Skilfully staging emotions in moving images with animation and sound, from pre- to post-production, from editing to storytelling in film and video projects. We take a look behind the scenes of Raphael Etter’s diverse range of tasks.
Born in Fribourg, he grew up on a farm, became interested in visual design during his A-levels and that’s how his career took its course. He completed the ‘Film Making Degree’ course at the SAE Institute and worked freelance on various projects, editing countless programmes and developing his passion for post-production.
Multimedia career
From 2004, the video expert worked as a freelancer at Habegger, and in 2006 he took up a permanent position as a career changer: from editing and animation to content production and file management – a multimedia area of responsibility: 2D/3D, AI, AR/VR/VP. Raphi is where all the threads come together; he handles the majority of all customer projects as well as internal enquiries.
Every project is different, there’s not just one workflow, so you always have to be creative from the ground up and use new technologies to give the project a unique flavour.
Facts about the job
The family man has always had a fascination and affinity for moving images. He has loved films since his youth and has spent hours watching behind-the-scenes videos about which technologies or set-ups are used – what was real, what was built. Nowadays, there are so many ways to access different media in order to acquire knowledge, familiarise yourself with tools and also take courses to acquire strategic knowledge and theoretical skills.
You can learn the expertise, but you have to have the passion.
A personal interest in everything from social media to artist platforms, a curiosity for new technologies and an affinity for software should be present in order to do the job with joy and passion. In terms of character, you should be a doer, enjoy taking the initiative, love trying out new things and experimenting. An important part is also the music, because this also creates the experience and triggers emotions; 50% image, 50% sound is the mix for the overall experience.
Creative working day
There is no such thing as a single working day, the projects are too different. On the one hand, there are short-term projects where a lot of things run in parallel. On the other hand, there are also many long-term projects that take several days and are complex to realise – development and creativity are the biggest components, both visually and technically.
The big projects are always realised in collaboration with the Creation team and the technical project managers. The basis is always the visual concept for the animations or a moving image concept is created from it. The content for the individual event stages and dramaturgy sequences are then created with the stage director and Event Technology. What matters most is the precise coordination of the developed creatives with the technical set-up so that the audiovisual elements are fully integrated into the event experience.
Emotional digitalisation
For Raphi, his field of activity is more than just a job, as he is still passionate about animating content even after more than 20 years of professional experience.
The exciting thing about my job is that you never stop learning, the technology is constantly evolving and so am I with the projects.
The media expert’s favourite projects are 2D/3D animations, because movement has a big impact on the viewer. Design and technology combined in a moving image creates a wow effect and gives the content a new story. AI is also a tool that is not scary, but an enrichment. We can use new possibilities for content creation, but the designers of the project are still the Habegger employees. AI is merely a tool.
Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social media.
