Fragment of a Dream

My focal point of creativity over the last 5 years has been the film project “Fragment eines Traumes.” For this passion piece, I’ve attempted to bring together all the artistic disciplines of my background: Its core lies in my childhood aspiration to become a comic artist and create fantastic worlds filled with weird and funny characters, and create stories that follow no other protocoll than to find their own path and to come alive. 1920s Weimar cinema as well as contemporary Japanese pop-culture have since my childhood been the main food for my imaginarium. And now I embarked on my wish to create a full-fledged real-life anime film set in modern day Germany!

Hamburg lies in ruins, and two young lovers are harshly confronted with the zombie-apocalyptic reality as one of them becomes infected. They seek help from a shamanistic butcher, who saves them by transfering the soul of the infected into the body of the partner. Now they have to live as two souls within the same body, which turns out to be pretty difficult.

A big part of this 5-year project has been spent on finding ways to make this fantasy film come true. We live in a conservative era when it comes to film funding, and though many are quick to embrace successful ex-periments, few are willing to invest in something unconventional. Taking inspiration from digital do-it-yourself pioneers and solo film producers like David Sandberg and Ian Hubert, I explored the possibilities of virtual production. We filmed all the actors in front of green screens and inserted them into computer-generated worlds. This allowed us to maintain flexible shooting schedules and save costs on set design and logistics. But what one saves with money, one loses in terms of time. Therefore, an important aspect was achieving a stylized approach – not aiming for the photorealism of major film production companies but finding a middle ground between realism and artificiality, a balance commonly accepted in theater productions but less so in films.