Well, hello there, everybody. Welcome to the 100th episode of the Cloud Based 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 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. We talked to John 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 Salmonega.
And I hope you enjoyed 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 hundredth 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 for kind of subscribers, you don't have to contribute fully.
So these are all these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these day 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 cloudbasedmayhem 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, because that's what 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 cloudbasedmayhem.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, 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. There are a lot of costs involved and really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, running this.
And there are, 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 out shows. I'm having a blast doing this. I love getting all your feedback. I love from hearing from so many pilots that 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 can. I appreciate your feedback. I appreciate, appreciate you guys for being here. I appreciate you guys for being here. I appreciate you guys for being here. I appreciate you guys for being here. 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. Thank you for listening. Thanks for hanging in there for a hundred episodes of the Cloud-Based Mayhem. And please enjoy this live audience talk with John Baptiste Chandelier.
Good evening, everybody.
So thank you for coming. Thank you for coming.
We are here today with Gavin again and John 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 don't, are not familiar with this podcast is 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, and with a really special person, which is John Baptiste. So we are going to make, they are going to make this recording, this conversation. Gavin will ask some questions.
John Baptiste will see some videos. And then we open the questions to the public. So in the, in the future, he will publish the episode. Two weeks? Yeah. In two weeks for everybody in the world. Okay. So that's, I give the word to Gavin and thank him and John Baptiste too. Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks everybody. Yeah. This is our first live audience. Show. And I sat down with, with, uh, John Baptiste about three years ago and said, Hey, I gotta get you on the show. And then we Facebooked and, uh, and here's Siri talking to us here. I probably should turn this off, but, uh, so this is very cool to be able to do it. Um, it's very cool to be able to do a live show and also for our, our hundredth episode. So thanks for coming. Uh, KB, when you're at a social gathering and someone doesn't know you, I can't even, 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 a, it's pretty not easy question every time because it's,
it's not like a real job. So I say I do power reading. Then I stopped and I don't say, I don't, I don't like to enter in the data. It's what I like with internet is that you can show what you think about, but in some time, yes, it's not a problem. I'm more like shy. So you're, 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's start to be a job. There is many people who do vlogs, YouTubers, Instagrammers. I don't know. But when I started, it was really the beginning of these things. Maybe the first time I get some hits on the internet, it was in 2011.
And so for people it was new. I started to leave about that. I started to get some sponsor, but it was not a good job. I was not like an 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 bit of a 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 the good thing is that I'm good at And everything together fits 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, it's fitting really well.
You were telling me last night that 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 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 wanted to fly. I was dreaming about flying. And when I was a child, I was taken from the school. I was there. In my mind, I was taken and passed between the buildings of my cities. And it was like Peter Pan. It was a dream, you can imagine. And then I said, OK, 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 said, let's 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 on the place in my home and I come in the takeoff with a few friends and I forgot my wing. I was stupid. I don't have my wing. But we were in the top of the mountain and a friend of 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 sell them between the trees. And there is some house in the mountain. And I start to fly. 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 summer, but almost nothing. And I was like a child. I mean, it's like the moment that I realized that it was how I wanted to fly when I was young. And then I say, OK, 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 or interesting. I don't know in English. Sorry. To show it in video. And that was the beginning. So the proximity flying was really the kind of start that led to the videos that led to the filmmaking.
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 am a filmmaker. It's really weird because one day a friend take a camera. I start to make a movie. And I say, oh, can I just check the movie to 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, oh, 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 start to make the connection between my experience like a video maker and my experience as a pilot, then it starts 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 get 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 enough myself to think that I was able to live about targeting. So I just fly because I like it. I was teacher of piloting, so instructor. And I started to make some videos. And step by step, it started to be more and more professional. And people follow more and more. And then I said, okay, maybe I can ask a sponsor to give me a jacket, sunglasses, and a jacket with two heroes.
And then a little bit more. And step by step, now we have a huge team. We have money. We 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 really fun. But it seemed like there was a really big jump at urban side. Is that where you brought in all these amazing graphics? And you made a place that has been flown a ton and not overly spectacular, just really fun. And I remember I was sailing around the world at that point. And I remember. 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, my dream was to fly like 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 sea. And then maybe it could be interesting to put paragliding where we don't see paragliding. That's why I start to think about urban side. And I see I was already in the past. I flew in Peru, in Lima, front of the building and in Chile as well. So I say, oh, maybe we can try to show to the people. It's like a message somewhere. It's not right in the video, but it says, okay, today we are able to fly with 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, we don't have connection with me and people are living in the city. And I have, my goal was to, to try to catch a circle of 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. My dream and a dream. And the reason for the urban side. Tell me about your process because it's, it's, it's fascinating to me how you come up with the ideas. So how, how does it, how does it take us through from inception, from the dream, from 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, sometime. 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 maybe would like to do bargaining and it's totally different. And then from deciding to sharing the feeling of flight with images, that was really the goal of all my videos is okay. No, how can I do it? So I try to take some reference. So, okay. Maybe it will be cool to play. Okay. Maybe it will be cool to play on the road, play on with a swimming pool, with a bus, with a somewhere. I don't know in the city. And then I tried to get some idea with that.
And also I tried to get some ideas about how to, to film it, to pass, to, to give, to share this feeling. Because if you take on a mic camera, a tripod, and you feel from very far, you will see your way to do that. And if you put the camera somewhere with a night singer, 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 guys just seem like you're having a blast when you're, when you're doing it, you know, like happiness and the, the, the, these films is just with the dancing and, but it's all seems to be built around.
The music. Do you, 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, the, the synchro and the jive and the, the, the timing and all, and the dancing in the Moyes and the, the, it all seems to bounce around a specific track that you've found. It seems like that's, 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 spirits, I mean, how you will do it, it will be hard rock or electro or something smooth. It will don't try to catch the same images and you try to have something more smooth or more dynamic or more speed. So it gives a real, 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 rip is going on, I chant and there is like a break and then nothing happens. And then it's restart and it starts to be faster. And it's really like playing drum, drum in the music. There is changement of free. There is many things. There is many, many things. So yes, I think there is a big link between music, my drum experience and my way. I, it's the video for sure. How much, 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 I want to get the ID until the end of the project. We have, we used to have two years because first you have the ID, then you have to show the ID to someone to be able to pay the trip, the cameraman, the 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 wizard here and sometimes it's not work so well. And it's already happened to me in the US 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 that. If we see the video touch, we go in Greece and then we have a surprise. The surprise was the wind is the melt them. The melt them. Wind. It's a wind never stopped around 50 to 60 kilometers per hour, 24 hours, 24 hours. So you see nice photo, everything and say, oh, it will be so nice. And you arrive and maybe it will be better than we can. Even the night for try to catch the sunrise and you say, okay, then we come back. So we stay 10 days. We come back 10 more days. Okay. And when we get all the images at the end of the shooting, then I start with it only at the end to, because I know all what I am.
It's the worst parts you have like for the waitlist videos, the last one we get 35 hours of images for five minutes movie at the end. So you have to work 35 hours of boring images to try to catch the seconds. Wow. Really nice. And then I did it. And my. Process is I make a first edits. Then I asked too many friends for 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 read it. Then I asked more friends and then I did it again. And then I asked more friends. I did it again. And like wait, less of 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. And when I read it, I already knows the feedback of the public. So it's like the next video I'm working on is not sure that we will be done. But first, when we get an idea, try to draw something to give an idea about how it will look. So it will help me to do sales projects and to get the money to pay the camera man and everything. So like the next project, it's will be it maybe because we don't have all the authorization right now. Yeah. We have 90 % of the tradition. So we cross finger, but it will be in the center of the city in France in New York City. So I start to do all 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 finishing the stadium in New York City. And then when I have that people can already imagine it a bit of story and then they are able to, to, to, to. Know if it's a good idea or not. Then. 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 have a, we know the budgets. We know how many people we need. So we give that and the budget. So that it's a less dreamy part of the project. I mean, you have a dream and then you need to talk to businessman. It's totally different. Is there also a backend 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, you know, for every million views, do you get more money or at, at, 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 projects. 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 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 he, 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 me? Yes or not. And then I have a little bit of money and. Uh, uh, strategy or not from the, from the brand. Also, uh, I do some commercial sometime. Um, me, my idea is not to be really rich. I reinvest everything in my project. So when I get some, I did some money from commercial, I really invest myself, everything in the projects to try to do something better. And just to realize my dream.
And also when you go to other risks, 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. So these are these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these because he wants 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 J.B. Mérandé, Jean-Baptiste like me. And this guy has come from a school of cinematography. So we have more of the basic thing because we are all autodidacts. So he give us some basic rules, he have a lot of experience.
And also I am really happy because all those teams just work with me for video. So I'm really happy. And they don't want to work with just like this project because it's almost all of my best friends. 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 it's every time different. I mean, there is some place that in my home, it's amazing for proximity flying. What I call downhill. I mean, it's no wind, no summer, nothing. And you just go down like a little bit speed flying. And yes, my home is perfect because the slope is perfect. Everything, the tree, 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. Very, very small. But it looks like a super playground. You can do 2000 things. It's really small, but there is so many things to do. That's pretty nice.
And here it's more for the landscape. You can fly and it's like, beat your face. You're like, wow, it's crazy. I feel like in Photoshop. It's like there is something not real here. What's happened? It's really cool. So in these projects like Weightless that you did here and Brian Son, how much of it is collaborative? Is it really your vision driving the whole project 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 times I spend on my computer because there is a lot of work of preparation. There is a lot of time to do. 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's happened. And I trust them at 200%. So there is JV Merande who is who I work with since the video Lightline.
It's funny but I know he sees the same thing in his head than me. So when we are talking, we say, okay, are you connected? Yes, it's okay. So, okay, 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. We're not so much. When and sometimes we see some people like in the waitlist video. But not 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 moments 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 will make an amazing job and try to find the point of view at this time and to be successful. And then we have to be super active. It's really in the beginning it's from my head. Then it's like the team with the job. And then I finish the process. The bus from touch. How did you set that up? I mean, obviously the bus driver is in on this. But what vision? But how did you coordinate all these things? That was really funny story. Because I get the idea of the beginning of this video. I mean, I say, 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 contact me and say, hello, do you do commercial for 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 fun. It was a small company in 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 really short section. But for three days, we will make a lot of run 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 signal.
So these are these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these these 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 videos, 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 your home? Yeah, it's my home. 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 stories 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 in the morning and then in the afternoon, I used the race and they didn't, how to say? Take down the gate. Yeah, exactly. And so... So we did the sequence 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 come on the slope and the tourists didn't know that. So the cameraman went 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 in France, it's really hard to get emotion from people. When we are happy in France, we are like... And when we are sad, it's the same and everything. So it was OK. It doesn't work. It doesn't work so well, but it will be fine. In Brazil, it's the opposite. In Brazil, people are like, you know, have their eyes like a child. OK, 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, it's because I tried to be a ski instructor in the past. I made a lot of slalom and I failed a lot of times. 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 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, I use like social network, like a laboratory. 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 if 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. So the idea was to check the speed effect with the FPV drone, follow cam.
And this point of view was 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 dissipate with the effect.
And I found this point of view really interesting. And so I just put on the Internet to get the feedback, to see if it would be nice idea for the next video or not. So. So, yeah, I like this point of view. And for the story, maybe so this saved my legs as well, because I get a 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? And it was a huge, huge. It's like Dust Devil without dust. Like I was just landing in my home. I was with my wife. I was with this wing with the 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 summer and just 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 a growing 17 square meters. And I have a huge collapse. Seventy five percent collapse in the back. I never see that in my life. That's you. You you said people to be answered to go in full store and then a huge collapse. It makes really weird things. It makes me going up. I almost fall. I really 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 story to have the shoot and I impact the ground very, very fast.
And I don't remember it, but I get the camera. If you may reason. So I was able to check everything. And it was really weird because I didn't make any mistake. When you see 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 the view because you can do nothing. Is that the only accident you've had? I know.
But at this moment, it was like I just go gonna land. That was for me. That was it. A bit. Even right now, I seek a lot. 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 happened to your head after that one? Was it scary coming back to flying or was there any kind of fear injury that went along with it? No. I think I'm super scared.
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 like. Oh, really? Yeah. I'm just super weak because my back is still weak. My leg as well. But I will recover everything. It's only bones. So in one month. I'm gonna be back in the air. How much of the how much of your life blood your income your 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 the New Zealand. How does that add up? It's what is really funny. I'm really lucky. I mean, it's like and now I start to focus much more on what I really care about. So I care a lot about my ideas. I want to get my ideas to be real one day. It's what I'm 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 a few 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 don't try to catch job like this because I have all what I need to live on my level of life. I like it like this. So I just take good opportunities when there is. And I focus on my project. And I try also to don't do a lot of small things because the program 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 get more money. And then 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 or only for the money, it will be the end of my motivation. So I try 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. Where do you start? Where do you? Because Waga and proximity flying is not something that many people teach. Yeah, it's something weird 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 anticipation.
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. 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 can do it. You have the leg in the back and really 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 it's
a good thing. I think it's a
different way to do the things in the past. I was focused on performance and today I'm focused on. 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 a focus on fun 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 try to catch the people from the city. And so if I can finish with a video in the city, it will be really amazing for me to talk to even more people to say that we can take off almost like Batman, you know, from Japan.
You can do whatever you want.
And I see. 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. It was like, no, no, sorry, I cannot go in holidays. It's boring. 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, girl, Facebook. And it's hard 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 your passion for flight?
No, no, no. It's the opposite. Yeah. I mean, it's like the project. The idea gives me motivation more than flight, because if it's every time the same fly at the same place. It's the premise. 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 pilots, you start to 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 am super motivated because I know where we go in the Peru and the ribbon to do something.
And that gives me a lot of motivation. But just to fly like normal people that we can. It's it's it's super sad. But at one moment, the motivation goes with a bit down. But now that the creativity really feeds the creativity. Yes, exactly. Because flying is every time it's a bit the same. But with creativity, there is no limits. You can every time do something new. You can fly. You can fly in some other place, something a new joke, a new game, a 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 60,000 euros. Okay. Yeah.
Was that the most expensive film to date? About not commercial. Yes, about for myself. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really cheap for the world of Moyes. It's because they are really nice friends. It's because they they want to do the project. And because we were staying here like two weeks, then we go somewhere else. We stayed two weeks and they receive 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 the rights.
Yeah. How does that? How are you negotiating that? Yeah. But I'm really bad negotiator. It's a song of the music weightless. It was like 16,000 euros. Okay. Yeah. And and does that change if you start doing festivals and everything or is that just unlimited? It's like. It should be one year. One year on only internet worldwide. Okay. Yeah. But then after you. You check what happens. 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 Spain and Anglar, they're real famous. They. Iceland Icelandic band. And it was just like, we have to use this track. And we contacted them through, you know, United one of the and 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 it was amazing. But I've had other instances where it's like, we can't use that song. Yeah. It's about me to touch the video. The see the videos. They will like it. You can use it. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Oh. Oh.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Oh. Oh. 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 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 works and they say it will be super expensive. I say oh. And then you have the video finished, you don't have the rights, you say what should I do, what should I change? The music, restart all the process. Or should I believe that I will get my money back later because the video will have some views and everything. And yeah, it made me like one year not in a good position with my budgets, my projects.
So it was like oh shit, I have a big hole in my budget. So I decided to take the risk. Yeah. Can you rely on YouTube? I don't know how YouTube works, but you know what the little ads that they put in the front end when you wait, let's got like 10 million views with the outside TV things. It's probably way over that now. I remember when you announced that there was 10 million. We are around like 40 million views. So is that a reliable source of income with YouTube? It could be. It could be the only program. It's a terrible game. I mean, social network at the beginning was a
terrible game. It was
really nice. It was super viral, super easy to be viral and was super cool. And then they want to 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 have to understand how it works. And the best strategy at this time was to give the video at many, many brands 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 millions. 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 commercial and everything like that.
How much of the effort is marketing?
It's marketing. It's like I try to don't care. I 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 how much time do you spend on the social media? Would that be the social media? No, I don't spend a lot of time on that. I try to have my contacts with huge followers. And I answer to them when they contact me, can we share the video? Yes, we can share. But But I think that I don't like the aggressive way to say, oh, please, please look at my video, please. 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 really want to try to, it's for you. So then after you do whatever you want. So I don't spend time to do that, to do marketing. How much of a film like Weightless, Lightline, and the more recent films, how much is serendipity versus script? 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 the 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? Do you just have ideas? There's so many, you know, you'll never do them. 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 two projects in some times and only one or two are working. Every time there is, we don't have a jet for one.
It's also happened to me that we did all the images and I was not happy about the results. So I never really did the video. So we did in Morocco with capoeirists, make a kind of dance and we made some synchrobatics flying, but the effect was not as I wanted. So I never really did the video. And you, I think I heard you say earlier that a typical projects, two years from inception to done. Yeah. So way less than two years. It was maybe three months, six months, one year, two years, three. And now it's starting to be super long. Yeah. 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. It's not to be super long time ago because what is super fun. It's between the time when we shoot it and when we really did, 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 there was a ones that I won't. I wanted to show all the goal was to show what we can do with targeting 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. Yeah. I wanted a lot of contrast. I want some glacier, some snow to make acrobatics to feel not so comfortable. And sometime I want, I wanted some super green place to offer on the road. And, um, 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.
Uh, I wanted to do that. I, for me, it was. It was the most important action of the video. And, uh, I wanted to go to Santorini and then we get this win this terrible win. We were not able to fly. So we came back a second time. We spend 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 to villages. Um, we, we, we, we, we, and then every time there is a kind of, uh, of, uh, weakness. Uh, chance, chance. 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, whether we are in the trip, because to go in the trip is terrible. We are like, I don't know how many bags we have. We have so many wings. We have so many camera. We have so many tripod. 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 with a camera wing. And so it's a lot of stress before to go there because it's a big team. There is a lot of camera and everything. And then when we start to fly and when you start to have a super beautiful life 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 and 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 you start flying. You get the feeling. We 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 got that the flow. I mean, it's like I cannot stop. You start is 2 p.m. And then it's 2 a.m. What's happened between? And you are like, oh, boy, super cool.
JV, thank you very much. This was really cool to do this centennial episode here with you all. And thanks for everybody for coming. And thanks for sharing. You're wonderful world with us. It's been terrific. A decade, really. And I can't wait to see your next project. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much. Thank you.