LIONS DAILY NEWS
WEDNESDAY / JUNE 18 / 2014
FOCUS ON GERMANY
93
STATE OF THE ART GERMANY STEFAN SPENDIER, HEAD OF TRIXTER COMMERCIAL, THE NEW DIVISION OF MUNICH, BERLIN AND LA-BASED VFX HOUSE TRIXTER AND MUNICH-BASED MATTHIAS ZENTNER FROM VELVET FILMS ARE TWO REPRESENTATIVES OF THE VIBRANT VFX INDUSTRY IN GERMANY. THEY SPOKE TO LIONS DAILY NEWS ABOUT THEIR WORK
STEFAN SPENDIER WHAT LED YOU TO CREATE TRIXTER COMMERCIAL AS A NEW DIVISION? Our work on movies such as Captain America and Iron Man 3, which was nominated for the visual effects Academy Award this year, goes to show the high standard of quality we can provide. We saw an opportunity in transferring our company’s know-how gained from Hollywood productions into the commercial and campaign movie market.
DO YOU HAVE CREATIVE INPUT INTO YOUR WORK? Our main objective is to realise the client’s creative vision. Being a service provider, we work according to the creative brief but we also have an in-house team of highly skilled creative talents. We will always offer our creative input to help our clients create the look that they are striving to achieve.
ARE THERE ANY RECENT COMMERCIALS, IN YOUR OPINION, THAT HAVE USED VFX WELL? With so many excellent VFX-heavy commercials today, it would be hard to pick out any particular ones. It’s a fact, that commercials and image films are not using the full range of VFX available today. Thanks to our experience with Hollywood productions we will hopefully be able to broaden our clients figurative VFX horizons. We can create things that they might not even have considered possible before.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR TRIXTER? In the future Trixter will be able to provide highest quality services to German and international commercial clients, while at the same time providing outstanding visual effects for Hollywood movies. We are currently working on our next Marvel project. In September this year, the fully animated movie 7th Dwarf will come to German cinemas. Our immensely talented art-director Luis Guggenberger was recently introduced at the “Regie Lounge” in Duesseldorf.
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MATTHIAS ZENTNER WHO ARE YOUR CLIENTS? About 90% of our clients come from outside of Germany. The requests come mainly from Asia, Middle East, Europe and the US.
WHAT TYPES OF PROJECTS ARE YOU WORKING ON? Since we combine many different fields of the industry (design, production, VFX and photography) we are involved in the creative process at an early stage. Our work ranges from creating a 15-minute corporate film for a 30-metre-diameter round cinema at the Audi museum, to films for social media, commercials and branding idents.
WHY DO YOU THINK THAT GERMANY EXCELS IN THE VFX SECTOR? VFX is not just some computers with people using them. VFX means creativity, dedication, concentration, love for detail and organisation. Each gearwheel has to fit perfectly to the next one, which corresponds well with the German and English working attitude.
HOW ARE VFX CHANGING THE COMMERCIALS BUSINESS? I don’t think that VFX are changing the commercial business. I believe that VFX is helping to make the impossible possible — or at least, the real hard tasks easier and affordable.
HOW HAS SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGED OR INFLUENCED YOUR APPROACH TO WORK? I really like the fact that it can be seen by millions and judged by millions. We actually produced with Sassenbach Advertising the KUKA Robots campaign with German table tennis player Timo Boll — ‘The Duel: Timo Boll vs. KUKA Robot’ —bcreated for social media, which is also running here in Cannes. So far the long version of the film has had more than five million views on YouTube. One of the downsides of social media is the quality of streaming. Many times the beauty and brilliance of the films is just not where it should be.
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