Capturing Speed and Style | Seya Eggler | S01E01

Guest
Seya Eggler
Co-Founder of AlpineRacer &
Head of Content Creation for F1's Sauber Team

Summary

In the premiere episode of Plot Twist, Eliana Pires Janssen sits down with the incredibly talented Seya Egger. At just 22, Seya has transformed his passion for photography and videography into a thriving career, working with some of the biggest names in motorsports, including the Formula One Sauber team.

Join Eliana and Seya as they dive into his journey from a young photographer to a top-tier content creator. They chat about the fast-paced world of Formula One content creation, the camera gear Seya swears by, and his love for blending modern digital techniques with classic film photography.

Key Takeaways

• Early Passion: Seya started young with videography and photography, with a later focus on cars.
• F1 Workflow: Creating content for Formula One demands quick editing and efficient workflows.
• Favorite Gear: Seya's go-to camera is the Sony a7S Mark III.
• Adaptability: He emphasizes the importance of adapting to on-location circumstances.
• Evolving Social Media: Seya sees a positive future for social media content creation.
• AI in Workflow: While he uses AI, Seya is still exploring its full potential.
• Favorite Content: He loves creating funny, lighthearted videos.
• Travel: Seya travels to every Formula One race and works with diverse clients.
• Client Connections: He initially found clients through social media, especially Instagram.
• Love for Film: Seya enjoys shooting on film and values its unique qualities.
• Typical F1 Week: His week includes media days, practice, qualifying, and race days.
• Stunning Locations: He aims to shoot cars in beautiful locations like the Swiss Alps.
• Client Diversity: Seya's clients range from automotive companies to luxury hotels.
• Artful Balance: He strives to balance old and new techniques in content creation.

Sound Bites

• "It's the idea behind it that makes it so special, so funny."
• "We love when the client gives us freedom. We bring the cars to where they belong."
• "I learned to develop film during my apprenticeship in Switzerland."

Chapters

• 00:00 - Introduction to Plot Twist Podcast and Guest Introduction
• 02:08 - Creating Content for Formula One
• 04:21 - Seya's Go-To Workhorse Camera
• 06:31 - Adapting to Different Shooting Locations
• 09:50 - Exploring the Use of AI in Content Creation
• 12:13 - Favorite and Most Successful Content
• 14:48 - Working with Different Clients in the Automotive Industry
• 19:24 - Finding Clients and Building Relationships
• 21:29 - Starting Out with Social Media and Instagram
• 23:45 - Appreciating the Art of Old and New Techniques
• 28:28 - Conclusion and Farewell

Transcript

Eliana Pires Janssen (00:01.25)
All right, hey everybody. Welcome to the actually first episode of Plot Twist, my new podcast. I'm Eliana Piri Jansen and I'm super stoked to kick off this podcast journey with you. Reminder for those who may have missed it, Plot Twist is about diving into fascinating stories of incredible people who just take awesome, you know, unexpected turns in their careers and lives. We have an awesome guest to start us off.

Go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us your favorite color. First question.

Seya (00:36.59)
What an amazing question. Thank you so much. Nice to be here. My name is Sey Echler and I'm from Switzerland. I have my own company here with two friends of mine that's focusing on video and photo projects, mostly in the automotive and motorsport section. Sometimes also like what comes with it, like watches and cool, yeah, just cool stuff. And my favorite color is, yeah, it's...

I think it's green like a British racing green like I think something like this.

Eliana Pires Janssen (01:06.53)
Fair, ooh, okay, fair enough, that's a good color. I mean, I feel like also your daily workload is a lot ingrained too, but we'll get to that later. So what came first, cars or photography?

Seya (01:22.534)
Actually photography and videography, yeah. Actually at first just videography when I was 12 years old and then afterwards like cars came with it but just when I turned like around 18 of course when I was younger I watched Formula One with my dad for example but

Eliana Pires Janssen (01:25.25)
Yes.

Seya (01:40.91)
It was like not like the main thing but then like when I turned 18 got my first card and it's it was a got way more real

Eliana Pires Janssen (01:50.594)
Fair enough. And for everybody hearing, listening, watching, he is 22 years old. And you know, you're just and you got your first really badass contract this year, right? Working for an F1 team.

and the amount of content, at least for me in marketing and in just that branding world, formula one sets a very high bar of amount of content created for ever. You know, you have your season and then you have your off season, but what is that? what does that load on you and how do you even handle your data? Like what's your workflow when you shoot something?

Seya (02:22.382)
Yeah, of course, yeah.

Eliana Pires Janssen (02:36.706)
and it has to go up because it's a real time kind of situation, what's your editing process like? What apps are you using? How are you doing that process at such a high A, quality content, like your content is chef kiss, it's great. But that amount of workload, what's your go -to practice?

Seya (02:54.51)
Thank you so much. Thanks so much.

Seya (03:01.87)
The thing is you have to be really fast as you already mentioned

Formula one is really high -paced not only on track It's only also off track for not only for my side for everyone that works in like this area and You have to be really fast. You have to sometimes create content and it has to go immediately like online afterwards So you have to be fast and because after some Minutes to hours. It's already irrelevant because everyone saw it already. So you have to be yeah on it and like the editing process I

I optimized everything to the max so I can bring the camera, plug the SD card right in, upload everything. Sometimes I do the editing by myself, but often I send it to an agency called SMG in London and they do the editing because they also do the upload for social media.

Eliana Pires Janssen (03:46.562)
Shoot it? Yes!

Seya (04:01.326)
So it's like a good workflow we have. So we work quite close together. So afterwards, it's not always that easy to handle all this stuff on track because I'm most of the time alone there. And other teams have several content creators.

Eliana Pires Janssen (04:21.858)
Gosh, now what camera are you shooting on? What's your go -to workhorse camera that you're using?

Seya (04:29.806)
I actually have it right next to me. It's like we use Sony cameras. Most of the time I have when I'm like at every shoot, not only when I'm at Formula One races, we have a photo camera with us because sometimes we still do stills for different kinds of opportunities. And of course, always a video focus camera, the Sony a7S Mark III.

Eliana Pires Janssen (04:37.218)
fair.

Eliana Pires Janssen (04:55.714)
Mm -hmm.

Seya (04:59.246)
And so this combination makes like, they add really good stuff. Like we can make really good stuff out of it. Also combine it with for example, the DJI Osmo, that's a pocket three, it's a really small camera. And for different kind of stuff, we can use different kind of cameras. So we get the best out of it.

Eliana Pires Janssen (05:21.57)
Very cool. So when you...

go to just like your remote shoots, because if, and I'll put a link to Alpine Racer below, you go to these like crazy exotic locations, like drifting and doing cool stuff in snow, and you know, you're out there. And similarly in the film industry, when we're doing like overnight locations, like I was on a movie in Montana, and it was like, it was winter, and we were in a valley, and it's freezing, and you just don't want to,

Do your hands are freezing now granted, you know, I'm from California. So you're a little bit more used to it than I am but What's it like doing? You know such high Importance maneuver that you kind of you can't you know reset go back to one and you know that many million times because a you have These luxury cars that you don't want to be doing but also be it's cold as hell So what's your what's your go -to like?

Seya (06:03.054)
I see.

Eliana Pires Janssen (06:25.346)
set up for being in those types of situations like outdoor, all of that.

Seya (06:31.95)
You mean set up eyes of camera or like...

Eliana Pires Janssen (06:34.37)
Well, just your base camp, you know? Are you just like pitching a tent, you know, getting something like a little crafty table going? I don't know if it's the same, you know, words or whatever, but, you know, we have our snack table and then we just like throw our gear in some pelicans and go out and run and gun it, or are you a little more produced because of elements? How do you handle that?

Seya (06:59.694)
We focus on getting the shot and how to get the shot is like focus on all the circumstances around you and everything. So we work pretty lean and agile. We just use as much people as we need at the shoot and sometimes we just don't even prepare something, build up something, I mean. We just go there and...

do the best out of it. And afterwards, the only thing matters is what you get through your camera. It doesn't matter how it looked behind it. So we just focus on getting that shot, that storyline that we need. So that's a good thing for us because we worked all the time as a small group to, how should I say it?

do as much out of the situation with as less people.

Eliana Pires Janssen (08:04.93)
Yeah, capitalizing the people around you and what they can do and bring to the table without having to hire out a huge team. Fair, fair. So you're 22 years old. You're kind of like in this generation now where social media is obviously like a huge proponent of content creation. And where do you see that going? Do you see eventually...

Seya (08:13.038)
Yeah, true, yeah.

Eliana Pires Janssen (08:34.242)
Things just getting so over saturated that you just can't cut through the noise. Like what, where do you see the social media content creation world kind of headed in let's say three and then five years from now.

Seya (08:50.798)
Of course, at the moment it's pretty interesting because there's like a trend happening every other time. Wait a second, I have to...

okay. yeah, it's pretty interesting time at the moment because it's very fast paced. like this whole social media world, world, yeah, changes every other, like second, the algorithms change. like what works good the other day works not good on the other day. So, you have to be on it, of course, but I think it's, it's going into a quite good direction because, what we see from our side.

we can adapt pretty good to these different circumstances of what, for example, Instagram is doing. And I think we get the most out of it at the moment.

Eliana Pires Janssen (09:50.274)
Do you use a lot of AI in your process? Like, do you, have you started, you know, using those tips and tricks to make your workload lighter?

Seya (10:01.55)
We just talked about this this morning as well, but from time to time we use AI of course, because it makes the work easier. But we didn't fully adapt everything that AI brought already, but I think it's a process and we have to work with it.

like for sure, because it's such a good opportunity. So for certain stuff, we already did adapt the AI opportunities.

Eliana Pires Janssen (10:33.826)
Yeah, it's wild. I was working at a company that is knee deep in AI technology, so I went to a lot of conferences and it's wild because I'm also at odds because in the film industry, it's threatening to take away a lot of jobs in the film industry, just in making sure there are assurances on how to properly use it, cite stuff and all of that, but it's just, there's so many helpful ways for it to just optimize

to optimize time management, to be honest. When it's used as a tool, it's a great functionality, but it's just, we're using it responsibly and not saying, yeah, I shot there. It's almost like in the movie world, CGI, it's gotten so...

generic, you know, and it's just making sure things stay original. And I think that's why I love your content so much because it's, it's first of all, what I like to say is like, it's dipped in art. It's like artful, you know, you can tell it's not just on like, I'm sure you use zoom lenses, but like, it's like, you know, the compression of spaces and it's just artful and it's so much easier to stand out when you have content like that.

What, so in the past contract that you've had within Formula One, what has been your favorite post that you've created, like your favorite piece of content that you've created, and then which one was the most successful, and did you actually like the one that was successful?

Seya (12:11.886)
The thing is, most of the...

Eliana Pires Janssen (12:13.314)
And if you get in trouble, you don't have to say which one you didn't like if it gets you in trouble.

Seya (12:19.694)
I mean, I can, it's probably one of those funny ones. It's all the time. It's like the ones that don't need that much like knowledge of video wise. It's just like the idea behind it. That makes it like so special, so funny. And of course, when you have like certain people in front of the camera, that makes life way easier because they're so funny overall. And there's like this one.

we did, we just shot last week and just is, trends that first they show an old, an older video, like mostly slow, like bad resolution. And there's this one girl like kickboxing a bottle out of the frame and the bottle, lens, in, in the driver's hand and he pushed it away like three times. And it's like.

Eliana Pires Janssen (13:02.626)
Yeah.

Seya (13:14.766)
Pretty it's pretty funny and it's not nothing special video wise. It's just like Quite cool. And this is also one of the most viewed videos I don't know if it's the actual most viewed video on the channel, but it's definitely one of the best

Eliana Pires Janssen (13:15.906)
Perfect.

Yeah.

Eliana Pires Janssen (13:29.485)
I approve that I could support that cause. But when you're on, I guess not on set, like how many hour days are you pulling? Because it's a bit of a different schedule where it's like weekend based, but are you shooting content prior to that week? So you already have some preloaded ready to go, and then you do the live time stuff the weekend, or how many days do you get in what?

plate and gosh, the travel is just the logistics is insane to me. It's quite phenomenal. Just logistic, logistically speaking, the shipping alone of stuff is wild, but, but you could go down that road forever. But for you, what is, you know, what is your typical hour day look?

Seya (14:01.934)
Mm -hmm.

Seya (14:09.326)
That's crazy.

Seya (14:21.454)
A normal week starts around that Monday or Tuesday for traveling, sometimes also on Wednesday for European races because it's quite close for us. But when we have to go overseas, it starts earlier of course, so that we're there one day before, also if something happens travel -wise. But normally we're there on Wednesday.

On Thursday is the first day on track and we have our, it's media day, it's called media day because on this day they have all their interviews with different kinds of people and they have like, yeah, all like interviews for different kinds of media, but also the social media slots with me, for example. Then I have like, for example, a certain amount of time with the drivers.

and film these kinds of funny videos. So this is pre -produced and afterwards, there are like the stuff that is ongoing through the whole weekend. So I just adapt to what is happening, of course. On Friday, we have the practice day normally. On Saturday is the qualifying day. On Sunday, the race day. And I just go wherever I have to go.

like to film like the right stuff. And sometimes the days are quite long. It depends on how the schedule is for the drivers or like for the whole team itself. So it can be quite a long day, but sometimes, yeah, like most of the time it's a long day.

Eliana Pires Janssen (16:01.026)
So do you travel to the states too? Like once you're on your, you go to every single, like you have to go to every single one. Well, yeah, yeah, I guess.

Seya (16:09.806)
Yeah, I mean, like in our contract, we have, we go to every single race, all 24 races. And on five races, I get some help from my friend from the company, Tim, for like the bigger races. For example, Las Vegas is one of the bigger races and there will be two people to also adapt everything or handle everything that is happening on track.

Eliana Pires Janssen (16:29.538)
Mm -hmm.

Eliana Pires Janssen (16:38.146)
Did you go to Vegas last year?

Seya (16:42.83)
Sadly not now.

Eliana Pires Janssen (16:44.45)
I'm just so curious to see how much light that sphere, like the sphere throws off and like how much that's gonna mess with your camera setting. I love how like I was watching that and I'm like, man, you have to like, they're moving at such a high rate of speed, plus you have this sphere that's just massive and bright and really strange. But I mean, obviously very cool, but I was just thinking about like, you know, in the film industry and I don't know if I'm sure

Seya (16:50.894)
you

Eliana Pires Janssen (17:14.356)
sure you've come across this in, I don't know, maybe like a car launch or something, but you know those walls that are all pixels because it's the, whatever, the motion capture. Like it, shooting on that, and so I was a still photographer for years and years in the feature film industry and shooting practical was like one of my favorite things to do and then you go on and you step onto these screens and they're just massive and a lot, but like.

Seya (17:22.958)
Of course, yeah.

Eliana Pires Janssen (17:40.834)
if you're not synced into the screen, your images are gonna be ass. So you just gotta shoot on like an 85 and compress that space somehow. Do you have, like when you're going and doing some stuff for your Alpine channel, do you go to like car events like that and do more of a commercial angle? Or are you trying to keep everything outside? Because I mean, you guys have the most beautiful backdrop in the world.

Seya (17:45.166)
Mm -hmm.

Seya (18:09.665)
It depends on what the client needs or wants. We work for different kinds of clients and they have different kinds of ideas that they want to showcase. But when the event is all inside, we don't bring the car outside of course. Sometimes even really special cars that have never been on the road and so on. So of course they stay in whatever, like a showroom or whatever we have to go.

But of course we loved the opportunity to bring the cars to the beautiful sceneries in Switzerland for example or like what we have around in Europe and bring the cars to the mountains and shoot like the coolest stuff ever because we have these mountains and we have sometimes really cool weather situations and like you can make a lot out of it.

And we really like when the client gives us all the opportunities and all the freedom of how we want to create the stuff. So we bring the cars to the place where they belong. And that's definitely a cool mountain road in the Swiss Alps.

Eliana Pires Janssen (19:21.538)
yeah.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Do you get to the the people hiring you? And I know it varies and whatnot. But are they companies? Are they private owners? Are you finding just like access to these cars through word of mouth? How are you kind of finding your client roster for that side of the world?

Seya (19:48.078)
Most of the clients or most of the people we work with are companies that use the videos and photos commercially. So they have, for example, a dealership or a company that imports the cars to Switzerland. We also have private collectors, of course. We have different kinds of...

clients from like even we had a we have a saddler that works with cars like to do the leather stuff and so on but we also have like electric cars we have all -timer companies we also work with watch companies and sometimes even with nice hotels that are like focusing a bit on the automotive industry

Eliana Pires Janssen (20:38.206)
luxury and just higher end, very smart. So when you first started, how did you kind of fall into your clients? Was it just, you know, people came to you, did you say like, hey, let me shoot a cool video for you. And you tell me what you think, like, what was your approach to when you were just first starting out?

Seya (21:00.718)
When I actually was starting this whole journey, it was mostly through social media, mostly through Instagram. I made a lot of photography and videography in the Swiss Alps. And then somehow I got in contact with tourism boards and could even invite some people from America or Canada to Switzerland and work with them for different kinds of projects.

And that's how everything came along actually. Because through Instagram I met so many great people that I still work with today. And from this point, or like, these possibilities, when I started to get this one job, I could get the other job. And people started talking about it.

And from that point on, we got the first clients afterwards for Alpenracer. We also just said, yeah, we're here. We started this project with people that we know, like with cars from friends or cars from people that we knew from along the journey. And then afterwards we got our first client, for example, ebookers.

like the travel platform because it was through like during the COVID pandemic and we had the opportunity to make something just in Switzerland because they wanted to promote like in -country travel so that we because we were not allowed to leave the country or like and then we had to adapt and we made the project out of it with an old timer to do a road trip through Switzerland.

Eliana Pires Janssen (22:41.602)
Right.

Seya (22:50.35)
and to still do a cool project. And yeah, like one thing.

Eliana Pires Janssen (22:54.498)
Now, you're 22 years old, so do you shoot at all on film? Or have you, is that just not even on your radar? And I'm not even that, I'm 32, so I'm only 10 years older, but film was my shit for the longest time and natural light and stuff, and now you're moving into commercial. Did you ever have that section of time where you were into kind of more of a film?

Maybe I got it, maybe I didn't. Bye.

Seya (23:28.814)
Can you repeat the actual question because I didn't understand it for a second.

Eliana Pires Janssen (23:32.45)
Yeah, so the film, did you ever have like a film phase where you only wanted to shoot on film and have that kind of like time as a photographer when you were first starting out? Yes, yes, yes.

Seya (23:45.934)
I mean, actual film from back in the days. Now I get it, sorry. Actually, when I made the apprenticeship as a... It could be translated to photographic expert or something like this, photography expert in Switzerland. It's a three -year apprenticeship. So I learned actually how to develop also the film and work with all this stuff that is brought with it.

And yeah, I used to shoot.

Eliana Pires Janssen (24:15.778)
I still remember the smell on my fingers. Like the chemical. Yeah, no, but it just always was there. It was like, it was my childhood, but yeah, it's, that's really cool.

Seya (24:18.734)
Yeah, I actually, I don't know if you like it, but I didn't like it that much. But yeah.

Seya (24:32.142)
Even at one time we made ourselves a camera obscura, like the first camera with a... Yeah, even with a mirror in the shoebox for example, something really special. And then afterwards we...

Eliana Pires Janssen (24:39.426)
cool, the mirrors.

Eliana Pires Janssen (24:45.922)
Mm -hmm.

Seya (24:52.046)
Yeah, I started with different kinds of cameras. I still have like this one roly camera that always bring with me to certain shoots because it's always fun to shoot on film. But of course, for all the different stuff, we need actual cameras because we...

Eliana Pires Janssen (25:05.282)
and

Yeah, that turnaround time won't work for you.

Seya (25:13.614)
Of course, of course. It would be actually cool to shoot the whole weekend only on film. But I think it's...

Eliana Pires Janssen (25:18.594)
Right? Be like, sorry. And you think about it like back in the day, that's what they literally had to do. Can you just imagine? Because like, you know, there's been now granted social media, take it for newspaper, but there were photographers from back in the day and they went to a race and they shot it. They went home and like saw if they had something. They had to sell it directly to the newspapers. Like such a different.

world, but they were still doing it, which is like so badass at the same time because you're just like, man, I mean, granted, the cars were moving a little bit slower. So, but challenge accepted. Now you have to start shooting at least one little role every weekend on top of all of your other things.

Seya (25:55.726)
Of course.

Seya (26:06.03)
Yeah, I think for the next race I will definitely bring one of the film cameras with me again. Actually I brought it to the last race as well, but I didn't use it that much, but for the next one I will use it definitely more.

Eliana Pires Janssen (26:15.042)
Yes!

Eliana Pires Janssen (26:19.97)
What film were you using?

Seya (26:23.982)
I think it was a Fuji film, quite a generic one, nothing special, because some...

Eliana Pires Janssen (26:29.989)
I, my heart and soul is portrait 400. The color, the tones are just so beautiful. Yeah. Yep.

Seya (26:35.438)
Yeah. It's actually a really nice film. But sometimes I'm just like at the city, like where we have our hotel. And then I have to search for another film to get into. Because sometimes it's not that easy to actually get the right stuff at the right place. Because you don't get these at every corner.

Eliana Pires Janssen (26:47.458)
Mm -hmm.

Eliana Pires Janssen (26:51.554)
Yep. Yep.

Eliana Pires Janssen (26:56.77)
Yeah.

Eliana Pires Janssen (27:01.154)
Nope, nope. And then you have like those crazy camera techniques, like the tint types. Have you seen those rad tint types? I'll have to send you a link, but it's basically it's like a it's a chemical process and there's like these bleeds of chemical that come through the image. And it's, you know, back from I'm going to put myself into a corner like I want to say the 1800s, but really cool. But gives the

Seya (27:09.774)
I don't think

Eliana Pires Janssen (27:30.338)
most stunning amount of detail. It's almost like a painting mixed with lyography, I believe it's called. I'll send you some, it's beautiful, but I don't even know how, but some portraits of that would be, but you have to stand real still for a second, but it would be worth the time. But that's one of my favorite things is trying to build my content. Cause like I'm in that weird millennial world.

Seya (27:37.806)
Okay.

Seya (27:48.174)
Okay.

Eliana Pires Janssen (27:59.074)
where you want, I love old timey things, but also at the same time, this new wave and finding an artful way to bring it together. When at all possible, I like to use practical stuff, but AI is very much up on the way. But anyways, I know we've already taken up, it's already almost 30 minutes, but I just wanted to say thank you so much for having come on my first guest.

I am an admirer of your content creation and your photography. I'll put all the links down below so everybody can check it out. But thank you so much and I look forward to seeing your stuff out on the interwebs. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Bye, have a good night or morning. Bye. Right, right, morning.

Seya (28:28.974)
Yeah, thanks a lot.

Seya (28:44.494)
Thanks a lot for having me. It was a really nice talk and looking forward for some more podcasts with you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Goodbye.

It's a morning actually, thank you.