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Matthias Haag and Matthias Müller from the Lazi Academy, together with Tübingen student Travis Mendel, took on this challenge and created their nine-minute competition entry “Coppelius”. The film has now reached the final of the “168hours” competition, with the team the only German participants in the Top 20. No fewer than 82 teams from 12 nations took part in this international short film competition. The filmmakers now eagerly await the awards ceremony on April 12: “Coppelius” will be shown at the awards that evening as one of the last entries.
The idea behind the competition is simple. All participants receive a slogan and a Bible verse as the basis for a short story, which must be turned into a short film of no more than eleven minutes within two weeks.
The festival theme is “Free the captives”. The German team received the Bible verse from 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 16: “Live as free people who are God’s slaves, and do not misuse your freedom as a cover for evil”. In their film, Matthias Haag and Travis Mendel have director Matthias Müller tell a story of revolution: the revolution has won! Dictator Coppelius is on the run. While armed troops comb the capital in search of the hated former ruler, young Julia and her brother Michael seek refuge in their secret hideout. Here they encounter the man responsible for their family’s death and decades of tyranny.
To develop the story, Haag and Müller, both students in the graduating Film and Media Design class at the Lazi Academy Stuttgart, assembled a creative team of twelve academy students. A four-person team wrote the screenplay for “Coppelius” within a few days. “The challenges in producing a film are always the same: quality, time and money,” Matthias Haag explains. “We had a minimum of time, only a third of the normal budget for a diploma film, but the ambition to compete at an international level,” says producer Haag. Maximum creativity and flexibility were needed in every area of production. Six actors and a 36-person crew around cinematographer Tobias Utz and director Matthias Müller had to contend with pretty much everything that can make a production difficult. One day before filming began, the eleven-year-old lead actor pulled out. A new actor had to be cast within 24 hours. The assistant director remembered an eleven-year-old extra from a commercial production, who promptly stepped in. The female lead was cast with Christina Einböck, a student at the Ulm drama school. Klaus Rafalski from the Sandkorntheater in Karlsruhe spontaneously took on the male role.
Because the film was shot mainly at night, the crew also faced major logistical challenges. Everything from lighting equipment and catering to a hired toilet had to be organised. Once filming could begin, a flu virus struck, gradually reducing the crew by almost half: the lighting technician was out, the effects animator was laid low and the costume assistant was in bed with a fever. That the film could nevertheless be completed within the allotted time is almost a miracle. While other competitors filmed in Kenya with a 70-person crew and the most professional resources, “Coppelius” was made largely in a warehouse in Esslingen and in the industrial area in Plochingen.
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The fact that the ambitious young filmmakers nevertheless succeeded in creating a fine little work is demonstrated by the official festival trailer (www.168project.com/clipreel.cfm) opening with scenes from “Coppelius”.
The films are judged by a jury whose members include such renowned Hollywood producers as Ralph Winter (X-Men, Planet of the Apes), Howard Kazanjian (“Star Wars: Return of the Jedi), Mark Clayman (“The Pursuit of Happyness” with Will Smith), Bill Ewing (former Senior Vice President of Columbia Pictures), Gary Hall (Senior Vice President of Fox TV Post-Production) and Luke Schelhaas (“Smallville”).
On April 12 at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, the winner can expect prize money of 10,000 dollars alongside recognition and good contacts in the international film scene. Coppelius is to be shown at further German film festivals this year. Its German premiere will take place in Esslingen at the end of May. Coppelius is also to be released on DVD.
