Please tell us about the projects you worked on before making ‘Bloody Good Soup’. How did you start, and how did you learn to make films?
I started as a child of GDR, the eastern part of Germany and in the first 20 years of my life I had nothing to do with film than watching some we could see on telly. Right after the break of the wall I moved to the western part of Germany and some short time later 1993 I filmed my first project on VHS with the equipment of a so called `open channel` of a town. It´s been a fiction environmental film. Then I went on stages and acted and applied for education as professional actor.
In the year 1998 my former girlfriend and current wife made me to go with her to Australia and I studied there film making with Metro TV film school, directing + video editing + script writing. In the evenings I went to another script writing course in Sydney with the idea in my head to make my own feature film some time.
After my return to Germany 2001 I founded the film making company Hollberg Media Production and I produced commercials, business- and image films, worked several years as video editor for a big TV providing company. Parallel to that I got trained privately as an actor and graduated with stage approval.
2008 I firstly stepped an a professional stage and it took me a long time to turn to the subject I like to do the most in life: film making. 2014 I produced the first professional feature film, `Run BaBy`.
Tell us about ‘Bloody Good Soup’. How do you describe it?
The idea of ´bloody good soup´ was basically to create good actors scenes for demo reasons in English language but than the story grew larger and more interesting to me with every word I wrote.
BGS is like a little chamber play in theater, it's a cat's and mouse' game I'd call it. Each of the main characters want to know the truth of things that lay in the past and of current happenings and so they spy each other during their conversation. The question is, if one of the main characters has a dark secret? To find out the truth the behavior of each of the main characters seem to be a little bit strange. These type of films live by the play of the actors. Well, this is basically in every movie the case but the eye of the viewer has no other distractions, no explosions, no hunting or running scenes, no other focus than the actors play.
Please tell us about your favorite filmmakers.
There is so much to see and to learn from the best film makers in the world, such as Guy Ritchie, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, the Cohen Brothers, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Peter Berg, Todd Phillips, Ridley Scott and a view other maybe. Sergio Leone created one of my favorite films, `Once upon a time in America`. They all made different movies in very different styles and topics but they have one thing in common: All of them are very successful. And that's so for good reasons. They work very precise, they work with fantastic stories and phenomenal actors but one more thing is so important: They take their time to work out every important detail to tell a powerful story. Okay, they get a lot of money these days to shoot their films but they had to start, too. I am sure they know, how it's like to shoot without money and all of them have to be very creative, too, to create their films. I'm driven by all of them because I'd like to shoot such movies one day.
If you were given a good budget, what would be your ideal project?
Every filmmaker should have his or her own view of things, his or her own vision and dream. That's what I have, of course.
I really like good action thriller with conspiracy theories very much. The remake of the `Jason Burn` story with Matt Damon in the lead are absolutely fab to me. To get the opportunity to do such a film, that would be my dream.
Describe how you would ensure that production is on schedule. What steps would you take?
There can be only one answer to that: I work hard and in that case something goes wrong I work even harder. I never ever give up a film project I started. I only put my hands to a rest when everything is done and we are on schedule to publish.
What was the hardest part of making ‘Bloody Good Soup’.-
The shooting for one of the flashbacks in `bloody good soup` should take place in the sleeping room of the mother of one of the fellows I produced with on this production. I had to do business abroad and came back to Germany a day before the BGS shooting was scheduled. It hit me like a hammer to hear that day, that the mother of that fellow I trusted moved out of this flat a month ago. But approximately a month before, this shooting day has been scheduled, the shot list and the storyboard were done and sent to all the people. That was crazy and never happened to me before. pfff.
In my house the heating was broken down meanwhile I wasn't there and it was inside as bloody cold as outside. And we had snow and ice to that time in Germany. Okay, I said, we're going to shot in my house, if you guys don't mind the cold but we can't use the sleeping room, because it doesn't look like that place, that I want to have in my movie. We have to shift some stuff and make one of the other rooms look like a hotel room and that's what we did. Otherwise, I couldn't have shot this scene. The actor told me he would be only this day available within next 6 months.
If possible, tell us about your next work. What plans do you have for your future work?
I shot and just accomplished the next short film `GREENLIGHT INSTITUTE` with a German film star. This film is an action comedy and beside action thriller the genre I like most. It's been produced with a runtime of 15 min., shooting language is German and this film could be seen as a pilot of a little series. Probably I'm going to find an interested PRODUCER here on the Tokyo Film festival?
After GREENLIGHT INSTITUTE I have another short film project as an action comedy in mind and I started writing the script and after that I hope I'll find a producer to work with on the next feature film project I wrote the script for.
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