Interview With The Ricke Bros (german Filmmakers)

INTERVIEW WITH AXEL AND HENNING RICKE (THE RICKE BROS.) 30TH OF MARCH, 2009. [Betacinema] Tell me a little bit about your background as filmmakers… [Axel] Well, I’ve been working for four years in a film-production company doing TVmovies and series [www.berengar-pfahl-film.de] and Henning has just graduated from the Cologne Academy of Media Arts (KHM). We both love making movies since we were kids, when we were playing with models in our backyard. Now that Henning has graduated, we plan to start a company to produce professional products. [B] Would you consider The Matrix XP as your first film? [Axel] No, not really, because we have been doing it for long. [Henning] It could be said that The Matrix XP is the turning point, from making movies from ourselves and friends to making movies to be seen by others… [Axel] …even if THE MATRIX XP was not intended to be made public in the first place! [B] Are any of you more oriented to technology in the movie making process? Would you consider yourselves as Special effects-oriented? [Axel] We have always been interested in Special effects, since we were kids, even if we didn’t use a computer. Although we have been recognized as Special effects specialists because of our movies since The Matrix XP, it could very well be that we make movies in the future without using Special effects. [Henning] (laughs) Well, we love Special effects because they offer you a way to tell a different kind of stories which would be impossible without them. I’m not so sure that we are going to do without them in the future! [Axel] We are conscious we have had the chance to be known because of our interest and technical skills in Special effects and animation. It’s something no related to our education: we consider ourselves as filmmakers, not Special effects specialists. [B] Tell me a little bit of the origins of The Matrix XP. [Axel] With The Matrix XP it was the right thing at the right moment. Back in 2003 there was a lot of talking about online video. But there was no Youtube or similar sites. And Antoni Roig Telo para Betacinema

1

Interview with Axel and Henning Ricke (The Ricke Bros)

when we did The Matrix XP The Matrix Reloaded was just about to be released surrounded by secrecy. Fans were crazy looking for anything related to the Matrix sequel. And when they googled ‘matrix’, then they found at the top The Matrix XP. Suddenly we had millions of download requests. Even our ISP (the second largest one in Germany) had to disconnect our server because of heavy traffic. We received thousand of mails from fans, hundreds everyday!. [B] Any call from Warner Bros? [Henning] Yes, at the second week. Legal department. They told us that we could make and distribute the movie, but we couldn’t make any money out of it. It was frustrating having a success story like that and not being able to sell it and make any profit from it. It would have been nice! (laughs). With The Matrix XP we were even asked by computer magazines around the world in order to include the movie along their DVD material. The only thing that pissed ourselves off was that the movie was used without our consent for the promotion of a software package. And we didn’t even use that software!

[B] What do you thing about the emergence of sophisticated fan movies, like Revelations, during this decade? [Axel] We think the fan movement is very interesting. We know that The Matrix XP is considered a fan movie, even if we are not really fans. We’ve never been to a fan convention. In fact, we like the first Matrix movie, but we think the other two are crap. The Matrix XP was conceived as an experiment in Special effects. What we don’t like is when fan movies just try to reproduce the original movies. What it’s interesting is when they are able to offer a new look on the original universe, when they show something different. [Henning] In fan films people who are not professional filmmakers can do things that are close to Hollywood movies (well, maybe not that close, but at least are quite decent). [B] Let’s talk about D-I-M… According to your three projects, it seems that you like the combination of comedy and science fiction… [Henning] It is true that we like the combination of comedy and fantasy. Anyway, with D-IM the comedy element was more in the background, not so evident. In fact, D-I-M is a very different approach. Not a spoof, but an original idea, a fairly serious subject about a nearfuture society where the main human aspiration is to be perfectly efficient and useful to the State. [Axel] It was also a very different approach to production. We paid it 1/3 from our pockets, while the remaining 2/3 of the budget came from a public fund. D-I-M was very complex to make and full of Special effects.

Antoni Roig Telo for Betacinema

2

Interview with Axel and Henning Ricke (The Ricke Bros)

[Henning] We gathered a team, including professionals, whereas for The Matrix XP we recruited just friends. D-I-M’s budget was at about 40000 €; The Matrix XP was just about 2000, most of it spent in expensive leather costumes (laughs). [B] Why did you choose not to deliver the whole movie trough the Internet and why did you choose to make a 30’ movie? [Axel] D-I-M was a much more complex and expensive effort, and we wanted to get some of the money back this time. Anyway, D-I-M has been showed in Festivals around the world, even in Barcelona, in the Crypshow Festival last year. We didn’t feel like giving it away for free on the Internet… [Henning] With D-I-M we were almost in debt! [Axel] As for the length, we never thought on which one was the appropriate length for DI-M. We simply wrote the material we wanted and then made it. With the perspective of time, I’ve realized that it was not a good idea. 30 minutes is too long for a short but too short to be sold on DVD. But what we wanted is to use D-I-M as our ‘calling card’. Even if we haven’t make any money out of it, it has been showed in festivals around the world and has helped to rise new opportunities. But D-I-M is now two years old, so we definitely want to release it someway. We have been talking with different video on demand services, like Itunes, to release it. It might be also released on DVD through some of the Festivals where D-I-M has been present. [B] You have looked after very much the use of the Internet in all your releases. In which way you find the Internet useful for filmmakers? [Axel] The internet is a very powerful tool, especially for promotion purposes. We used lots of info related to the production of The Matrix XP because people were asking for it, and they wanted to know how we did it. In commercial DVDs there are almost always content about the making of the movie. And that’s because they know people are curious about that. [Henning] With D-I-M we designed a flash-based website, which was very immersive and connected to the story, but it was very difficult to update. That’s why we have turned to a more traditional website approach for Rosfeld. [B] Tell me a little bit about your new project, Rosfeld. What are the main differences in relation to your previous work? [Henning] The approach to Rosfeld has been very different. Whereas in D-I-M every shot was pre-defined and storyboarded to the last detail. Rosfeld, on the contrary, was centered on the story and the characters. For instance, we used a lot of steadycam, so we could follow the actors and find a more natural approach to the shooting. [B] What do you think of the trend of filmmaking based in the collaboration with communities? People like the team behind Star Wreck and Iron sky or projects like A Antoni Roig Telo for Betacinema

3

Interview with Axel and Henning Ricke (The Ricke Bros)

Swarm Of Angels try, in different ways, to engage communities in the very production process… [Axel] Well, we haven’t done that. It’s interesting, like in the cases you mention, but we wouldn’t know how to do it. Filmmaking is, honestly, not an example of democracy. It resembles more like a dictatorship (laughs). Through communities you can find somebody telling you: well, I can’t keep on working for this project, I’ve found a new day job or whatever. Or you can find a 3D artist who has been working on post-production for weeks at home, then he comes and says: “Hey, look at this, I’ve just finished’. And then it’s crap! How can you tell him? [Henning] For D-I-M we decided it was better to work together at the Dusseldorf University facilities, even if we knew that people could have better equipments at home. Communication is very important: even if you can have it of course through the Internet, it’s different. You need to supervise the developments of the whole project frequently. People working on their own at home tend not to show their work until it’s finished. And then it could be useless because it’s not good enough or simply because it doesn’t fit properly or it’s not detailed enough for an specific camera angle. And this is frustrating and people get pissed off, because there is a lot of hard work involved. Maybe people should be showing more of their work before it’s finished.

[B] Are you planning to produce for the Internet in the future or are you going to focus on more traditional outfits like cinematic exhibition? [Axel] Producing for the Internet and for other media are not opposite paths. The Internet is very good for promotional purposes and also for advertising (for example, viral videos). I think that the distinction between television and the Internet is more blurred everyday. One is in fact assimilating the other. That’s why we think it’s not a matter of having to decide between the Internet and other media. We can use all. [Henning] We definitely want to make feature length stories, in the mark of 90 minutes or more. But we may well be having a living with commercials in the near future. In commercials there is a needed the same skills we are using in making movies, and you can take a lot of advantages of the Internet. [B] That drives us to my last question. Where do you think are the main trends of innovation for filmmaking? [Axel] Well, 3D is being considered as the ‘next big think’, but I honestly think it’s overrated. It’s a consequence of Hollywood going through a crisis. They did it before, in the fifties, the seventies or the eighties and never quite worked. It’s true that nowadays technology is much better, but the question is that if you don’t have a good story, it won’t look better on 3D. User Generated Content is almost familiar now. Everybody does it know. So it is hardly a new thing. It is important to take into account that the Internet has taken back the short into focus; it has made it a valuable format. The Internet asks for short-

Antoni Roig Telo for Betacinema

4

Interview with Axel and Henning Ricke (The Ricke Bros)

length content. Mobiles ask also for it... thanks to the Internet, the short has turned out to be profitable again.

[Henning] For me one tendency is to have real-time 3D model previsualization during the shooting process. In movies like Sin City or 300 you have most of the time an actor in front of a green screen and two years later you get the final result through post-production. When you shoot an actor who is supposedly at the top of a mountain, looking at a village at the end of the valley, all through green screens, you’d like to show some way how everything would look like through the monitor. It really demands an intense preparation for the scene, but it could make shooting and acting more natural and realistic. I see today that with digital technologies you can fix everything it in post-production. Everything ends up being in its right place, like in a painting. Now the dream of producing a movie that is exactly as the director had in mind is perfectly possible. However, everything is too perfect but at the same time you get the feeling that everything is too artificial. I miss the more ‘natural’, ‘imperfect’ look of the movies of the nineties, where not everything was subjected and controlled by Special effects. A movie is not great because you turn what you have in your mind exactly into the final product. It’s great when you have an excellent team that understands what you want, that can make it that way but also are able to contribute with their talent to make it even better. [B] Thank you guys for attending this interview and all the best for your projects. We will be following closely!

Antoni Roig Telo for Betacinema

5