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I have an irrational love for geared heads, even though I never had my hands on, let alone owned one before. They fascinate me, the mechanics, the fluidity of the motion, they have that special aura. I soaked up all the info I could gather from the internet, whether Worral, Mini-Worral, Moy, Mitchell, Technohead, Panahead, or the king of geared heads: the Arrihead. And every now and then, just out of curiosity, I’d look at ebay and other sites, if somebody was selling a geared head.

Ever since I was in film school, I wanted to work with one, but I never got the chance. I told myself that someday I’d buy one! Well, I spent the first years paying back student loans. Additionally, I was mostly doing work where a geared head just wouldn’t make any sense. So, it remained a dream.

After a long time, I had started a family and income became steadier again (unlike me, my wife thankfully has a real job, so as a freelancer I was taking care of the kid until he was ready for kindergarten), I was finally ready to buy one. I knew, that geared heads were becoming a relic of the glory days. If I’d ever buy one, I might not use it on a production, ever. I knew that. And I was OK with it. It was still my dream. But meanwhile they where nowhere to be found. The affordable ones anyways.

And then, suddenly, I saw a listing at one of the big rental houses: an Arrihead at a criminally low price! After a few minutes of thought and speaking to my wife, I called them, and a few days later I literally drove from one side of the country to the other to pick it up. And now, finally, I am the proud owner of the seventh Arrihead ever built! For the first two months of owning it, I’ve been practicing for about an hour every night. It really is a dream come true.

That was over a year ago and it’s still one of the best purchases I’ve ever made, even when I still haven’t brought it to any set. Others buy motorcycles during their midlife crisis. Well, my motorcycle is an Arrihead.

In 2018, AV22 was in Karlsruhe at EnBW‘s Rheinhafen steam power plants to accompany Amer, who was in the middle of an apprenticeship there. Three years earlier, Amer had fled Syria. In the short film, he talks about the path leading to his apprenticeship, but also addresses topics such as loneliness and family.

A few weeks ago, together with AV22, I visited Amer again to see how he is doing today. We were able to capture some very impressive images and together with Philipp I also edited the film.

As a cinematographer and film maker, it’s always nice to get to different places and meet exciting people. Filming in a huge (and pretty noisy) power plant (where, by the way, the different levels are not numbered by floors but are divided by altitude) was pretty impressive. On top of that, the generally friendly environment made filming even more fun. 🙂

The two films (I was involved in the second one) can be seen here (at the bottom of the page): Klick

I now have a demo reel (finally!). Actually I could add the word “again”, because this is not my first reel. However, the last one is from 2007, and since a lot has happened since then, it was time for something new.

Now I’ve sat down to edit a film with footage from some of the recent projects. The emphasis is on the images in tune with the music, a selection of my work as a cinematographer and filmmaker. The whole film was put into 90 seconds, which you can watch here:

In the same step, I also slimmed down the whole homepage, adjusted some texts and changed the colors a bit. And I just couldn’t help myself but to add a (slightly modified) movie quote on the “About me” page 😉

Last week the film, which was meant to convince the people of Büttgen of fiber internet, was released. The press reported about it and many people saw and shared it on various channels. And lo and behold: we are getting fiber in Büttgen! The power of moving images?

The facts: for a demand survey to be successful, 40 % of all households had to sign a contract. After several weeks of an ongoing demand survey and increasingly slow progress, the result for Büttgen was 30% on the closing date. Fortunately, there was an extension of almost 5 weeks, but no more figures were communicated. if progress had continued to be so sluggish, the demand survey wouldn’t have been successful in any case. so last week the film was released, and then, just under a week before the new deadline, a successful demand survey is announced.

Only the provider Deutsche Glasfaser will know whether the film was decisive or not. But it certainly played its part.

Some time ago we moved “into the countryside”. There are many advantages here (especially at the current time) compared to Cologne, but especially one big disadvantage: extremely slow internet connection. The Telekom website falsely shows a speed of 50 Mbit for our address, which would have been slow, but at least somehow tolerable. however, it turned out that a staggering speed of only 16 Mbit is available. In the meantime, DSL has been canceled thanks to an unlimited LTE rate plan (ca. 200 Mbit). But for that price, we could have gigabit internet via fiber instead.

And now the time has come: a demand survey for fiber internet in Büttgen is currently being conducted, but it is proceeding at a relatively slow pace. The need for fiber is not as great for everyone as it is for us in the area here, since for example there is gigabit cable internet in the village center. Hardly anyone there wants fiber, although there are still many arguments in favor of it. In addition, the statement “I don’t need that, what I have is enough for me” is heard very often, especially here with a very high average age.

So I decided to make a film. I sat down (digitally) with writer and director Patrick Jäschke and we developed a script. Shortly after, I was approached by a representative of the city. The budget was as small as the local bandwidth, but my personal urge for faster internet access was as big as the bandwidth of gigabit fiber. And so it happened that I made the official film about the fiber rollout in Büttgen. Patrick and I developed a concept according to the new circumstances, which deals with one of Büttgen’s passions: cycling. Cycling is deeply rooted here.

Via cycling, analogies are built up to the benefit and common cause for fiber internet. The film is not meant to explain or convince factually. Rather, it is about telling stories. The goal is to evoke emotions so that even people who are not originally interested in switching to fiber, will watch the film because of the people portrayed, the metaphors and thus the messages are nevertheless being communicated. Explanatory films or pure advertising are probably of no interest to them.

The shoot, among other things, in the cycling hall (the Sportforum Büttgen) took place with some well-known Büttgen personalities. Even though we weren’t so lucky with the weather on the second day of shooting, it was fantastic on the day of the shoot for the scenic shots and I was able to capture some very atmospheric pictures. I even had to take out some of the orange in color correction on the shot with the mill, otherwise it would have looked too artificial and no one would have believed that I didn’t turn up the colors. It was indeed such a lovely orange on location.

The result is a film called: “Highspeed and team spirit”, as usual in 4K and with German and English subtitles (the film is embedded from my YouTube account, the film on the city’s page can be found here):