The “World of SWISS” interactive brand experience, which complements the booking elements of the swiss.com website to bring the SWISS brand to life, has long been home to a series of films offering intriguing insights into the SWISS travel world. In mid-2015, though, came a new request for a film about the people behind the airline. Its aim: to illustrate the sheer diversity of the employees within the company’s ranks and the vast range of tasks that they passionately perform day in, day out on SWISS`s behalf.
The production of SWISS’s latest brand film was entrusted to the Zurich-based LAUSCHSICHT agency for film and motion design. And the team set out on their project with an extensive reconnaissance phase. “The first thing we wanted to do was gain an overview of the 900-odd different professions at SWISS,” explains director Kevin Blanc. “After that we put our heads together with SWISS’s Marketing and Human Resources to select 35 units that we felt had good filmic potential. And we spent another intensive two weeks visiting each and every one.”
“Alongside thousands of photos, this phase also spawned the film’s treatment,” Kevin continues. “The main point here was to show what’s behind the ‘Grüezi’ that SWISS passengers are welcomed with when they step aboard. We also wanted to use a new and modern way of communicating this, and present all the people who come together to create the SWISS service product in their real working environment.” The actual production, which the LAUSCHSICHT crew filmed on the new Canon 4K camera (the first time this specific camera has been used in Switzerland), also proved quite a challenge, and took about a month. After that it was over to Alain Renold for post-production. “Having spent an average of half a day at each of the 35 units, we had masses of footage,” Alain recalls. “And despite all the detailed planning, the editing was a pretty complex puzzle. In a way, each scene is a story in itself. We really wanted to capture the good mood within each team, too. But at the same time, the film had to be both as compact as possible and easy to follow and understand.” All in all, post-production took another two months.
The soundtrack was a further key element in the process. Here composer Michael Ricar teamed up with Swiss musician Heidi Happy to provide a new song conveying the spirit of all the people behind the SWISS name. And, right at the end, Alain put a sound design over the whole film to intensify and underline certain key moments. “The people behind SWISS” was premiered at the SWISS Staff Party in January, when the new Boeing 777-300ER was also presented. And some 3,800 SWISS employees were there when the film was shown on a 15-metre-wide LED wall and Heidi Happy accompanied the screening with a live performance of her song. “The response was totally positive,” says Kevin, “and in many cases very emotional, too. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to round off the whole project!
Watch the movie here.
Facts & Figures
- “The people behind SWISS” took some 160 man days to make – not including the contributions from the SWISS side.
- Some 100 photo portraits were also produced.
- The whole project lasted 6 months from start to finish. The actual shooting took 1 month and generated 20 hours of footage, or 2,200 shots.
- “The people behind SWISS” is 335 seconds long and consists of 330 separate shots.
- The project generated 6 terabytes of data and 20,000 images.
Text: Tamás Kiss Photos: LAUSCHSICHT/Agi Simoes
The post Capturing SWISS on film appeared first on SWISS Blog.