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zeit:raum Group

After founding a couple of companies during the last four years, many of them in the creative space, I have had quite a lot of brands under my wings. 2018, I´m taking the opportunity to clean up this brand-portfolio a bit and combine a few of my companies under one new brand: zeit:raum.

The zeit:raum Group is made up of zeit:raum film GmbH (formerly bildpiloten Gmbh), the newly founded zeit:raum digital GmbH (together with Jens Kreuter) and the services of hololux GmbH. Here´s to a great 2018! www.zeitraum.com

Let´s make that three businesses...

Serial-entrepreneur? Or merley bored? None of the prior. But it seems there is another piece to this business-puzzle I´ve been puzzeling over the last couple of years. Let´s see if we can make this work, shall we? Big things ahead, not slowing down, leaning into it.

Company 2 - hololux GmbH

While things are going splendid at the bildpiloten HQ, doing all the fun film and motion graphics stuff we are known and loved for, there is a need to make our VR & AR work more discoverable. And to emphasize that we believe that this tech is not just some new fangled gimmick, but here to stay, we are putting all of our weight behind it by incorporating this line of work as a seperate company: hololux GmbH

Together with Christian Glessner, Leitwolf of Experts Inside, we have assembled a truly unique team to rise to the challenges of bleeding edge Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality productions, may it be film, animation or apps. Both Christian and I will take on CEO duties at hololux GmbH. Combining the graphics and film expertise of bildpiloten with the IT knowledge of Experts Inside makes hololux well suited for the challenges of this new market that is still in it´s infancy. Brace yourself, it´s gonna be a bumpy, yet exciting ride!

VR - The new frontier

Much has been written about the new kinds of VR and AR tech that has emerged in the last few months. Rest assured that no amount of writing will do the same for you as five minutes of using an Oculus Rift device viewing a state of the art VR scene. Even though the experience is still rough around the edges, the potential as well as the certainty that this tech will change the game yet again is more than clear.

While working in film and animation, the fundamental principles, tech and art - even though still evolving - have largely been established generations ago. In contrast, the language, tech and best practices of building VR content are just being established as I type these words. We have both the opportunity and the burden of shaping this future right from its inception. Having spend the last couple of weeks authoring real time VR content at our company, I for one couldn 't be more excited about being part of this journey that, as of now, only holds roads less traveled.

With this is mind we are embarking on a new adventure by launching hololux, the newest addition to the bildpiloten company. hololux will focus on creating Virtual and Augmented Reality content, both as video as well as real time 3D.

bildpiloten - Year One

I can´t believe how fast this year went by. 12 months ago I permanently left what was arguably the best job I´ve ever had (Head of TV/Motion at a well established ad agency) to found my own company.

I did so without a co-founder, a decision that was either the worlds best or worst decision ever (the jury is still out on that one). We started out at the awesome Coworking Space Ligatura. If you are starting out in the Saarbrucken area, this surely is the place to be. We quickly added offices in Hamburg and finally moved to our own place in Saarbrücken just a few weeks ago. Things are moving so fast that it is hard to keep up at times, but I couldn´t be happier about how well things are going.

Better yet: we are working on some huge projects (most of which I can´t tell you about yet) and I´m facing my biggest challenge to date: growing the team to keep up with all the work coming in in 2015. Granted: a good problem to have. Here´s to a great 2015

Wunderlist 3 "Syncphony" Promo Video

Wunderlist 3 Announcement Video "Syncphony" from bildpiloten on Vimeo.

 I recently directed this really nice promo video for the new version of Wunderlist with my company www.bildpiloten.com for the great folks at 6 Wunderkinder. Oh, and look - our company website is finally online.

bildpiloten - Agentur für Film GmbH

So I founded a company at the beginning of this year. It is only now that I have had a chance to breathe and tell you about it as well as share some stuff with you.

What we do is really simple: we produce films, animations and ads for global audiences. And we´ve been doing it a lot. In addition to some of the most famous german companies in tech, like mytaxi or 6Wunderkinder we also work for international tech giants like Yandex and have worked for Hollywood production companies like Bad Robot.

But enough with the words. How about some moving images?
First is our little Logo-ID. It´s in german for now (english version on the way) and we had the german voice of George Clooney do the voice over work for this, since it provided the level of sophistication we were after.

This is our current showreel, which we hope you enjoy. As you may see, even though we specialise in tech, we also like to do some work in the entertainment realm as well.

I´m sure, we are going to get our company website up and running any day now. If you want to contact us in the meantime, go ahead and hit us up at hello@bildpiloten.com - we love email and look forward to hearing from you.

Nomination for German Design Award 2015

I´m thrilled to be nominated for this one again. Wish me luck.

oscar nomination for ST:ID

So it´s official: I was involved with a film that is up for "Best Visual Effects" at the Oscars. Mind blown.
Thinking back on all the talented people working on Star Trek Into Darkness, it shouldn´t feel like that big of a suprise. Huge congrats to everyone involved and the greatest thank you to Bad Robot for giving me the exciting opportunity to be just the tiniest part of this exciting journey.

Interview in Digital Production Magazine

If you are itching to find out how I achieved some of the shots in my latest music video "A Campus A Heart A Star" from The Satellite Year, you should pick up the current issue of leading german post-production and vfx magazine "Digital Production". There´s an nice, lenghty interview with me in which I shed some light on the techniques and tools used in the making of this project.

Update: The interview is available here in PDF format for your reading pleasure!

Awards and new beginnings

You might have noticed that it has been quiet around here for some time. Well, I´ve been busy.
Last night, I won two awards: one for my old company and one for a new company. And this might just be the perfect opportunity to tell you more about it.

Click to read more ...

Working on Star Trek Into Darkness at Bad Robot

I had the amazing opportunity to work on this movie at Bad Robot in Los Angeles and couldn´t be any happier about the whole experience, which still feels kind of surreal to me.

Not only did I get to meet and work with J.J. Abrams (spoiler: nicest guy ever) and the amazingly talented Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot (BTW: Andrew did epic, mindblowing work on these maintitles - keep an eye on his blog for more!) but a whole bunch of really great people (Ben, Erin, Kerry, Josh, Marty, Andrew, Nate, Juan, Zack, Robby, Olaf - this list could go on forever...). 

The Bad Robot offices really are geek heaven, bursting with energy and I´ve had an amazing time working there. Now go out and see the movie. In true summer blockbuster fashion, it is a big, fun and highly entertaining ride.

 

working in hollywood

So excited to be heading to the US to help out at Bad Robot, working on a major summer blockbuster.  

TSY - "A Campus, A Heart, A Star"

Here´s my most VFX-heavy music video to date:
"A Campus, A Heart, A Star" by THE SATELLITE YEAR.

 Shot entirely on greenscreen and featuring 4:30 min. of 3D, Compositing and VFX work. Not an easy task, especially since I was doing everything by myself: Director / DP / Edit / CGI / VFX / Colorgrading

Be sure to check out the SATELLITE YEARS terrific album MISSION POLARLIGHTS while you´re at it:
itunes.apple.com/de/album/mission-polarlights/id423313465 - it´s really great.

Making-of: A Campus, A Heart, A Star

Lately Element 3D from VIDEO COPILOT has become one of the cornerstones of my work. Huge, daunting tasks like creating 4:30 minutes of 3D animation and composting (as a single artist)  for a music video suddenly become manageable. Although Element 3D might not be as fully featured as a dedicated, established 3D program like Cinema4D, the speed and interactivity more than makes up for this. It has become my favorite way of doing 3D-stuff. So take a look at how some of the stuff was done in the above video.

Wunderlist 2 Product Trailer

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to direct and animate the Wunderlist 2 launch video for the great folks at 6Wunderkinder.
Brisk in pace and done as 2D and 3D Animation, the trailer is all about giving you a taste for what it feels like to use the app. Since the level of attention and care present in the app (and the Wunderkinder marketing in general) is up there with the very best, coming up with a trailer matching the quality of the product was no mundane (but fun!) task.
And as someone who has spend the last couple of weeks using the near-final beta, let me tell you: Wunderlist2 is quite awesome. The guys really poured their heart and soul into making a great app and it shows in every pixel and every user interaction, If you don´t know this app yet, you should definitively check it out

If you´ve got a neat tech product you want to show off in a product video, drop me a line. I´m always interested in new projects.

Going out with a bang. and a trailer.

This is the trailer for my last music video for the foreseeable future, since i´ll be moving on to other ventures in 2013. "A Campus, A Heart, A Star" by The Satellite Year will premiere at europes biggest computer arts festival REVISION 2013 on 30/03/2013 before going to broadcast on 31/03/2013.

"reactor burner brain"

 

While my past promos always involved shooting a performance of some sort, this is much more of a graphical exploration of the track using macro-photography and 3D-graphics.

It was much more about finding images to fit the music and I animated roughly 100 different visual explorations, some of which didn´t make the cut of the final promo. I really enjoyed creating the imagery going into this video, but one should keep it away from children and epileptic people (I´m NOT kidding on this one...). 

There´s a photoset of stills over at flickr, too.

This might also work as a title sequence for a David Fincher film. Just saying - drop me a line, David ;)
Please head over and watch the HD-Version on VIMEO since the tiny embedded version doesn´t do it justice... 

baby lou "tennis"

I went with a fun, kinda cheesy, meta-music video approach on this one. 
The single is out 10/08/2012 - get it on itunes