[drostie]

That's also something I haven't considered. Whether or not this was really done, if you wanted to create the same effect by faking it, you could do it at least in part by doing two different "takes" -- one where you pull the guy from the front and view with a camera behind him, and another where you pull the guy up from behind and view with the camera on his head. There is a blurry whitish splotch when he first gets air which could be a tree in the distance, but if you wanted to fake it, that could be a way to disguise the cable.

This would give a plausible way to fake the first and the last scenes, where you see the man from behind, as well as the "in the air" scenes where you just see from his perspective: you could in principle put him in a boom lift vehicle -- perhaps suspended from it or perhaps even just sitting in it -- and the image would look very similar.

The side-view shot would be much more difficult to fake.