Background information
Half marathon project: gadgets, Garmin and coach Greg
by Oliver Fischer
Behind the scenes of the Galaxus Four Hills Tournament
15.2.2021
From coffee klatch to the Galaxus Four Hills Tournament: how two guys in the marketing department at Galaxus staged an entire sporting event.
A starry-eyed start
We gather any materials we might use from our immediate surroundings: an office table, a pallet and loads of cardboard boxes. And we grab a trolley from our Zurich shop to use as a pillar for the cartons. Its metal grate is perfect for attaching all sorts of things.
So, we step it up a notch and put in a few night shifts. When we’re not busy building in the basement, more ideas are buzzing through our heads. Despite working overtime, our to-do list keeps growing. For every task we cross out, two or three new ones are added. We get little sleep and, when we do, we find ourselves dreaming of landing angles and ramp design.
One and a half weeks have already passed and we’ve just barely managed to complete the skeleton construction. Tom and I are at a crossroads. If we build everything the way we want, we won't get the project done in time. But to get it done on time, we would have to throw out many details and simplify everything to the extreme. We need help.
Marketing team to the rescue!
We hope to convince just one or two people to help us with video editing and graphics. To our surprise, we get far more support than that. More than ten people step in, helping out with absolutely everything. From creating graphics and logos to finding sponsors to broadcasting on social media channels.
We’re both overwhelmed by this support and a little panicked – the project has just grown to new dimensions. In the beginning, Tom and I find it difficult to delegate tasks. But we quickly realise it's worth it. We can now focus exclusively on detail work on the ramp and filming.
Shooting and sound
To prepare for the video shoot, Tom and I watch live ski jumping broadcasts. We quickly realise we’ll need to set up several cameras to capture all the shots. Six, to be exact. Four of them will give us static shots: one at the top of the ramp, one in the middle and two on the landing slope. The fifth camera will be used to film handheld footage of the entire jump, while the sixth camera will be used to create detail shots of the cars before and after the jump.
Shooting the four jumps goes pretty smoothly. Since each car only does one jump per event, we quickly have the raw video footage ready. Editing it, however, will be a Herculean task. Six camera perspectives, eight vehicles and four jumps each – that’s several hours of footage and quite a few gigabytes of data. Fortunately, we can count on Manuel Wenk to cut the video. Our saviour!
The result is a sporting event that’s second to none. Four jumps full of excitement, action and surprises. It may sound pretentious, but we’ve done it: we’ve made ski jumping sexy again. And now, just in case you've read through this entire article but haven't yet watched the jumps, you’ll find them all in the article linked below:
The most wonderful month of the year
Tom, thank you for the fun times. All our helpers, thank you for your active support. And Galaxus, thank you for giving me the best job in the world!
