Yannick Barthe - Cameraman, editor and filmmaker

Midnight Sun the short version of the clip Patrouille Suisse Nord Tour 2012

Yannick — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:13:50 +0000

Just one week before Salon de Provence Airshow 2013 you can discover the short version of the clip “Nord Tour Highlights 2012″ with the Patrouille Suisse at the Aalborg (Denmark), Bodo (Norway) and Kauhava (Finland) airshows. Enjoy this new extract with the amazing light of the midnight sun.

We need your help for our 52min Handiflight film project 2014

Yannick — Mon, 20 May 2013 08:05:21 +0000

Handiflight began with Sarah, a young student who has read the book “La couleur préféré de ma mère” the story of Dorine Bourneton. Dorine became paraplegic after a plane crash. She overcame all the steps to become a pilot with her disability and became the leader of the Mission Bleu Ciel flight team. Sarah decided to make her diploma work on the story of Dorine and on the project to organize a meet up on the airfield of Gruyère with disabled pilots invited from different countries of Europe. The goal was to share their difficulties and to improve the legislations of the aerobility. Handiflight was born.

What is Handiflight

The will to push one’s limits and explore new horizons, the pleasure to meet new people and share new emotions, Handiflight is a non profit organization of “flyable” enthusiastic people promoting “aerotherapy” and “aerobility” by the practice of piloting powered aircrafts (incl. helicopter), gliding, paragliding, hang gliding, skydiving, ballooning, etc… A week-long meeting was organized in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 on Gruyères’ Airfield in Switzerland. 40 disabled glider and powered aircraft pilots and paragliders from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Canada, USA, Sweden, Scotland, England, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy took part in 2011. The next event will be organized in August 2013.

Synopsis

In 2007 the organizers of Handiflight commissioned me to create a unique film recording the inspirational event. Handiflight gave me the opportunity to work with new aviation disciplines including paragliding, hot air balloons and gliding. My human approach to filmmaking recorded incredible memories and one of my most beautiful experiences to date. I’ve been following my friends and pilots of the Handiflight team every year since 2007. I’ve filmed about 6-7 hours of footage each year and already shared some extracts on Internet. The videos have a great success with thousands of views and they are also used on several airfields for imaging the new aerobility projects. The idea now is to edit a 26 or 52min film-documentary “Handiflight” with a release in cinemas, DVD/Bluray and VOD (iTunes, Vimeo, etc…)

What we need to begin the film project

We have a beautiful story to tell, we have a stock of amazing footage, we have interviews from people from different countries and I assume the jobs of cameraman, filmmaker and editor. Now we are looking for an original soundtrack composer, an english narrative voice (man or woman), a swiss or international distributor, a producer and sponsors to finance our film project.

Film budget

Here a list of our expenses and sponsoring needs for our film-documentary project of Handiflight :

Filming (already done), reimbursement of our expenses
Editing on Final Cut Studio
Original soundtrack
Narrative voice
Color grading
Motion Graphics
Authoring DVD/Bluray
Packaging, Marketing
Distribution
Screening in theaters / TV / VOD

Video Highlights

All the footage was filmed in HDV or AVCHD 1080i (ratio 16:9) with Sony HVR-Z1, Sony HXR-MC1p, Sony NEX-VG10, Sony HC9 and GoPro videocameras. All the extracts and videos of Handiflight were edited with Final Cut Pro on Apple Mac Pro computer. This year I plan to film the event with the Sony FS100 and Sony A99 cameras.

The people behind the film

The Handiflight events are organized each year by Sarah and Daniel Ramseier with a great team of volunteers behind them. I assumed the jobs of cameraman, editor and film director during all the Handiflight event. Since 2009, I’m supported by Franziska Neuhaus as video assistant (interviews, sound, photographer, etc..). She’s a great help to enhance the quality of the filming work. Many thanks to Michel Barras for his technical tips and help with GoPro cameras and flights coordination.

Would you like to join the adventure and help us to achieve our film project ?

We are looking for collaborators and sponsors to achieve our project. Please contact me directly with the contact form on this website.

The Blog : Handiflight blog
Handiflight on Facebook : Facebook Group
Vimeo : Vimeo Channel

Some BTS pictures by Franziska Neuhaus.

An in-depth step-by-step tour of the Sony A99 with John Greengo

Yannick — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:43:21 +0000

If you are a Sony a99 photographer, I invite you to watch the following videos with John Greengo for an in-depth step-by-step tour of the Sony SLT-A99. With a hands-on introduction to your camera’s operations, detailed instructions on how all the menus work, and instruction on how to shoot great photos with this specific camera model. As already mentioned in my last blog post, the Sony a99 is now my principal full frame still/video camera for portraits, night shootings and timelapses.

Patrouille Suisse Lauberhorn 1st trailer, new season program and trailer 2013

Yannick — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:54:23 +0000

The program of the year (includes the training missions and demonstrations throughout the season, as well as applications such as photo flights and overflights) is online on the patrouille-suisse official website. In the same time, I would like to share of one the new trailer of the Patrouille Suisse. You can discover the first 1-minute video extract of the Lauberhorn display. A lot of surprises and amazing videos coming later this year.

The new trailer of the Patrouille Suisse for the new season 2013 :

Trailer of the Patrouille Suisse display at the Lauberhorn 2013

Here some BTS pictures from the different filmings in Norway, Finland, Denmark, UK and Switzerland last year and in January 2013 at the Lauberhorn.

And the new season begins. Projects, NAB and more…

Yannick — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:28:40 +0000

Here a new post on the blog after several quiet months. I was really busy and tired at the end of the year 2012. The hard work of editing to be able to deliver my last films in time was very important from November to January. After that, I needed to slow down and have a little break. My last filming was at the Lauberhorn ski race with the Patrouille Suisse in January.

It was really good to have time to watch movies, to cook, to have fun with my family after a 9-hours day of work (and not 20-hours like the previous months). When one is fully engaged in several projects at the same time one often forgets the simple things of life. As a freelancer one needs to work hard and when the projects one has dreamed of show up, you just can’t say “No thanks, no time for it!”. One or two months with 3-4 hours of sleep per night are ok, but more… there’s always the need to find a good work-life balance. This is why there were not a lot of news and videos on my website and on my Vimeo channel the past three months.

I’ve been looking for ways to improve the productivity of my workflow in order to spend less time in front of my computer, website or on social networks. I would like to have more time to film. But making videos is still a paradox : 1 hour outdoor in nature with a camera mean one has to work about 5 hours on ones computer for editing, grading, exporting, backups, etc…

Early this year I renewed some of my gear. So I decided to sold my Sony Alpha 350, my Sony Alpha 580 cameras, all my APS-C lenses, my lovely Sony HVR-Z1, the Sony CX7 and my old GoPro, etc… I added the new full-frame Sony A99 camera and three beautiful Zeiss lenses (16-35mm F2.8, 24-70mm F2.8 and 135mm F1.8) to my filming equipment. I also plan to buy the 70-200mm F2.8 and the new 70-400mm from Sony. I’ve been wanting to work with a full-frame camera for stills and video for a long time. I hesitated a lot between the Canon 5DIII, the Nikon D800 or the Sony A99. Every camera is amazing with advantages or inconvenients. My goal was not to have the perfect camera (it doesn’t exist…) but to find the camera that suited best for my work. I am mainly a filmmaker and the A99 is the camera that gives me the most benefits for my kind of work (focus peaking, articulated rear LCD, 60fps @1080p, clean HDMI, in-body image stabilization, sound with XLR, silent controller, etc …) even if the 5DIII looks a little bit better with noise at high ISO.

It’s April, the month of the NAB in Las Vegas. So what’s new this year? We are talking about 4K everywhere but for the second time the surprise comes from Blackmagic with the announcement of the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K for 3995$ and the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera for 995$. In my opinion, the most interesting announcement was just before the NAB when Vincent Laforet presented the new “game-changer” stabilization system from Freefly : the MōVI M10.

From Apple ? They’ve been constantly working to improve Final Cut Pro X with a lot of updates, but I switched to Adobe Premiere last winter. Still no informations about the Mac-Pro update we’ve been desperately expecting for years.

My current projects include finishing the editing of 3 new short-films for the Patrouille Suisse, mainly with the footage filmed in Norway, Finland and Denmark last year. I hope I’ll be able to publish an new trailer or extracts shortly.

And now… we are waiting for spring and sun to go outdoors and start filming on our new projects. I’m working on a few interesting new ideas for this year… First days of filming in May, stay in touch!

See you soon,

Yannick

A new Eco Balloon is born 2013

Yannick — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 06:50:33 +0000

Following an idea of Pierrick Duvoisin the company Total Gaz Suisse joined this innovative concept to build a new hot air balloon for passenger flights with Eco Balloon technology. I was commissioned to document and film the different parts of the conception, building and flying of this new Eco Balloon. We travelled to Spain and Italy to film the different part of the processes in the factories of Ultramagic and Bonanno Burners. We filmed the first flight sequences the 1st December 2012 in Château d’Oex with beautiful snowy landscapes and amazing lights. In January 2013 we filmed the last air-to-air scenes with a flight above Le Creux-du-Van (CH). Congratulations to my friend Pierrick for his innovations with the Eco balloons and his amazing work on this project. Many thanks to Totalgaz Suisse and a special thank to all the team and to all the wonderful persons who worked on this project with us.

These projects allowed me to enter the world of innovation, technology, team spirit and challenges. People who push their limits to search for and build new technologies for the future. The Eco Balloons are a new generation of hot air balloons with amazing performances (consumption up to 4x less than a traditional hot air balloon). More informations and pictures on the project page.

Showreel Yannick Barthe 2012

Yannick — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:35:34 +0000

I would like to showcase this 2012 season and I invite you to have a look on my new showreel with the highlights of my work as filmmaker, cameraman and editor. It has always been the passion for video/film, pictures and new interesting projects in aerial disciplines which inspires me, drives me and makes me travel in Switzerland or abroad filming aircrafts, helicopters and other aerial footage.

This year I worked in Norway, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. 2012 was rich in meetings, new collaborations and new important documentary projects for which I spent several days of total immersion with the subject and people. I started in January with the filming of two hot air balloons videos with paragliding and skydiving jumps for Honda and Balloon Concept. Followed by the stunning video of an Extra 330 SC doing aerobatics in the Swiss Alps. After that, I’ve edited a short documentary to cover the project “Eco Trans Canada 2014″ of my friend Pierrick Duvoisin. In May I started the filming of this year’s main project : I followed Captain Ralph “Deasy” Knittel during his airshows season and made his portrait as the Swiss F/A-18 Hornet pilot and his work as the solo display presenter on airshows in Switzerland and abroad. Beside this work, I’ve filmed some stunning aviation videos in Waddington (UK), Birrfeld (CH), Sanicole (BE), Axalp (CH) with the Rafale, the F16 and the Swip Team by night, the impressive Chinook, my friends of the Captens, the Breitling Jet Team, etc… and a short-clip for Edelweiss Air. One summer afternoon I’ve met my old friends of aeromodelling and we filmed a short video of a Yak 55. Remembering my first steps in video 10 years ago ! Now I’m working on a new hot air balloon documentary and new videos for the Patrouille Suisse.

Thank you to all my friends, the pilots, the mechanics, the airshows organizers for all the amazing dreams we have accomplished and the great fun we had along this year 2012. Thank you to all the pilots for their trust in me and who gave me the possibility to install my onboard cameras on their aircrafts or allowed me to use their onboard footage. A special thanks to Franziska for her important support and her help on filmings or at home when I work long hours on my Mac for editing. Many thanks for your collaboration : Claude Walther, Anne Knabe, Andreas Knabe, Pierrick Duvoisin, Arnaud Favre, Cédric Burri, Nicolas Tièche, Claude Tièche, Samir Chercher, Nicole et Paolo Bonanno, Josep Maria LLadó, Ultramagic, Emiliano Del Buono, Michael Brocard, Gregory Le Moigne (for our collaboration at the Sanicole Airshow 2012), Breitling Jet Team, Hptm Ralph “Deasy” Knittel, Swiss Air Force, Komm D LW, ltcol EMG Michael Leuthold, Hptm Bernhard Kocher, col EMG Benoît Studemann, Oberst Martin Erb, Oberst lt Marcus Levy, Maj Beat Hedinger, maj EMG Jeremy Faux, Hptm Matthieu Ghiringhelli, Niels Husmann, Josef Zemp, Urs Matti, Marco Liechti, Daniel Sulliger, Max Schilt, Beat Niklaus, Gabriel Hadorn, Johann Heurtebise, Christian Pillonel, David Maillard, Cédric Genoud, Grégory Carrard, Bodo Airshow 2012, Waddington Airshow 2012, Birrfeld Airshow 2012, Axalp Airshow 2012, Sanicole Airshow 2012, Swip Team, Joeri Mombers, Marianne Shaw, Adam Shaw, Edelweiss Air, Patrouille Suisse, David Geiser, Matthias Maitre and David Zigerli.

Video gear and equipment :

Sony PMW-320 XDCAM EX
Sony NEX-FS100
Sony HXR-MC1P
Sony NEX-5n
Sony 18-200 OSS E-mount
Sony 50mm OSS Prime F1.8 E-mount
Sony 16mm F2.8 E-mount
Tokina 11-16mm F2.8 A-mount
Sennheiser EW 112-p G2
Sony CML V55 LCD monitor
GoPro 1, GoPro 2
Contour HD+
Kessler Crane Philip Bloom Pocket Dolly™
Glidecam HD 4000

Swiss F/A-18 Hornet Solo Display short clips from Bodo and Waddington 2012

Yannick — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:31:58 +0000

I’ve edited 2 short clip (5 and 6 minutes) with some extracts of the footage we have filmed with the Swiss Hornet Solo Display team in Bodo (Norway) and Waddington (UK). Just pictures, sound and music. The full documentary is always available on my website and Vimeo.

More informations on this webpage : http://www.aeromedia-concept.ch/swiss-hornet-solo-display-the-film

Snow Poi : our participation for the One Day On Earth 2012 film project

Yannick — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:20:37 +0000

This is our participation for the “One Day on Earth 2012″ project. On December 12th, 12.12.12, across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and other inspired citizens will recorded the human experience over a 24-hour period and contributed their voice to the third annual global day of media creation called One Day on Earth.

This year they have suggested to film the answer to the questions: What do you have? And what do you need? In this video we would like to show some of the most important things for us like dreams, creativity, synergy, passion, teamwork, simplicity, hapiness and love. We always loved the spontaneous plans, always surprised with beautiful lights and atmospheres of nature.

So, we filmed a part of our life of the 12.12.12, we tried with Franziska Neuhaus to answer the questions with this firedance video and we added a personal challenge :

- Filming not far away as 12km from home.
- Filming time limited to 12min.
- 1 camera (Sony FS100) and only 1 lense (50mm 1.8).
- 1 fire stuff (poi).
- The last parameter was not planned … but it was about -12 ° C at the time of filming.

Fire dance performance by Franziska Neuhaus, firedancing.ch
Filmed and edited by Yannick Barthe, yannickbarthe.ch

This little video is also my first editing with my new software Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 after more than 5 years of work on Final Cut Pro. I am pleasantly surprised how it was easy to switch from FCP to CS6. Already fully adopted . Filmed with my Sony FS100, the Sony 50mm OSS 1.8 E-mount prime lens and my Litepanels LP-MicroPro.

Have a look on the trailers and other extracts of One Day on Earth 2010, 2011 and 2012 :

More informations on www.onedayonearth.org

Patrouille Suisse and A320 Edelweiss Air at Pistenfest Birrfeld 2012

Yannick — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 22:31:59 +0000

The short clip I’ve made for Edelweiss Air and the Patrouille Suisse with the footage filmed at the Birrfeld Airshow 2012 is now online. Stunning pictures with the F5-Tigers and an Airbus A320 over Swiss landscapes.

And below, a selection of pictures from Franziska Neuhaus (Birrfeld 2012)