camera. They used still images of the zombies and plopped them in and then used keyframes to give the images some motion. I could not tell and would not have guessed if they hadn't said so on the audio commentary. This won't work in all situations but it would probably work well in the diving scenario because it would be quick. As long as you can manage the conversion from live action to still frame. That might be a good time to zoom out, creating a blur and a more grand view of the jump.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

Thanks alot for your time and suggestions, greatly appreciated. You're right, I never would have thought to use still images because I wanted him to move slightly, but if I chuck in a slight zoom and maybe a bit of motion blur it could fit together nicely. I'll give it a go and keep you updated. Thanks again both of you for your help.

You could also pull this off via editing. Have one shot where the camera is looking up as the character starts to fall off the roof (in reality, a stem wall about three feet off the ground) Cut to a close up of them as they fall, (blowing their hair with a leaf blower) and a downshot as they hit the ground (In reality, maybe having your talent jump off a porch or something.)

Another possible way of doing this is to have a dummy dressed as your character, thrown from the second story, and then replacing the dummy with him/her in the same position as the dummy landed and then tightly editing the transition. (Look at the movie version of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" for a great example of this technique. The scene where Same Rockwell falls on the steps of the "Deep Thought" computer.)