October 29, 2020

A Perfect Day – Interview with Tomas Lemoine & JC Pieri

Sportsmen from all over the world experienced a rather extraordinary year in 2020. All of a sudden they found themselves with an opportunity to complete creative projects sometime put on the back-burner due to a hectic contest schedule. Tomas Lemoine and JC Pieri produced a three minute video combining the emotional touch of JC together with Tomas’ flawless style. We sat down with them to talk about the process behind “A Perfect Day”.

Hey Tomas, JC,

Before diving into your project, how did you get to know each other? Do you share a biking background?

JC: Yes exactly! I’ve known Tomas since I started riding BMX. It means for at least 15 years. He was a really young kid when we met for the first time at the bowl of Marseille. He’d just started racing with his dad back in the days as well.

Tomas: We’ve met a long time ago when I started riding at home, then we became friends and rode and hung out together a lot. After a while he started to work a lot on his film projects and developed a level of creativity that is now to be seen in all of his projects. All of them have that unique JC Pieri vibe! It is also dope that he can adapt to pretty much any kind of filming situation!

How did it all come together? Why did you decide to shoot near your hometown, Marseille?

Tomas: We started shooting after the lockdown was already active, so we weren´t allowed to travel far. But after all we thought there are plenty of good spots to ride around home that would make for a cool video, so why not! The South of France keeps amazing me!

JC: I knew exactly what I wanted before the shoot. We made a list of beautiful and easy to find spots. All it took was a few minutes to collect the spot list since we knew all of them from riding back in the days. Especially the spots in our local city, Marseille.

What motivated you throughout the shoot?

Tomas: It just felt so good to spend time on all my bikes as I usually stick to my dirt jump bike during the contest season. It was a good way to keep your mind off things by being able to ride whatever you like throughout the year!

JC: For me, personal projects are always the best, because you have full control on your creativity and this one was a big one for me. Last year I´ve developed a master class about photography and videography. I traveled around the world to share all my knowledge in every shooting situation possible. This video was made for a new master class to talk only about professional videography.
The goal was to shoot this video and explain how I created this video from A to Z. The master class comes with a behind the scenes clip and 35 videos, explaining how to prepare this kind of project, how to film, which equipment to use and also how to edit. It’s more than 6 hours of content in total but right now it´s only available in French unfortunately.

The video thrives of emotional and moody scenes. A style which seems to be a bit different from the typical Lemoine show we all know and love.

Tomas: The video is different from my own style: it has more of a story and shows me riding more than only one bike. JC’s style of filming is insane to me as well, so I’m always happy to work with him and I can’t wait for the next project!

JC: Exactly that is my personal touch. I always want to spark emotions in my projects and just create something different. I didn’t want to do a regular mountain bike edit. Rather a lifestyle video with mountain bikes in it. It wasn´t the goal to show Tomas doing his best tricks but to tell a story about a perfect day in his life, having fun on his bike, with his girlfriend and his dog.

How many days did the filming take for the final result and which equipment was used for the clip?

JC: It took us 2 days to film everything. I had prepared a script, so I knew exactly what we needed. With riding of course, you always have different tricks and lines by the end of the day. But in my script it was more about the timing and the feature than a certain trick.
I mainly used a Red Gemini 5K for this project. A Canon 1Dx Mark II and a Ronin M for the moving shots on the trail. I also have a few drone clips filmed with a DJI Mavic 2 pro.

Thank you for your time and the insights on “a perfect day” and we hope to see more projects by the two of you in the near future!