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I can't remember exactly how we had the idea, but the visual style of Lars von Trier's Antichrist was definately an important inspiration for us. We saw the movie in a small cinema in Cologne and were amazed about the highspeed shots and the color look of the movie.
Preproduction began in the end of October, while screening Der Tag An Dem Herrn Müller Einfach Nichts Einfallen Wollte
on the 32. Biberacher Filmfestspiele on the 31. Filmfestspiele in Biberach. During the days, when there were no films to go to, we brainstormed a lot about the project and finally visited a beautiful forest not far from Philipps hometown. It was that forest that gave us confidence for our ideas.
Back in Cologne we started to tighten everything and began the official production. The were several very difficult decisions to make. One of the most difficult decision was the decision of our production format. Our idea was to shoot on S16mm or S35mm, but our budget was tight and we were thinking about switching to a digital system like the RED. Everyone recommended to shoot digital, but somehow we were not happy with that approach. It took a lot of time and many hours of budget planning, but in the End we decided to shoot on S16mm and S35mm ;-)
The next very difficult thing was our idea to shoot everything on minimum 50-75fps and two special shots on 1000fps. We knew the Phantom HD and the WeissCam, but theses systems are extremely expensive and the film rentals in Cologne couldn't make us a good offer.
That was a big problem for us, because the majority of our concept was based around these ultra highspeed shots.
So we began an intense research and found Norbert, a guy specialised on highspeed crash test and nature shots. He supported us with the PCO Dimax camera system, which is basically the same as the Weisscam HS-2, but a little more complicated to use.
We began with the highspeed shots of the kids and the bird. We built our set in the garden of the KHM and used a backdrop and a bush to let it look like it was in the forest. It turned out to work very well using the printed backdrop. I had some concerns about the color matching later in post, but we had so much color detail in the footage that it worked.
The slingshot shot was a little dangerous, because the actor had to aim directly on the lens of the camera, but we constructed a safety box around the camera and shot through thick glass.
Day two was our first day with animals at the Wildgehege Hellenthal. It was an about 1:30h drive from Cologne. We did not work with so many different animals before, so we were a little afraid of the situation. We had no animal trainers. The deal was to go into the enclosure and work everything out by ourselves. That was a huge risk when considering that we were shooting on S16mm at 75-150fps!
In the end we were very lucky and managed to bait them with some food :-)
After shooting with deers, goats, racoons, ferrets, and roe deers we switched over to falcons and owls. The park had a special bird of prey section and the supported us very kindly. We shot a falcon ripping a dove, which they usually use bird food. Later on we shot with Hugo
the owl. Because they were all trained birds, it turned out to very comfortable to shoot with them. They were doing precisely what the trainers wanted!
Again we spent day three in Hellenthal shooting with two teams in two different locations. Team one was shooting with the actors in a nearby forest on the big S35mm camera and team two was in the deer park shooting on S16mm some of the animals we did not manage to shoot the day before.
The logistics of that day were very complex. There was always a car somewhere on the dirt road between the two sets. We learned a lot about how to manage two camera units and all what they need to shoot.
On day four we relocated everything to a forest near Windeck, Kreis Sieg. Again it was a 1:30h drive from Cologne, but to a completely different direction. Just like Hellenthal we visited this location about a week before production. We got the forester's address from the Anitchrist
production manager, so in the end, we were shooting in the same forest as Lars von Trier did.
In the morning of day four we began everything so early, that we did not have enough light to start shooting :-) . During the day we had a lot of rain and so everyone and everything was soaking wet and full with mud. In Hellenthal we were a bit more lucky with the weather and lighting conditions.
As nearly every day, day four ends when the sun goes down. Unfortunately that was already at about 16:30, so there is not very much time to shoot on one day. But somehow we managed to shoot everything we needed.
Day five, our last day of production, was divided into three parts/locations. We shot the majority of the day in the forest in Windeck and as the sun went down we moved to a little pub in Windeck to shoot the old man singing. After that we drove to a dive centre in Siegburg where we shot the underwater scenes.
During our preproduction we found a nice location in the forest. The ruins of an old gunpowder factory look really beautiful through the camera. We finally shot the climbing and some running sequences there.
We decided shooting in the dive center, because there we had the chance to shoot through a window at a depth of about three meters. Hence we could save a lot of money we would have spent for underwater housing equipment. But still, the shooting turned out to be very difficult, due to the angle Konstantin had to jump in. It was very narrow and so we had to practice many times before we could actually roll the camera. At about 23:30 of our longest day we finished the production of the music video!
Just one day after the exhausting production marathon, we continued with the postproduction. Therefore we first had to gather all of our footage which was mostly analogue but there were also some digital clips and still photos from our 5D MK 2. Philipp, Jakob and me drove down to Baden-Baden to scan our footage. Once again we did our standard film workflow. The S16mm and S35mm footage was scanned at 25fps directly onto HDCAM SR and 10bit Apple Prores HQ files. The tapes were actually just a backup solution, just in case something happens.
Back in Cologne Philipp started editing everything while Julian and I were already working on several composites. We did a lot of complex stuff, like to the bird shot, where we gave life to the dead bird. There were also a lot of removals to do.
On our 5D the 2. Unit team shot several small animals like grasshoppers, a mouse and a rat in front of a bluescreen. We composited these elements in the foreground or background of the final clips.
Overall there was a lot of compositing to do for this project, but everything we managed to accomplish on our own.
We receive very positive reactions about this video. The people recognize the distinctiveness of this video and discuss it heavily on the web. Many people ask how the bird shot was done and think that we used a living bird for it! I hope now no one thinks that any more.
Altogether I think we can be very proud of our creation and of what we learned by making it. I hope we'll have the chance to do this kind of project again in the future! The next time we will not shot in a rainy November, with animals and kids, with only 7 hours of light and everything on film at 75-150fps!
What we did was insane and we were not very far from a failure, but again somehow we did it!
Shortly after our release on Tape.tv and Youtube the blog Feingut
contacted me with some questions about the music video and posted an article with my answers about the project.
A BIG thanks to every team member and everyone who helped us during this project!
