For the 3rd year I went early october to the Oetztal valley for the Adidas Sickline race, the extreme kayaking world championship. This is a great event, beautifully organized, which is offering a great media exposure to one of the most speactualr facet of kayaking. I was working there editing and also shooting.
Most of my 3 days there were spent editing. I prepared the athletes inserts used during the live broadcasting, as well as a variety of other sequences. This was an intense mission with many different inputs/outputs and a short time to deliver everything.
The event race was also the occasion to gather the Adidas Sickline Team members. We got a generous load of gear for the season, everybody was super stoked! Now i have all i need to keep me warm on and off the water!
This is the teaser with host Steve Fisher:
The live replay is available in Freecaster, as well as the 26min TV show that was edited afterwards @ Dropin TV in Munich, the same guys that I work with over the winter season. Have a look, it's great :
Wow... I've been bad in the past, but to leave my website without an update for nearly one year... ouch! It's more than time to catch up!!! As you will see the past year has provided me plenty of reasons NOT to find the time to update these pages.
So what's up in my world. Basically, lots of work, and very interesting work. As a matter of fact I've never been busier! The easiest thing at this stage would be to go through a chronological report of the past 12 months.
September 08: some good paddling in the French Alps, and a trip to Amsterdam / Dutch Water Dreams WW course. I was attending and filming for the Kajak Festrival (http://www.kajakfestival.nl). Great event with good atmosphere, plenty of kayaking disciplines, and a good party too!
Apparently the event won't happen this year, which is a real pity. But it should be back in 2010 hopefully.
Then I hit the road along with the Kanoshop/Rokxat crew to attend the now famous Kanu Messe in Nuremberg, Germany. Rokxat is the European distributor for Fluid. Great bunch of people doing an amazing job! Again, a very good tradeshow. Fluid/Rokxat had one of the biggest booth at the show, and probably the coolest too, thanks to a super fancy Fluid Deejaying setup where i could play every evening. Two white Solos are dedicated to the sound and lights. They both contain multicolor spotlights, and a big speaker in the cockpit. A third Solo is used for the the turntables and mixing table, and light controller. It's all super well designed and assembled and it KICKS ASS! So cool.
Now I only wish FLUID would make an open canoe of some sort so that we can fit even bigger speakers in it and a subowoofer too while we're at it. The last evening at the dinner we had installed the Fluid DJ booth in a corner and i played some tunes while people were having dinner. But soon the tables were pushed aside and this usually quiet and formal place turned into a dancefloor! Some more speakers were collected over various booths at the tradeshow and the party was ON! A few hours later the crowd moved to the various clubs accross Nuremberg, each looking to end the night in the best possible way.
Party is on in Nuremberg! Photos courtesy of Peter Lintner. Tx!
Next stop was Austria with the Adidas Sickline Extreme Kayak World Championship. After a nice run down the class 4-5 Oetz (and bumping into Corran Addison randomly - the guy can still paddle!), it was work again. I was there hired by the organizers but working on my own, detached from the TV production team. The brief was simple: do your thing, shoot and edit daily clips. My footage would also later be used in the 26-min TV show. Despite cold conditions, the event was a great success and a great time was had by all, competitors and spectators alike.
Here are the clips that I produced (each clip was shot and edited same day and displayed at the public tent in the evening).
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Soundtrack by "Orange but Green" ; they gave a great concert and a great show on the saturday night party. And that was just one of the highlights of a great party, a great night and a perfect ending for this time spent on the road. It was then time to find my way home, which wasn't easy after a nearly a mouth of travelling abroad!
from left to right: Tao Berman, myself, Michelle Ramazza
Some extremely charming company and a welcome change from the smelly kayakers ;-)
The next few weeks were spent back home, beginning my new job as "Video Content Manager" for the Freeride World Tour (www.freerideworldtour.com).
What does "Video Content Manager" mean exactly? well, basically, my role would consist in managing and supervizing the whole video production process, from planning / budgeting / booking to shooting to editing and delivering. While the main priority remained the TV news and 26-min TV highlights, there were also numerous other video products to deliver, such as webclips, taylormade clips for the different sponsors, and to answer various requests for footage and such. Since I was also in charge of directing all the TV shows, no need to say my winter has been totally hectic!
Basically, a good part of what i've been doing resides in the FWT Youtube page:
The Freeride World Tour 2009 was composed of 4 main events : Sochi-Russia, Squaw Valley-USA, Tignes-France, and the finals in Verbier-Switzerland, spread over january/february and March. On top of it, the same organisation team did the Winter Outdoor Games in Chamonix-France, another event that I was involved on for video production. But more on that later.
So October was filled with Excel files, budgets, meetings and conference calls, with frequent stops in Lausanne where the FWT headquarters are located.
In November, a very welcome break occured with a 3-week paddling trip to Kenya. I had been talking about a autumn trip with Mat Dumoulin and Marc Girardin, and I remembered seeing some nice pics and vids from Mark and Michelle Basso. After a few emails it was all set. We'd fly to Nairobi and enjoy the Savage Whitewater base. Indeed we were very warmly welcomed by James Savage as well as his parents, and they made this trip a memorable experience for us.
Mark and James Savage, in front of their home river, the Tana.
The Savage own and run a rafting company about 2 hours from Nairobi. The place is like a little piece of paradise, super nice and friendly. It also turned out to be the perfect starting point for our daily expeditions to the surrounding rivers. And what rivers!
Local life in the village of Sagana
I was totally amazed by the beauty and diversity of the Kenyan rivers. Within a radius of 1 to 2 hours of driving, you can get big volume, tiny creeks, big slides, clean waterfalls... and no need to mention the luxuriant environnement and stunning scenery.
After a week of hucking and paddling it was time for a little break, so we embarked on a 3 day safari which was a very rewarding experience as well. I'll let the pictures speak here.
After that it was time to get wet again, and paddle some more rivers of the area. My 2008 paddling season ended on a nice technical drop of about 10-12 meters, my very last paddlestrokes of the year, nice !
It is crazy that in over 2 weeks there, we all got the feeling we had barely scratched the surface. Kenya definately holds a big potential, with entire areas remaining to be scouted and explored. It's also just a day away from the White nile by bus, so that could become a perfect combination if you're going for an extended trip and want to creek and play in these 2 destinations. For more info check out and contact the Savage. They rock! www.whitewaterkenya.com
It was then time to fly back home! Back to cold Europe. December was again filled with budgeting and planning for the coming season, and also editing trailers for the various events.
January saw the first stop of the FWT in Sochi, Russia. As soon as you pronounce the word "Russia", inevitably come to mind all the clichés associated with this country: crazy vodka drinking, extravagant bureaucracy, tall blonde girls, Lada cars all over the place and a big cultural and linguistic gap.
And to say the truth, all of this is true.
Located on the Black Sea, Sochi will be hosting the Winter Olympics in 2014. Our settlement was the ski resort of Krasnaya Polyana, an hour drive from Sochi. A small resort with only 3-4 chairlifts, but blessed with generally abundant snowfalls thanks to the proximity and humidity of the sea. Putting the event together was a big challenge and I must say that my colleagues have done an impressive work there. On the video production side, the big challenge was to make the whole story fit into a tiny 26 minute for TVs. We have four categories (Ski Men and Women, and Snowboard Men and Women) and this event was ran over 2 days of competition on 2 different faces. Not to mention the inevitable adventures and anecdotes that you can expect to experience in Russia! So this was definetely a challenge to depict all this and make it interesting for the TVs, to combine the narrating of a world class freeride competition and add a local, typical russian flavour to it.
All in all it went smoothly. The competition was shot in HD, using 4 sony EX3 cameras and 1 HDCAM for the "long lens" producing close up action shots. This setup was completed by several POV cameras placed on riders' helmets along with lavalier microphones and dedicated audio recorders. Onsite we also had 2 editors taking care of file management and of the editing of the TV news (most of the times, 3 min of footage sent over a satellite uplink for TV stations, on the same day or at D+1).
This was our standard setup over the season. In Tignes and Verbier the addition of a helicopter equipped with a Cineflex stabilization system was a huge plus for the pictures. More on that later.
After the competition I flew back to Munich to work at Dropin studio on the TV show. It was completed a week later and broadcasted in many countries accross the world. All in all it has had more than 50 000 views on Youtube as well, which is fairly good for such a long format for the web.
The complete Nissan Russian Adventure 26-min show can be seen here, in HD :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiYsiefmvoU
A shorter clip from contest day 1 can be seen here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPVF26G0unI
After a short stay at home early february and a couple runs down the local rivers, it was time to pack again, this time for about 50-55 days on the road, from Chamonix to Squaw Valley to Tignes to Verbier, with a stop in Munich inbetween each event. I left home under a grey sky and cold winter day. Two months later when i got back home it felt as if i had jumped in time : spring was there, flowers, sun and all. Strange feeling! But I guess i'll keep that for another post.
Last July the 4th edition of the Nissan Outdoor Games took place in Interlaken, Switzerland. This was my 4th participation to this summer event, but this time as a cameraman/director for the event organizers. My experience during the last Winter Outdoor Games in Chamonix had already been very interesting as video content manager.
This time I was in charge of directing the Event Highlight, a 24-min program aimed at TV stations worldwide. Nice challenge! Knowing the event and the area, as well as some of the teams and participants made my task easier. I also shot and edited daily clips for the event's website. All of the clips, as well as the teams' movies, can be seen on this page:
L'ensemble des clips quotidiens, ainsi que les films des équipes sont dispos sur la page suivante :
The concept of the event, for those who don't know it, is quite simple: 5 teams have 5 days to shoot a 5-min movie featuring 5 different disciplines: kayaking, mountain biking, base-jumping, climbing and paragliding. I spent most of the week following the teams on hte field, documenting the making of their respective movies. Unfortunately a tragic accident occured during the week. A base-jumper from the French "Ride The Planets" team, Yoann Lizeroux, was killed during a jump. It was a shock for everybody. After a meeting, the four other teams decided to continue the event but to leave aside the competition format.
Despite difficult weather conditions, the general level of the movies has improved nonetheless. My personal favorties were Team IBEX and team GOLGOHT. These are two very different movies, but equally inspirational.
During the public event on the last 3 days, 3 more cameramen came from Germany. As soon as the event was over, I made the drive to Germany to work on the editing at the "Dropin TV" studio. This is a production company that works mostly on sports events. Once again, a good preparation of the work and a solid script allowed us to edit this TV highlight in just a week. The tricky part in this kind of jobs is to make an interesting show with a good storyline, while taking into account the required exposure for the various sponsors of the event. The show is now airing in various parts of the world... pretty cool!
One of my personal highlight was to take place into the air:
Copyright: Outdoor Games 2008, Dom Daher
For about 15 minutes, the hangglider of Austrian Flo Orley flew over my head and in front of my camera. What a great show! In the background was one of the most spectacular panorama of the Alps. I was truely amazed by the maniability and speed of the hangglider. The noise of the hangglider is very similar to a plane or a jet. Very surprising. And very impressing during the close fly-by. Whooo!!!
Here's yet another Fluid Element action clip, shot on the left channel in Hawaii sur Rhone a couple weeks ago. On the video the level is approximately 950-1000 m3/sec. At this level the wave is hardly surfable with a standard freestyle boat.
It was a really fun session in the Element. It was only my 3rd session in it, and I know there's still a lot to be learnt from that great little boat. The potential is huge. I won't go into too much detail and I'll let the footage talk. However I feel that I should mention once again how easy this boat is, considering its high speed and agressivity while surfing and carving. In just a few rides you can start carving and doing high speed turns, like you always wanted to but never could in most other unforgiving surf kayaks!
I don't know if I made it clear enough that I fell in love with my Element ?
Remember that feeling, back in the late 90's-early 2000's, when every new boat was a revolution? When each new design opened a new world of possibilities and eventually put a huge grin on your face? Well, that was my exact feeling when I could finally test my Fluid Element on Hawaii sur Rhone at flood levels. Here's my totally biaised review of my new favorite boat.
Some time ago Andrew Pollock already showed us what the Element was capable of on the South-African ocean waves. Truely inspiring footage and action that had me waiting anxiously for the good waterlevels in Lyon this spring, thinking about the shiny red Fluid Element I had received earlier this year.
Andrew Pollock and his Element:
Unfortunately the river gods didn't hear my complaints and the wave remained at a quite low level for months, with a nice foampile but very little green to carve on. Just when I was packing my stuff for a creeking trip to Corsica last April, the level quickly rose and reached 1600 cumecs, a level we call the « ramp ». I could finally test my Element, late on a friday evening, right before crossing the Mediteranean the next morning.
At 1600 cumecs the wave is kinda long, and slow. It used to be interesting with the older generation of longer freestyle boats (Dominatrix, sub-7 and such) but it lost its interest with the newer butt bouncers. They are generally too slow to really enjoy the surf, and to avoid flushing these boats must remain stuck in the big foampile which is not very user-friendly. They're also too slow to catch the wave from the eddy. Not great.
In my Fluid Element my session was a total blast. Not only could I catch the wave from the eddy (which I haven't been able to do since the Dominatrix), but I could freely move all over the green part of the wave, even in the flattest sections. The Element is really, really fast, especially considering its short size (about the size of a standard freestyle boat). By watching the footage afterwards, I realized I was a bit too far backwards and that I could have safely move my seat forward to be even faster. But at the time the boat already felt so fast that I didn't even think of it.
The Element can carve very aggressively and radically, but yet it remains forgiving enough. In fact it is actually quite easy to paddle considering its high level of performance. It is still a bit more demanding than an average freestyle boat, but after 30 min I was totally at ease. The performance/user-friendliness ratio has been set very high with the Element. It is much easier to paddle than what you could expect given the hard, radical edges on the hull, and I think this is where the Element seperates from the pack. We've seen some high performance boats in the past, but their performance was obtained at the cost of user-friendliness. Now at last, this kayak combines an outstanding level of performance with the ease of use that makes it accessible for most WW paddlers and not just river gods.
After surfing for a while and enjoying the carving abilities of this baby (a true joy in itself), it was time for some moves. Needless to say the boat spins efforlessly. Clean 540° and 720° were the standard, but this was expected. The true question was to know if the Element would allow for aerial manoeuvers or not. In fact, it can bounce – but only if you use hard edge transition. It won't bounce if you let the hull flat on the surface, and this is good news for the ocean paddlers. Bouncing can be fun, but on bigger waves it also means getting out of control in no time and eventually getting crushed.
So while bouncing is definately possible, you have to make it happen. The bounce in itself is smaller than on a freestyle boat, but combined with the greater speed of the Element, the air you get might well be just as high. Backblunts and flashbacks were easy to launch – even easier than front moves! It will definately take more time to really take advantage of the possibilities offered by this boat, but I can already feel a BIG potential.
My first session in Lyon in the Fluid Element:
All in all I think the Element represents the missing link between the surf kayak world and the freestyle boats. It combines the best of the two worlds in a user-friendly design that will make you instantly enjoy your surf. The kind of boat that makes you want to shake the designer's hand and offer him a good bottle of Cotes du Rhone. I've put one aside for you, Celliers ;-)
Now I can't wait to test it on a steeper wave – I know there's still a lot to be learnt from such a boat, and I love that challenge. It feels like exploration again, at last. I haven't had that feeling in a long time!
It's raining outside. If only the level could rise a bit in Lyon again!
One happy Element paddler
Oh, and here are a few pics from yesterday, a last minute update before heading for the Pyreneans creeks. At last, a sunny session with decent a level on the left channel! Even if a bit low, the wave was super fast and fun (and hard to surf)!
