Interview with Jean-Baptiste Chandelier, paragliding star
36 Million views on social networks, that's what the video "Weightless", released in October 2017 on the Web, has generated. At the origin of this buzz, Jean-Baptiste Chandelier and his shadow team. A paragliding star, "JB" specialises in close flying, low to the ground and over natural or man-made obstacles. This passionate, experienced and humble rider confided in an interview with the Manawa Blog. Google Earth, Candide Thovex, Danny MacAskill or the crazy charm of the Azores, "JB" answered all our questions with a disarming naturalness, during thirty minutes. An interview that makes you want to take up paragliding!
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- JB, can you tell us a bit about yourself, about your background?
I'm 32 years old, I'm from Briançon, I did a BEP (vocational training certificate) in electronics while passing my ski instructor's certificate. At the same time, I started paragliding when I was 18. Skiing didn't work for me, unlike paragliding, so I finished my paragliding certificate but I didn't finish my ski certificate. I started aerobatics and became a paragliding instructor in 2007, I also started to be a test pilot for a brand. I gradually mastered some big manoeuvres, and in 2009 I started my collaboration with Dudek as a test pilot and designer. That's when I made my first videos, which didn't do too badly on the web (smile).
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- You discovered paragliding in 2004 and it was love at first sight. What made you fall in love with this sport?
Basically, I wanted to fly, it was a childhood dream, I absolutely had to do it... Paragliding is still the most accessible sport in this respect. When I started paragliding, I didn't really know what I was getting into, but it was perfect for me, as I don't like to have too many constraints. You can just take a backpack, you can fly anywhere without a radio, without a control tower, without many regulations... I quickly became addicted to it, there is a great freedom and I think it's really great, you don't find it as much in other air sports.
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- Almost 15 years later, do you still get the same adrenaline when you fly?
Much less so! I'm not an adrenaline junkie like many sportsmen, I like to control things so that I'm not afraid anymore. Often, adrenaline is linked to stress, but I like to reduce stress, to be more in control so that I can have fun. I try to calculate as many things as possible. Today, I put myself less and less in the red and rely more and more on my experience. As a result, I don't have any adrenalin but I have a lot of pleasure, and even more pleasure than before!
- You are a specialist in proximity flying, what are the characteristics of this discipline?
The name says it all... Basically I come from aerobatics, I had started acrobatics where the challenge is to perform a succession of manoeuvres in the middle of nowhere. I was the one who promoted proximity flying because people didn't talk about it much at the time. The aim is to go and play with the natural terrain, i.e. to fly close to the ground, which gives great sensations... There are not too many proximity flying competitions, at the Federation they never talk about it. My personal definition of proximity flying would be the following: flying as close to the ground as possible, and having fun with the elements that you can find on your way, as you can see in my videos...
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- Why did you choose to go into local flying?
I actually had a big breakthrough during a flight, I had forgotten my aerobatic wing and had to borrow one from a friend. I then had fun flying close to the ground, down the mountain. Before I started paragliding I used to dream of flying, I used to imagine myself flying, often I would take off from the playground and walk around near things. It's a shame, I was influenced by the environment, formatted. But I had the technical background to fly the way I dreamed of when I was a kid. After that, I decided to train closer and closer to the ground, in order to have fun and get back to what I really wanted to do: fly close to the elements, with precision. That's where you clearly get the biggest feeling of flying...
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- What do you like most about it?
When you're 10,000 metres high, the ground doesn't go by much, you don't have the feeling of flying at all, you're just in the middle of nowhere... Conversely, the closer you get to the ground, the more you feel yourself going up and down, you feel the movements with the visual reference that goes with it. If you feel yourself going up, you see the ground moving away, or the ground moving towards you when you go down. It's very clear. The magic happens when you are in the human reference frame: trees, roads, houses, cars... You feel like you are flying, you feel light and it is very funny!
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- What about the notion of risk, of flying very close to the ground? How do you control this risk?
What we always say in paragliding is that what hurts is the ground. The higher you are, the safer you are, contrary to what you might think, because you can't hit much. When you fly close to the ground, you actually get closer to the area where you could hit. Often you go in gradually and you have the advantage of moving much slower than wingsuiters who are doing proximity flying. If you have a problem, you won't hit the ground very hard. To give you an idea, in straight flight, I fly between 25 and 50 km/h. When I do turns, I can reach accelerations of between 70 and 90 km/h. This is close to the speed of a skier... This requires a lot of anticipation, the idea is not to hit the ground! So we take margins, we evolve in conditions that allow us to know our trajectories and to be precise on our trajectories, and then we use our experience. Personally, I've never hit too much. But yes, when you're close to the ground, you can look for shit a bit more than when you're very high...
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- What are the qualities needed to perform in this discipline?
Apart from having a view that holds at least the road, to avoid obstacles, I think it is only experience! It is experience that will allow us to anticipate the trajectory of our machine. Paragliding is really a sport for lazy people, you sit in a flying chair and you don't need to strain your muscles. From a physical point of view, you don't need any pre-requisites except to see where you're going. After that, it's all about anticipation and you have to fly a lot to get close to the ground like that...
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- Your video "Weightless", released in October, took 3 years of work and the shooting took place on several spots around the world, between sand and snow. What memories do you have of this shoot?
It went through many phases! There was a part at home, in Serre-Chevalier, where I could have fun doing slalom between the slopes. The resort trusted us, gave us the authorisations and we were really able to have fun in complete safety, without stress. We also shot in the Azores, a wonderful, magical place, we knew it would really look good on video. But what is complicated there is the weather. We went there once and the conditions were not good enough, so we had to go back. The second time, it was raining hard, so we had to wait for a little bit of light to be able to go and do the images. We were waiting, the stress was mounting, but each time we were able to shoot, we were treated to magnificent sunsets over the craters, it was sublime. I'm as passionate about paragliding as I am about video, so in South Africa and the Azores we were more focused on cinematic research, or higher challenges than in Serre Chevalier or Brazil. When you go looking for images that are hard to take, that's when you get a pretty exceptional result. We set out to find the most beautiful images possible...
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- How did you find the different spots?
I'm a big fan of Google Earth (laughs)! Internet, Google Earth and Youtube are my biggest friends... For Brazil, I had seen a video of a guy who was flying there and doing exceptional things. I spotted the spot on Youtube, then once the spot was located, I went on Google Earth, where you can see very precisely the relief, the terrain, thanks to the photos and the 3D views. For South Africa and Brazil, I really worked with Google Earth. I also used the wind statistics from the power stations and airports to find the best time to go to the spot. I already knew the Azores, it was my third (and fourth) time there. I knew that there, it's Brittany to the power of two (laughs)! I just had to take my time, be patient, and it would work out in the end...
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- What is your favourite spot for paragliding?
There are a couple of my favourite spots in the "Weightless" video. The Azores are one of the places where I feel the best in the air, you wonder what you're doing there because the landscapes are absolutely crazy. There are craters and volcanoes everywhere, with lakes that are all different colours... It's really magical. For the pleasure of flying, I have a lot of fun flying down the mountain at home, in Serre-Chevalier. In Brazil too, it was really exceptional. You are in the wind, you have the sensation of flying weightless... You feel like a helicopter!
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- Each of your videos is an event. To what do you attribute the success of your edits?
My videos share this feeling of flying with the general public. I'm more talking to the kid I was, who dreamed of flying, than talking to other paragliders. It's a breath of fresh air that I wanted to share with this "Weightless" video: you can fly, this sport is really magical... We hide the constraints, it's cinema, we don't show the moments when we struggle! We want to share a little moment of escape, of dream, because today you can fly with a piece of rag and it's completely crazy... It's deeper than a simple "sports video", I try to share my childhood dream. You can do incredible things, you just have to give yourself the means.
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- How many people were in your team for the shooting of "Weightless"?
There were four of us! You have to know that they are all paragliders, all passionate. They all have the double hat of paraglider-videographer or photographer, we were all looking for the most beautiful angles. It's not a trivial job, the guys were all ultra-motivated, they fully invest themselves at my side and help me a lot in the reflection around the project. It's a big team effort, even if I'm the one in the lead.
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- Do you manage to make a living from this activity?
I've been lucky enough for the last 5-6 years to make a living from it, thanks to my sponsors who allow me to finance projects. I'm very lucky, it's great! I do a marginal sport but I manage to reach the general public, that's what allows me to live from my passion. In paragliding, there must be three or four of us who have this chance, it's not easy...
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- You said in an interview with PositivR that you were inspired by a guy like Danny MacAskill. We at the editors like him a lot too, can you elaborate on what Danny and his videos mean to you?
I made my first buzz with a video called "Urban Side" (released 6 years ago), which was 800% inspired by Danny's edits... It was almost "pumped"! I liked his style, so I thought I'd take his style and put it into paragliding. I was watching his videos over and over again, they convey something very positive and the character seems very endearing and very human. He didn't put himself forward and did incredible things, with such ease that it made people around him dream. So I wanted to transpose that to my sport, to adapt Danny's recipe to my own, to make people want to practice paragliding. I think that's why the video worked... He's someone who inspires me a lot, who is always creative and always manages to surprise us. As soon as a Danny McAskill video comes out, I stop everything and watch it!
-Are there any other riders who inspire you?
Yes, Candide Thovex! Candide is also a director, he is very, very good at editing and post-production. He's impressive, he won everything in competition and then he starts doing video and wins everything... I like creative people actually, the performance is a tool but it's not the goal in itself. Another rider who inspires me a lot is Jason Paul, who does parkour and is a Red Bull sponsor. I also watch all his videos. Danny, Candide, Jason, these are the three riders who inspire me a lot...
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- What inspires you most about Candide?
There are several aspects that interest me about him. He's a big performer so I salute the performance, I'm not an extraordinary skier so I can only take my hat off to him... But it's mainly his creativity that I like. We've been seeing ski videos for years and years and he's managed to make them interesting and attractive to the general public. He has great ideas, like jumping over a helicopter, or slaloming between ski lifts, or skiing on the grass... He completely diverts his sport and that makes it very interesting. I also salute the director's performance because his videos are very well thought out, there is no shot that is there by chance. As a videographer, it inspires me a lot. There's always a lot of thought behind each shot, you don't necessarily realise it if you're not from that milieu, but what he does is impressive. And then he is amazing in the art of communication. He is a great communicator but he never communicates! He communicates three times a year... That's where it's strong, we're taught that we have to share a lot of things many times on social networks, three times a day on Facebook and Instagram... He never puts anything, and as soon as he posts something, bam it explodes! I like this side, he communicates in a different way, he dares to try things and overall, he doesn't make too many mistakes. Strong...
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- The image aspect is very important in extreme sports, to reach the general public...
Yes, I find that these sports are sometimes more about image than competition. As far as freestyle is concerned, it's hard to say if so-and-so did it better or not, sometimes it's just elegance that wins. Candide is beautiful to watch ski, and that's probably what allowed him to get the upper hand at times. Like Danny MacAskill, he's not a world champion at anything, but you enjoy watching him. For me, the beauty of the gesture, of the movement, takes precedence over the fact of putting things in boxes, as one can do in competition. I'm not a competitor at all, I've never done one, and I like the fact that sport and creativity are mixed. It almost makes the sport more artistic than the silly, nasty competition. I actually hate competition! Paragliding gives you a big feeling of freedom, and to go and put yourself in a competition frame where you just become a number, take off when you are told to take off and land when you are told to land... You add a lot of constraints and I don't really understand the point. But then, we are not all wired the same!
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- What message, what advice would you like to give to our readers who would like to start paragliding?
Well, you have to go! It flies just about everywhere in France, and even in the world, and paragliding is the most accessible aerial sport, even if there is a cost at the start. If you feel like it, it's really worth a try!
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- Your next goals?
We've gone for a slightly different concept for the next video. I'm going away for two years with my girlfriend, we're going to do a lot of travelling, we're going to visit a lot of incredible places in the world. My girlfriend will be the one filming, we will have less money but we will be able to make a richer video. We're changing the concept a little bit, which will be close to the one of Candide's last video, who stole my idea, that bastard (laughs)! We started the journey quite a while before he released it, and when I saw the video I thought: "oh the bastard" (laughs). We went to Easter Island, I didn't get to fly but you can afford to take a "goal", to take risks and go and try to fly in mythical places.
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- When you fly on mythical spots like Candide skiing on the Chinese Wall, there is indeed a strong identification of the general public!
It's clear, it makes you dream! We're looking for impressive places in the world, we'll visit them for two years and we'll make a compilation of it all for a future video.
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- The final word?
I thank my team, guys who are in the shadow but thanks to whom I can do what I do today!
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