Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome to the 100th episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Can you believe it? I certainly can't. This was actually our first live show with the man, the myth, the legend, John Baptiste Chandelier. We recorded this last week when I was out in the Azores for their 25th festival. I first sailed to the Azores in 2011 and met that whole club and had a blast. We were there for about a month, did a bunch of flying. It's a beautiful island. It's an amazing club. These guys know how to throw a party. It was just a really fun week. We had terrible weather, not really any flying, but man, it was a good time. And I encourage all of you, if you get a chance to go out and do that festival. It happens every August; they put a lot of effort into it. I can't believe it. It makes me feel, uh, like I'm a total slacker as the head of our club here back in Sun Valley.
But yeah, we had a fun, we had a great time. Uh, we talked to Jean Baptiste about where he gets his creativity from, and his favorite places to fly, and what's next, and how to get into Wagga. And we took some questions from the audience and we'll see how all the audio from that works out. But I had all my gear with me and it should be pretty good. But a big thanks to the folks in the Azores and Sal Miguel for hosting. John Baptiste and I, we had a blast with this and I hope you enjoy it as well. Usually I put the whole kind of housekeeping and donation stuff at the end, But I wanted to put it up on the front side, just because this is the 100th episode and I just want to put a shout out to all of you who are supporting the show. I really, really, really appreciate it. Remember that all the bonus content and all the stuff that we have, um, for kind of subscribers, you don't have to contribute financially to be a subscriber.
If you have, you know, sent us an email, or if you're on our newsletter list, or if you've been involved in the podcast in any way and you can't support us financially, I will still make a lifetime account for you. We're not going to put anything behind a paywall. So if you don't have access to that, just let me know. I'll set you up with an account and hopefully someday you will be in a financial position to help support the show. But yeah, I just wanted to put a shout out there. We get about six to 8 % of the listeners actually support the show financially, which I guess for a podcast is really, really, really good. But just as a reminder, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. If you add it all up, that's less than a magazine subscription every year. So if you're getting something out of this and you can contribute financially, we would really, really appreciate it.
And you can do it a number of different ways. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash Cloudbase Mayhem and just kind of set it up, set it, forget it. You can also do it directly through the website where it just bills you a dollar or whatever you want to contribute every couple of weeks. Cause that's we put a show out is every two weeks. Or you can just do a one-time donation through PayPal and you can find all those links to do it on cloudbasemayhem.com. And if you can't support us financially, we totally get that. We understand. And there's a lot of other ways you can do it. You can review it on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify, or however you listen to the podcast. You can tell your friends about it, because that's what this is all about—is just spreading the word and making us safer and better pilots. So, uh, and you can talk about it on the way to launch, you can put a shout out about it on your social media.
When, when we release a show, tell your friends about it that way. You know, the whole goal is just to get as many people listening as we can, so we can be safer and better. That's what it's all about. So, I appreciate it. Uh, there are a lot of costs involved in running this, and there are, uh, it's obviously a lot of time, and it's a lot of editing. Big shout out to our editor, Miles, who has edited, I think, since episode 20 or so. And I'm sure you saw a big change in the quality since then. It's been really fun to go back and listen to all the episodes as I'm working on this book, kind of clipping them off one by one and putting the best of the best into a book that we're doing with Cross Country Magazine. So stay tuned for more information on that. It's going to be really fun. And in the meantime, we'll just keep banging hanging out shows.
I'm having a blast doing this. I love getting all your feedback. I love from hearing from so many pilots that has, it has either saved their life or saved them from having an accident or just made it a lot more fun. And it's pretty cool hearing that people, you know, they say like, Hey, when I'm flying, man, I've got you in my head. That's, that's pretty great. So we will continue having great people on the show and putting out the best content we possibly we can. I appreciate your feedback, I appreciate your suggestions, and I appreciate you letting me know who you think I should be interviewing. I try to take all those into account and I try to make it happen, so thank you very much. Uh, thank you for listening, thanks for hanging in there for a hundred episodes of the Cloudbase Mayhem, and please enjoy this live audience talk with Jean-Baptiste Chandelier.
Hello. Hello. Ah, okay. Yes. Hola. Buongiorno a tutti. Good evening, everybody. So, thank you for coming. Obrigado por tere invenido.
Gracias por venido. We are here today with Gavin again and Jean-Baptiste Chandelier. We're really happy to have them here today for Gavin's recording of his 100th episode for his podcast. For those of you that are not familiar with this podcast, it's a really, really good tool for any paraglider pilot, any free flight pilot, I think. And we are really honored to make this recording here, especially with a really special person, which is Jean-Baptiste. So we are going to make, they are going to make this recording. This conversation, Gavin will ask some questions, Jean-Baptiste will see some videos, and then we open the questions to the public, and in the future, he will publish the episode in two weeks.
for everybody in the world, so
I give the word to Gavin and thank him and Jean-Baptiste too. Thank you.
Thanks, everybody. Yeah, this is our first live audience show. And I sat down with Jean-Baptiste about three years ago and said, hey, I got to get you on the show. And then we Facebooked and here's Siri talking to us. I probably should turn this off. So this is very cool to be able to do it. It's very cool to be able to do a live show and also for our 100th episode. So thanks for coming. But, KB, when you're at a social gathering and someone doesn't know you, I can't even imagine, but what do you tell them you do? What's your answer if they come up to you and say, hey, what do you do?
It's really not an easy question every time because it's not like a real job. So I say I do parallel reading. Then I stop. And I don't say I don't like to enter in the data. It's what I like with the Internet, it's that you can show what you think about, but in some time, yes, in private, I'm more like shy.
So you consider yourself more a pilot than a filmmaker or a creator or a creative?
I think maybe it was my program. We start to understand right now that it starts to be a job. There is many people who do vlogs, YouTubers, Instagrammers, I don't know, we call that. But when I started, it was really the beginning of these things, maybe the first time I get some hits on internet, it was in 2011, I guess. And so for people, it was new. I start to live about that, I start to get some sponsor, but it was not a real job. I was not like athlete because I didn't do competition. I was not a director of Hollywood video as well, I just make small videos for the internet. And yes, it was like a little bit tricky answer for me. I'm, I have three jobs for me. I am like a pilot, I am a video maker, and I am also a targeting designer, and everything together fit and works together because I need a special wing to do my video, I need to know how to make videos, to know what kind of tricks I can do like acro pilot to show something, and all together, the weather is fitting really well.
You were telling me last night that, you know, I've always thought that paragliding really had two disciplines, acro, which obviously you're very good at, and cross country. But you said, no, I'm not really, I'm a proximity flyer. How did that whole, how did you get involved in proximity flying? Where was the inspiration for that?
It's really interesting because there is a story about that. I mean, when I was a child, I just want to fly. I was dreaming about flying, and when I was a child, I was taken off from the school. I was there, in my mind, I was taken off and passed between the buildings of my cities, and it was like Peter Pan's dream, you can imagine. And then I said, okay, I want to fly, it's my goal, I want to do that. And then I don't have a lot of money, so I started with paragliding because it was cheaper. And then you go inside the paragliding world and I feel like I have two choices, cross country or acrobatics flying. So I decided to do acro because cross country is not my way. And I started to make acro and I started to make a lot of pressure to myself to prove something to myself, to try to be a good pilot.
And one day I arrived at a place in my home and I came in the takeoff with a few friends and I forgot my wing. I was that stupid. I don't have my wing, but we were in the top of the mountain and our friend have two wings and he gave me a cross country wing without some arm, nothing. It was the end of the day, sunset, really beautiful, and so I start to fly down like this the mountain and I start to play with the trees and to sail on between the trees, and there is some house in the mountain and I start to say hello to people to the house, and when I land, maybe the flight was 20 minutes flight because it was like a little bit of someone, but almost nothing, and I was like like a child. I mean, it's, it's like the, the moment then I realized that it was how I wanted to fly when I was young, and then I say, okay, there is something I really like, it's not in the box, it's out of the box, and I think it could be really interesting, interesting, or interesting, I don't know in English, sorry.
to show it in video, and that was the beginning, so
The the proximity flying was really the kind of the start that led to the videos that led to the filmmaking. Were you were you already a filmmaker at that point, or just playing around at that point?
No, it was like, I don't know why I'm a filmmaker that it's, it's really weird because one day a friend take a camera, I start to make a movie and I said, "Can I just check the movie to make try to make some edits?" and he give me the video and I make an edit and I get a feeling about that. It was like, wow, I really enjoy it. And then I make a new one and a new one. And then a company asked me to make video for them. And I started to make video for Little Cloud. It was the beginning of the brand Little Cloud. And then I make this flight. And when I started to make the connection between my experience like a video maker and my experience as a pilot, then it started to work really well.
When did you, it sounds like about then, When did you feel like, okay, this could be a career, this could be a job, I could make a living from this? I
think maybe the first time I got a lot of views, I understood that it was possible to make a kind of job. But what was weird, it was not like a dream at the beginning. For me, I don't trust myself enough to think that I was able to live about paragliding. So I just fly because I like it. I was teacher of paragliding, so instructor, and I start to make some videos and step by step it start to be more and more professional and people follow more and more and then I say, okay, maybe I can ask a sponsor give me a jacket, some glasses and a jacket with two heroes and then little bit more and step by step now we have a huge team, we have money, we do do some commercial things and it's a real job since seven years but everything was step by step.
It seemed like I had the great pleasure of watching all your videos again yesterday, preparing for this talk, which I've seen them all so many times. And so that was—that was really fun. But it seemed like there was a really big jump at Urban Side. That was—is that where you brought in all these amazing graphics and you made a place that, you know, has been flown a ton and and not overly spectacular, just really fun. And I remember I was sailing around the world at that point and I remember seeing that video going, that guy's having a really good time.
It's like urban side was a result of the flight I explained before. It was a result of the flight when I say, oh, I don't have my aircrew wing. So I start to play and I say, that was my dream. And since this time I say, okay, okay, my dream was to fly everywhere in the urban place. And then maybe it could be interesting to put paragliding where we don't see paragliding, I mean, in the city. That's why I started to think about the urban side. And I see I was already in the past, I flew in Peru, in Lima, in front of the building and in Chile as well. So I said, oh, maybe we can try to show to the people. It's like a message somewhere. way, uh, it's not right in the video, but it say, okay, today we are able to fly with a like, almost like Peter Pan, but with a wing, and it was that.
And I think if I fly in the middle of the mountain People will not have connection with me, and people are living in the city, and I have my goal was to to try to catch, uh, people who work in New York City in the building. A secretary of my, my girl was a secretary of a dentist, things you know, and to say people really far from my home from what I'm doing, and I have to track the attention of this girl, if she already dreamed about flight, and I tried to find a way to create connection between my dream and a dream, and the result was urban sign tell
me about your process, because it's, it's, it's fascinating to me how you come, come up with the ideas. So, how does it, how does it take us through from inception, from the dream, from the, the time you first think of, "Okay, I have an idea," to the end result?
it's it's not so organized process, I mean, sometimes there is a base, I mean, like something really important in the base. It's like try to sharing flying with a large public, I don't try to touch programming pilot, I try to to show the passion to someone who maybe would like to do paragliding, and it's totally different. And then from this idea to sharing the feeling of flight with images, that was really the goal of all my videos. It's okay, now how can I do it? So I'll try to take some reference. So okay, maybe it will be cool to play on the road, to play on with a swimming pool, with a bus, with a somewhere, I don't know, in the city, and then I try to get some idea with that.
And also I try to get some ideas about how to to film it to pass to give to share this feeling, because if you take on a my camera, a tripod, and you film from very far, you will see, you will do that. And if you put the camera somewhere with a nice finger, with something really maybe innovating, or something new. Maybe you will get this feeling of fly, and my goal is really that when you see images, that it's you feel almost that you are flying with me. And so it's, it's not something really for me; it's something I try to give to people, to give a feeling to people, to give emotion. Your
team, you you guys just seem like you're having a blast when you're when you're doing it, you know, like happiness and the the these films is just with the dancing and, but it's all seems to be built around the music. Do do you do Do you start with the music and build the film, or do you build the film and bring in the music? Because it's like the synchro and the jive and the timing and the dancing in the Moyes and it all seems to bounce around a specific track that you found. It seems like that's the first thing.
Yes, many times, yes. Many times I found the music and I tried to get the connection between music and the idea. And then, when you know the spirit, I mean, how you will do it, it will be hard rock, or electro, or something smooth. You will not try to catch the same images, and you try to have something more smooth, or more dynamic, or more speed. So it gives a rhythm. Also, I do music myself, so I am a drummer and guitarist as well. So, the drum parts, for me, when I am on Adobe Premiere and I edit, I just do drum. It's like when the riff is going on, I change and there is like a break and then nothing happens and then it restarts and it starts to be faster. And it's really like playing the drum in the music. There is a change of rhythm, there is many things, there is many, many links.
So yes, I think there is a big link between music, my drum experience, and my way I edit the video for sure. How
much of a project like Touch is shooting versus editing in terms of time?
I think if a company pay me directly to edit a video, I will be the worst guy in the world because I'm so slow in the process. I'm really like a total, even the total is faster than me. It's like when I get the idea until the end of the project, we used to have two years Because first you have the idea, then you have to show the idea to someone to be able to pay the trip, the cameraman, everything you need, the camera and everything you need to be able to go there to make the images and everything. Then when you get the money, you can start to shoot the video.
Sometimes it's working, but it's power guiding. We have nice weather here and sometimes it doesn't work so well. And it's already happened to me in the ass, or we came and then we came back because of that's why it's super green and and so yeah, so we try to make the images like if we see the video touch, we go in Greece and then we have a surprise, surprise was the wind is the melt em, the melt em win, it's a win who never stopped around 50 to 60 kilometers per hour, 24 hours, 24 hours, so you see nice photos, everything, and you say it will be so nice, and you arrive, and you say maybe tomorrow will be better, when we came, even the night, to try to catch the sunrise, and you say okay.
Then we came back, so we stayed 10 days, we came back 10 more days, and when we get all the images at the end of the shooting, then I start to edit, It only at the end to, because I know all what I have is the worst parts you have like for the weightless videos. The last one we get, uh, 35 hours of images for a five minute movie at the end, so you have to work 35 hours of boring images to try to catch the seconds who are really nice. And then I did it, and my process is I make a first edit, then I asked to many friends or in In the beginning, few friends, and they give me a feedback. So that's nice, that's not so nice, that's good, and that we don't understand.
And then I redid it. Then I asked more friends, and then I did it again. And then I asked more friends, I did it again. And like weightless or touch, it was the same. It was maybe 10 to 15 version before the end of the video. So I'm working like do it, feedback, do it, feedback, do it, feedback. And when I read it, I already know the feedback of the public. So, it's like, the next video I'm working on is not sure that it will be done, but first, when we get an idea, I try to draw something to give an idea about how it will look. So, it will help me to, to sell the project and to get the money to pay the cameraman and everything. So, like, the next project, it's will be, it may be because we don't have all the authorization right now.
We have 90 percent of the authorization, so we cross finger, but it will be in the center of the city in France, in Lyon city. So, I start to draw a kind of story that I will take off from a skyscraper and I will land. I will have many things fly in the city, hello, with few action and finish in the stadium. In Lyon city, and then when I have that, people can already imagine a little bit of story, and and then they are able to know if it's a good idea or not. And
you use this, you take this to your sponsors and say, this is my next idea. This is how much money I'm going to need.
Exactly. So at this time, we know the budget. We know how many people we need. So we give that and the budget. So that is the less dreamy part of the project. I mean, you have a dream and then you need to talk to a businessman. It's totally different.
Is there also a back end to the project? So, if you go to Adidas and say, "Listen, I need this much money to make the film," and then, do you have, uh, you know, for every million views, do you get more money or at it? How can you—can you take us a little bit behind the scenes of how the financial model works?
So it's the part of the sponsor, it's the part of the project. Me, I have two way to get money for project, so it's with a sponsor I have a kind of fixed money every time, and then if I'm working well I have a kind of bonus. So if I have some million views, or if I have some TV show or things like that, they give me more money until a roof, and then after I propose a project and they will give me if they like the project, if if it's in them strategy they will invest in the project or not. So you propose a project and you do that with a sponsor like this to to show how to how it would work. Do you trust in me, yes or not? And then I have a little bit of money and strategy or not from the from the brand
Also, I do some commercial sometimes, and me, my idea is not to be really rich. I reinvest everything in my project, so when I get some ideas, some money from commercial, I really invest myself everything in the project to try to do something better and just realize my dream. And also, when you go to other rest, we did that here; we asked, and sometimes they say, "Okay, we like your project, so we will pay you the plane and we will pay you house here to be able to stay here, and you can have some money or just some free of charge of something." How
Big, is it? Is your team typically on weightless light line? Some of the, some of the more recent films you've done, so
I used to work with, uh, every time the same people. It's like there is a Tristan Schuh, maybe you already see some photo of Tristan Schuh. He's an amazing photographer and he's also a video maker because he want to switch it a bit, and we start to work together as video maker for him, but only for my project. There is another guy with Guillaume Galvani. Guillaume Galvani, he was a super good friend with who I was training a lot in Acro, so we have exactly the same level. He do all what I do in proximity flying, acrobatics fly, but he's filming in some time. So, I mean, he should be the star or he should be the guy in front of the camera because he's like doing crazy things. And sometimes with the legs, he has a GoPro and a gimbal and he's like make the movie and everything.
And it's like super complicated stuff. And another guy with JB Merande, Jean-Baptiste, like me. And this guy has come from a school of cinematography. So we have more the basic thing because we are all autodidact, so give us some, some basic rules. Some, you have a lot of experience, and also I am really happy because all those teams just work with me for video, and they don't want to work with, they just like this project because it's almost all of my best friend. So we go somewhere with a friend in an amazing place in the world to do paragliding. It's not so easy, but what's
Your favorite place to fly?
Here, it's really nice.
I think the it's every time different. I mean, there is some place that in my home it's amazing for proximity flying, what I call dawn downhill. I mean, it's, uh, no wind, no summer, nothing, and you You just go down, like a little bit speed flying.
And yes, my home is perfect, because the slope is perfect. Everything, the tree, have the space to pass between, to go on the slope. And it's an amazing place. But to do soaring, like Brazil is amazing. Like Brazil in Canoaque Brada, it's like a super small cliff, but about sometimes five to six meters, really, really small. But it looks like a super playground. You can do 2,000 things. It's really small, but there is so many things to do. That's really nice. And here, it's more for the like, for the landscape. You can fly and you have, it's like beat your face, you're like, "Wow, it's crazy." I feel like in Photoshop, it's like, "Yeah, there is something that's real here." What's happened? It's really cool, so
In these projects like Waitlist that you did here and Brian's own, how much of it is collaborative? Is it, is it really your vision driving the whole project, or or is it really a lot of people coming together? Because you said before that you edit it. That blows me away.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have the real, what people don't see is how many time I spend on my computer because there is a lot of work of preparation. There is a lot of time to edit things. And I spend a lot of, lot of, lot of time back to my computer. But I get the kind of first idea like this. Then after, we have a seat with all my team and I present the project, what do you think we can do. And then when we start to fly, they will give more ideas, they will push forward the project. And also when I am in the air, then after, they are the boss because I cannot land every time to see what happens. And I trust them at 200%. So there is GV Merande, with whom I work since the video Lifeline.
It's funny, but I know he sees the same thing in his head as me. So when we are talking, we say, OK, are you connected? Yes, it's OK. So OK, we can do the job. And he will control that everything is working well, and it was what we want. And so it's quite, finally, it's quite easy, but it's never exactly like the script, because we start from an idea, then it's programming, so sometimes it's too much wind, not so much wind. And sometimes we see some people, like in the Weightless video, one moment we have people who do selfie, and I am floating over the car. It was a real tourist at this moment. We cannot read that or write that on the script. And then we get the moment, and we know that we have to try to catch that kind of moment. It was really important for us.
So it was the team who make an amazing job and try to find the point of view at this time and to be super reactive. And it's really in the beginning, it's from my head. Then it's like, the team will do the job, and then I finish the process. The
bus from from touch. How did you set that up? I mean, obviously the bus driver is in on this, but uh, what vision? But how did you, how did you coordinate all these things that
was a really, really funny story because I get the idea of the beginning of this video. I mean, I say, oh, it would be super nice because I want to connect with people, all people on the road. It would be nice to go down the road and to cross on bike and everything. So that was the basic idea. Then a bus company contacted me and said, hello, do you do commercial for a company? We would like to make a commercial with you for a bus. I said, no, but
I really, I'm really looking for your bus. It could be amazing to put your bus in my videos. So it was, it was a small company in my, my town, so it's really small company, and they say, "Okay, so let's do it. We will give you a bus for three days with a driver." And then we were with our bus in the mountain for three days, and we make some... it was a really short section, but for three days we will make a lot of run to, to catch seconds. Wow,
And how many takes did it take to get
That so, this one we did it three times. I did it two times, well, and one times we have a missing synchronization with, uh, with the guys, and I was with, uh, how we say in English, the headphones, yeah, the headphone. And then I was, okay, faster, slower, and then I just ran. But it's what is really funny, it's when you are programming pilots, it's super easy action. There is not, it's not, you don't need to be world champion to do that, but for the people who don't fly, it's look like a James Bond, super fun, super cool. Yeah, and we want to give this kind of joke, this kind of feeling, and that was most important than the performance. And in all the video, the emotion is more important than the performance weightless.
Same question. So, like, where I fly at home, there's a ski area and we have to stay 150 feet off the deck for the legal and all the stuff. Is this Brian's own? Is this your home? Yeah, it's my. So, do you have a—I mean, could other—could we go do that? So,
Not you, you have to ask. But yeah, I tried to get the permission for everything, 90-95% of everything. And so there is two story about that. The first story, it's because it's my home, because I like the video in the past, and because they trust me, they give me the authorization to do this part, and they give me the slope with the slalom. It was a race the morning, and then the afternoon, I, I used the race and they didn't, uh, how to say, take down the gate. Yeah, exactly. And so we did the second like this, but they also gave me the authorization to fly and to touch the slope with the slope open to the tourists. And I said to them, "Trust me, I control like a skier, I can stop everywhere, do everything, and I will do like a ski, and if there is a problem, I will land somewhere, but no worries, there is no risk." And they trust me.
Of course, there is no risk. And so we play for maybe three, four days to try to get the feedback. The idea was to, to come on the slope and the tourists didn't know that. So the career Roman were somewhere and with long lens to try to just catch the moment and to get the feedback of the people. The only problem is we were in France, and France, it's really hard to get emotion from people when we are happy. In France, we are like, and where we are sad is the same, and everything. So it was okay, it doesn't work so well, but it will be fine in Brazil. It's opposite. In Brazil, people are like, you know, have their eyes like a challenge.
Okay, you've got a couple of short segments. You were saying that before you really launch into a project, you storyboard it, you get the funds, and then you do some testing, yeah?
Just before I forgot the second story about this one.
yes okay
It's because, um, I, I tried to be a skin instructor in the past, and I I make a lot of slalom and I fail a lot of time. These things, you know, blue, red, blue, red. And I go down and every time I was too late and too late and too late. And I did that for five or six years. I missed the exam maybe nine times or ten times. So I stopped and then I started to do at 100 % powergating. And then it started to work much better in powergating. So it was a little bit of kind of, how we say, vengeance? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Revenge. Revenge. Exactly. Nice one. So it was a revenge for me.
Nice, nice, nice. You were saying you, you know, without a lot of editing or you just put out these little segments on Facebook, you really use social media as kind of a platform to test projects and see like, hey, this thing's got legs. Instead of embarking on a huge project, you do these little things.
Yeah. It's just to make a recap about what we were talking before. It's for me, like I use like social network like a laboratory level, yeah, laboratory, yeah, to try to just catch the feedback. And sometimes I have some new idea of point of view, or some new idea of effect, or things like that, and so we try it and then we check the people like it or not to try to know how it will be for the huge project after. So this one was this winter, and the idea was to check with a 360 camera if it will be better than with a gimbal. So the idea was to check the speed effect with the FPV drone follow cam, and this point of view was the most interesting for me.
Is it something interesting for people or not? So, I test—I have a kind of big stick in the front of my stomach like this, and we have a 360, and the stick dissipates with the effect. And I found this point of view really interesting, and so I just put on internet to get the feedback to see if it would be nice idea for the next video or not. So, yeah, I like this point of view and for the story maybe. So, this saved my legs as well, because I get the crash this winter with this big stick like this, and I think it keeps my back much more stronger when I crash on the bike. Well,
good segue. You got hurt this year. What happened?
It was huge, huge. It looked like Dust Devil without dust. I was just landing in my home. I was with this wing, with the Accru wing I flew since one year, this one. And I just want to land because it was really strong, and I just have to make some video for documentary, and I have to go in the thermal and just I make the images, I go land, I do 360 because it was strong, and outside of the 360 at the exit, the wing was in my back full of energy with acro wing 17 square meters, and I have a huge collapse, 75 percent collapse in the back. I never see that in my life, that you you say to people to be answered to go in full stall and then huge collapse, it make really weird things.
It make me going up, I almost fall, I release the tension with the line, and then four or five meters over the ground, I just recover the tension with the line. I was able to keep the deep stall to not have the shoot, and I impact the ground very, very fast, and I don't remember it, but I get the camera to film everything, so I was able to check everything thing, and uh, it was really weird because I didn't make any mistake. When you see them, the movement at the end was a good moment, and I was not able to do nothing, and for me since many years, the only thing that I am scared it's does the bill because you can do nothing is that the only accident you've bad, I I know, but at this moment it was like I just gonna land, that was for me, that was a little bit even right now.
I I seek a lot of, I I'm thinking a lot about, I mean, I just gonna land, but no wind, a lot of sun, huge contrast between snow and rocks, and it's gonna happen anything.
Anything happen to your head after that one? Was it scary coming back to flying or was there any kind of fear or injury that went along with it? No,
I think I'm super lucky because it's look, my brain don't understand that I fall in paragliding because I don't have, I don't remember nothing. I have like a few hours of deleted totally. So when I flew again, I restart to fly in July in the air, I was like a normal day flying Oh, really? Yeah, I just feel super weak because my back is still weak, my leg as well, but I will recover everything. It's only bones, so in one and a half months, it will go back into the air.
How much of your lifeblood, your income, the financial at the end of the year, how much is it from sponsors versus selling a project? I noticed you've gotten more into doing more commercial projects as well, like in New Zealand. um how does that add up
It's what is really funny. I'm really lucky, I mean, it's like, uh, and now I start to focus much more on what I really care. So I care a lot about my ideas; I want to, to get my ideas to be real one day. It's what I really give me the motivation even more than just flying. It's like, okay, I have these things and it should be in the video or in the wing somewhere. And then I get some mail, and sometimes I have two propositions, and when it's cool, I answer and say, "Oh, cool project, maybe we can do something." And when it's not, I just keep going my project. And I'm, I, I don't try to catch job like this because I have all what I need to live, and my level of life, I like it like this.
So I just take good opportunities when there theories, and I focus only on my project, and I try also to don't do a lot of small things because the problem sometimes I think if it's more the money or if it's more like the job or something. Who catch you? You start to lose the motivation, you start to lose the passion, because it's not to be too much a job. And then, if it's only for the sponsor, only for the money, it will be the the end of my motivation. So I try to to focus on just what I like.
For those who want to do more waga and more acro training, because you talked about how hard you really had to train for a long time and put a lot of focus into it, uh, where do you start? Where, because waga and, you know, proximity flying is not something that your many people teach, yeah?
it's something weird because because it's like everybody do proximity flying, because we all take off and land. So it's not something like really new, but you can be the world champion of cross country, you can be the world champion of acrobatics flight, but proximity flying, it's another way, it's another technique. It's about anticipating the trajectory of the wing.
And so I try to focus more and more on that, and to be able to make really interesting line, and to make also to it should look easy, so to be able to feel that it's easy, it should be really easy for you, and you have to do it a lot of time to relax, because at the beginning you have the legs really, when you are close to the ground, you have the leg in the front like this, and you don't click on the table, and then after a few hours of training, you have the leg in the back and really smooth, smooth effect, and then you get this feeling of flying, and so now I just spend half a day, like I fly one and one and a half hour per day when I'm not broke in my home, just to fly proximity flying, and my goal is every day to find new game to be able to do it with a smile, it's like my
It's my goal. I don't do that to be the best, I do that to have fun. And it's, I think, a different way to do the things. In the past, I was focused on performance, and today I'm focused on fun. You
showed us a little bit of the your storyboard for potentially your next project, but what's next for JB in terms of, you know, kind of the big picture? Do these projects just have to keep getting better, or is it just to focus on fun and and kind of let it happen, so
For me, I feel like what I want to tell with the programming to the people and what's really what the passion, what was the dream, I think the message is, it's okay, it's done. I have maybe the last video I show you because I love the way that my dream was to to try to catch the people from the city, and so if I can finish with a video in the city, it would be really amazing for me to talk to even more people to say that we can take off, almost like Batman, you can do whatever you want. And I think I'm more close to the end than the beginning of what I did, and I don't, I feel also the motivation in the past, it was like really hard for me to
stop to work on Premiere Pro, to stop to work on my project. I was like, "No, no, sorry, I cannot go on holidays. Days, it's boring. I, I need to do it." I know it's the opposite when I go on my computer and when I have to open Premiere Pro, it's like, "Oh no, Google, Facebook," and it starts to be very hard. So I feel that maybe I have to change and I have to go for other projects. And yes, so I think I will have maybe two more years in this world and
Has the, do you feel like the filmmaking has robbed at all all your passion for flight? No,
Did the two? It's the opposite, yeah. I mean, it's like the project, the idea, give me motivation more than flight, because if it's every time the same fly at the same place, it's the problem. It's, I think, it's like surfing or paragliding; it's a sport with really nice, it's super addictive because you are frustrated. And if when you start to be professional pilot, you start to don't be frustrated, and when you are not frustrated, you start to lose the passion, and it's a terrible effect. I mean, it's you can all my days I focus on flying, so the only way I found to get motivation is to have a crazy idea that it's super hard to, to catch. And so I, I'm super motivating because I know I'll be going the preview on the rainbow mountain to do something, and that gives me a lot of motivation.
But just to fly like normal people the weekend, it's, it's, it's super sad. But at one moment, the motivation goes a little bit down. but
No, but the creativity...
Really feeds the creativity, yes, exactly. Because flying, it's every time a little bit the same, but with creativity, there is no limits. You can every time do something new, you can find some another place to do something, a new joke, a new game, and new things. And then, then it's super cool. I
Have a question: how much does it cost to make a film like Weightless?
weightless cost me, okay? Yeah, was
that the most expensive film to date
about not commercial? Yes, both for myself. Yes, yeah, yeah. So it's really cheap for the world of Moyes. It's because they are very nice friends; it's because they, they want to do the project, and because we were staying in here like two weeks, then we go somewhere else. We stayed two weeks, and there is three people, and they accept to don't have much more money than what they have, and that was very great. And the worst was the music license, yeah.
I was going to ask you about the music license, because I mean, some of the tracks you're using are big songs and obviously you can't just do it. You've got to get, yeah? How does that—how are you negotiating that?
Yeah, but I'm really bad negotiator. It's a, it's a son of the music weightless. It was like 16,000 euro, okay? Yeah, and
And does that change if you start doing festivals and everything, or is that just unlimited? It's
like, uh, it should be one year, one year on only internet worldwide, okay? Yeah, but then after you, you check what's so
Did that, but that's an interesting question. So, you are, you choosing your music because often you just find a track where it's like, "This is the song I have to use." In 500 Miles to Nowhere, we found a track from—I'm not going to say they're the band, right—but like Spang and Anglar. They're real famous, uh, they Iceland, Icelandic band, and it was just like, "We have to use this track." And we... We contacted them through United, and they didn't know what paragliding was, and they looked at the film and they were like, you can have it for free. That's just awesome. It was amazing. But I've had other instances where it's like, we can't use that song.
Yeah. It's an opportunity to touch video. They see the video, they say, we like it, you can use it. Oh. Oh, ah, really? I could wear it on holidays.
But so you're, you, do you, do you, are you really thinking about music rights before you pick a track or do you just, you're, you're listening, listening? Oh my God. That's the one I got to use. And then you deal with it.
Yeah. I did a huge mistake with the weightless because I, I was thinking that during the shoots, I said, I like this song. I really want to use this one. I want to use this one. And then we start to contact people to show them, and and they were really late to answer. And then I start to make the edit, and then I finish the edit, and I have so many words, and they say it will be super expensive. I say, "Oh," and then you are, you have the video finish, you don't have the right. You say, "What should I do? What should I change? The music? Restart all the the process?" Or should I believe that I will get my money back later because the video will have some view and everything and
Yeah, it made me like, one year not in good position with my widgets, my projects. So it was like, oh, I have a big heart in my widgets, so I decided to take the risk, yeah.
The, the um, can you rely on YouTube for, you know, what the—I don't know how YouTube works, but you know, what the little ads that they put in the front end, when you—you know, Waitlist got like 10 million views with the outside TV things. It's probably way over that now. Yeah, I remember when you announced that we are around
like 40 million views, so
Is that a reliable source of income with just is YouTube? It's, it could be, it could
be the only program. It's, uh, it's terrible game. I mean, uh, Social Network at the beginning was really nice, was super viral, super easy to be viral all, and was super cool. And then they won't make money, so they want to sell advertising, and so it's what we call the reach. So the way that's how to share, the best way, it's like a kind of strategy about something a little bit weird, and every time I, you have to understand how it works. And the best strategy at this time was to give the video at many, many brands, like, like Red Bull, outside TV, many things to try to get the reach. If you don't do that, it's like I will have maybe two, three, four million. So I change the strategy.
I give for free to other people to have that feedback and the popularity of the video will make me able to negotiate new sponsors, new commercials, everything like that.
How much of the effort is marketing?
It's marketing. it's like I try to don't care but like really don't care about marketing I mean I have a wing I have a logo no
No, I don't mean that, but like, when you—when you release a film, how much do you have to work on getting the news up and getting it out? And, you know, how much time do you spend on the social media? Would that be the social media?
I try to don't, I don't spend a lot of time on that. I try to have my contacts with huge followers, and I answer to the mail when they contact me. Can we share the video? Yes, you can share, but I think that I don't like the aggressive way to say, "Oh, please, please look at my video, please." I, for me, it's more, I do something, if you like it, feel free to share, but I will even not push you to share it, and I, I really want to try to, it's for you. So then after you do what whatever you want, so I don't spend time to, to do that, to do marketing, how
much of a film like Weightless, Light Line, the the the recent, more recent films, how much is serendipity versus versus script, um
I think we every time know what is the beginning, what is the end of the video; we know what should be the spirit of the video. I have a number of actions I try to do inside the video, and I can do usually 70% of the ideas. I cannot do it or we fail and fail and fail and we never get to success. And 30, 40 % is what's happening right now. We have an opportunity right now in this place to do that, so let's do it.
Do you ever get any kind of like writer's block? You know, do you—do you just have ideas? There's so many, you know, you'll never do them. Or, or do you go through times where you're like, "God, what am I going to do now? What's the next one?"
I'm super scared about that, but I have every time like one to two projects for one, so I'm not in stress, but in some time every time I have three projects in some times, and only one or two are working every time there is. We don't have the jet for one, or it's also happened to me that we did all the images and I was not happy about the results, so I never released the video. So we've been in maruco with capoeirists make a kind of dance, and we make some synchrobatic flying, but the effect was not how I wanted, so I never released the video.
And you, I... I think I heard you say earlier that a typical project's two years from inception to done. Yeah, it was maybe
three months, six months, one year, two years, three, and now it starts to be super long. It depends on the way we, if it's difficult or not, and because I try to be better and to do something better, I, yeah, it's take more time. So touch, touch, touch, touch, it starts to be super a long time ago because what is super fun, it's between the time when we shoot it and when we release it, we have already a lot of time. But yes, touch, the idea of touch for me was to express it was maybe more performance video than the other ones that I want, I wanted to show all, the goal was to show what we can do with powergating everything. I mean, I wanted to show a lot of acrobatics, flying proximity flying, and a lot of kind of things like that.
So I want, I wanted a lot contrast, I want some glacier or some snow to make acrobatics to feel not so comfortable And sometimes I want, I wanted some super green place to have fun on the road, and it was the beginning of of professional work, and with a lot of like the swimming pool, I mean the swimming pool, it was like super lucky moments. I wanted to do that. I, for me, it was the most important action of the video, and I wanted to go to Santorini. And then we get this wind, this terrible wind. We were not able to fly, so we came back a second time. We spent more than 20 days on this island.
The island is like 10 kilometers for two kilometers, it's super small. There is nothing to do, two villages and wind, wind, wind, wind, wind. And then every time there is a kind of
It's like we've been there and just a super five-star hotel open and they say we have nobody in the room. It's the beginning. We have to do some promotion so you can do whatever you want on this hotel. And then we take off from the roof because there is no landing at this place. It was just a hotel, a cliff and a sea. And so we take off from the roof, and we start, and we land, and we did it many, many times. And every time, there is a big, big part of chance that people trust us, and we are able to make crazy things because of chance. What
What part of the process, that two-year process, what do you love the most? I
think there is when we start to go on the trip when we are on the trip because to go in the trip is terrible. We are like, I don't know how many bags we have, so many wings we have, so many camera we have, so many tripods we have, three huge bags per person with 25 kilograms, it's terrible. And when we arrived in Greece for touch, the camera didn't arrive, so we were on the island without camera wing, and so it's a lot of stress before to go there because it's a big team with with a lot of camera and everything. And then when you start to fly, and when you start to have a super beautiful light, and when you start to get the action, and you know that the shots are going inside, and you start already to imagine the edit in the air, you say, oh, that would be cool after that, that, that, and that is super exciting.
And then it's the second moment I really like, it's when you have all the images, you know that you have something, it's not create now, but you know that it's right now, You will be able to create something super cool or super shitty, so it's Premiere Pro open and then you start to make one images and two and three and then, oh, you start to get a feeling, you start to growing and then you keep going and you repeat it and the feeling and the emotions start to come at this moment. And at this moment, I am like, I call that the flow. I mean, it's like I cannot stop. You start it's 2 p.m. and then it's 2 a.m. What's happened between? And you're like, pro pro pro quite super cool.
JV, thank you very much. This was like really cool to do this centennial episode here with you all, and thanks for all everybody for coming, and uh, thanks for sharing your wonderful world with us. It's been terrific, a decade really, and uh, I, I can't wait to see your, your next project, man. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much.