History

It started in February 2003. At this time I discovered an article about Theo Jansen and the Strandbeesten in the internet. Attached to the article there was a small photo and what I saw there, fascinated me. I sent Theo Jansen one mail and two weeks later I had a video with footage of his work in my mail box. Six months this video cassette was unopened on my desk. Sometimes covered of paper mountains, several times it fell down, threatened in the office chaos to disappear. In September fortunately it was still there and because I planned a journey to the IBC in Amsterdam and I knew that Theo Jansen lived somewhere in the Netherlands, I put the cassette in my VHS-player. For the first time I saw his constructions, the Strandbeesten, in motion. Fragile, natures artful inserted into each other from thin plastic pipes, which moved in a completely own way over the beach. I wanted to experience these things in reality. After a hard day at IBC I telephonedwith Theo and we arranged a meeting for the afternoon in Ypenburg, a new suburb in The Hague. I was very lucky, because only few kilometers far away from this place my father in law has a flat. We had already been in The Hague for several timesin the years, but we had never been to Ypenburh. The place, on which Theo Jansen works, and where we met for the first time is at first sight a very strange place. It is hill, which separates the suburb Ypenburg from the nearby motorway. Above on this hill there are two green building containers: Work place, public studio, camp and center for Theo Jansens work. It was a sunny September day. We sat down on the small terrace before the containers, in the back the motorway, before us the roofs of Ypenburg. At the foot of the hill some fastened Strandbeesten of past generations and on a small piece sand the new construction. From the motorway the noise of the by-rushing cars ran in waves up the hill and it sounded like the sea. It is a magic place there above, on this hill and after I had talked for a long time with Theo, I decided that I deeply want to make a film about Theo Jansen, his work and the place. I knew words would not be sufficient to describe Theo Jansens work and so I decided to make a trailer to visualize my idea of making a film. Because you cannot make a film on your own, we traveled as a team to Holland. Andreas Gockel, a director of photography who I know from Berlin, his friend Ulricke and Stefan Gilsing, editor and sound engineer, we traveled to the Netherlands to make our first shooting for this project. Without the great work of these persons, this project wouldn’t have been possible. We got a Super16 camera from Hans Rombach, a famous director of photography from Berlin, and 4 film stocks from Kodak. Thank you! At this time in autumn 2003 there was no HDV available, HDCAM was too expensive for us and in such a way we decided to do our shooting on film, in order to be able to illustrate the fragile constructions at the beach with blue horizon in brilliant quality. A decision which we should not regret after we see the first developed pictures during scanning and color correction at Geyer-Film in Berlin. We turned four days at the hill and on the beach in the proximity of Rotterdam. The result of the work was 2 minutes 30 trailer, which Stefan arranged in a nightshift at the Avid (kindly again made available by Gabi Degner and Hans Rombach). For the next two years this should be our most important work basis with the attempt to find money for our film. If I have time, I will go on to write about the other stations of the project, which setbacks, positive developments took part. The next article is about our experiences during our test shot in the last week. With friendly support of the companies 25p from Berlin, MediaTV from Hanover and MaximFilm from Berlin we could did a test with three cameras