Category: General

Over ten years ago, space.games.film was officially launched. The idea of making a film about the video game industry had been brewing in my head for a few years before that. By sending the first email, the project finally became real.

Fast forward ten years, and the release of space.games.film is now a distant memory. A lot has changed since then. games.film no longer exists, the website is now just a sub-page on my personal site, and the elaborately built online shop, which had to withstand a massive rush of buyers during its existence (7 – that’s seven in words (yes, really)), couldn’t be integrated into my new homepage and remains inaccessible to potential nostalgics.

Throughout this decade, I’ve worked on numerous other projects. During that time, I also took on editing projects. I’ve refined my editing style and picked up some cool new tricks and techniques from numerous tutorials to make my cuts more dynamic. For a while now, I’ve had the urge to go back and rework the space.games.film trailer to make it more compelling. Back then, we had to get a trailer done in a ridiculously short amount of time, and with everything else life was throwing at us, the official trailer that resulted obviously wasn’t going to get anyone hyped for an action movie.

Looking back today, I would, of course, shoot and edit space.games.film completely differently. Armed with newfound knowledge and more advanced skills, I wanted to take another crack at the trailer. So, I pulled the project from my archives, reinstalled Edius, and tried to export the old edit to import it into DaVinci Resolve. That turned out to be a tricky business, as large parts of the project simply wouldn’t export correctly. After a lot of trial and error, I managed to import the raw footage and some of the game sequences into Resolve, so at least the core edits of the film and trailer were there. However, a lot of the B-roll and all the original color and sound work were missing.

The goal this time was to make the new edit feel more alive. I just wanted to create a kickass trailer and see if my current skills were up to the challenge—and I think they were. This new trailer is the result, and it includes a few effects that simply weren’t possible for me when space.games.film was first made, either because I didn’t know how to do them or because the software at the time was too limited.

The new cut was a fun challenge, and for a brief moment, I actually considered re-editing the entire film. But the amount of effort would just be too huge. The trailer cut alone took a lot of time, balancing it between work and family life. A complete re-edit of the whole film would mean several months of (unpaid) work, and when I look at the viewership numbers, it raises the question: Who would it be for?

Even though I cut this trailer mostly for myself, I hope others enjoy it and that it might bring a little more attention to space.games.film.

 

The original trailer, once more:

 

And here’s the new one. Be sure to turn up the sound to really feel it. Compared to the old one, I think this trailer makes you more excited to see the film, right?

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.