Lionhearted, the diploma film of the Filmacademy Baden-Württemberg, is celebrating its German premiere at the 60th Nordic Film Days Lübeck (30.10.-04.11.18). The VR film will be shown to the wider public in the middle of the historical centre of Lübeck in a 360° dome.
Lionhearted (Löwenherz) tells the story of the 8-year old Rida, who lives in Athens at the Hotel City Plaza. The self-proclaimed “Best Hotel of Europe” has no minibar, no room service and no porters. In-fact it´s more like a squat in which refugees are living in a self-organised structure. In the last months, the film was screened at several international film festivals in the USA and in Canada, such as the renowned FIVARS Festival in Toronto, and the Chico Independent Film Festival California , where it won an award for the “Best New Media“. It is going to be also shown in Germany in the following few months; starting from 30.10- 4.11.2018 visitors can watch the film in the Full-Dome cinema in the centre of Lübeck. The Director of the film, Ricarda Saleh, illustrates: “It´s great that the film is getting such positive feedback and interest! In the current discussion on displaced people, the solution to bury one´s head in the sand is an absolute dead end. Instead we should debate possible ways of integration.” She continues: „The Hotel City Plaza is an extraordinary model. We are in a heated political situation in Germany, with widening extremes across the political spectrum- we need dialogue and exchange of ideas for an inclusive society” The Nordic Film Days in Lübeck has been showing 360° films now for three years. Ralph Heinsohn, the curator of immersive media at the Nordic Film Days, says: “We are overjoyed to be able to show Lionhearted at our festival in Lübeck. This sensibly told VR documentary is Zeitgeist media art.” The Nordic Film Days Lübeck is the only film festival in Germany and Europe which entirely focuses on films from the North and Northeast of Europe. The festival starts every year at the beginning of November, and shows the newest feature films, documentary films and shorts from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Island, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden. In addition the film festival creates a peephole into the filmic creations of north Germany. „This year we are showing 14 immersive films, sound installations and interactive VR experiences designed specifically for the dome. The settings of the stories take place over the continent, from the far North, stretching over the Mediterranean Sea and reaching towards the Middle East. 360° is an impressive narrated surrounding which becomes a wonderful group experience!”, enthuses the curator Ralph Heinsohn. The Director of Lionhearted, Ricarda Saleh, will be present at the 31.10.18 after the screening of her film (beginning: 18.00) for a Q&A. More info on the VR film Lionhearted (D: Löwenherz) can be found at the project blog at https://lionhearted360.weebly.com
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The 360° documentary Lionhearted was honored with the "Best New Media" award of The Chico Independent Film Festival (USA). The film festival took place September 27-30 2018 in Chico (California).
During our shooting in Athens we tried to document our work with the 360° camera and also our time with Rida at Hotel City Plaza. I would like to share with you two videos, which we created. The first video demonstrates how we shoot at public places. As soon as the camera was set, we run away and hid behind cars and doors. As you can imagine this was not an ideal form of film making..
Our second video shows the time during the week of shooting the film. The film team showed a lot of openness in interacting with the inhabitants of Hotel City Plaza - and patience to embrace the noise, cheekiness and endless creativity of the children. Rida invited us to celebrate her 9th Birthday with her. On our last day in Athens we were invited to a roof top party. Check out the video to find out more!
Last week the VR documentary Lionhearted celebrated its world premier at the Ivy Film Festival at Brown University in Providence, USA. The Director Ricarda Saleh was able to be present at the festival and represent the VR piece. Ivy Film Festival is one of the world’s largest film festivals for students, by students. Since 2001 the festival curates student films and since 2017 it added Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality projects. Every year renowned Hollywood filmmakers participate at panels. In the recent years Robert De Niro, Tilda Swinton and Shia laBeouf were among the speakers. As part of the VR Arcade several 360° and VR projects were exhibited. Next to Lionhearted three other projects were Cinematic VR pieces. In addition two interactive VR experiences for Oculus Rift and two installation projects were exhibited. The reaction to Lionhearted were mostly positive. The viewers were intrigued by the spirit of the main character Rida. Many visitors were deeply touched by Ridas story. They were very emotional after taking off the VR headset and needed some time to get back to reality. The VR Arcade was coordinated by Adam Hersko-Ronatas. He wrote an interesting essay on Virtual Reality: How it´s used and why it matters on the Medium blog of the festival.
Narrating in 360° space is a great challenge. As a DOP you have to free yourself from the usual, the well-known resolution concepts no longer work. Documentary, which is already subject to a certain element of chance, becomes even more unpredictable. With the attempt to view the 360° room as a flat screen we tried to find our own concept for working with VR. We searched for visually interesting places like perspectives through mirrors, looks through doors and windows. This offered us the opportunity to tell little visual stories in addition to our main plot. From a technical point of view, working with a GoPro rig is challenging. If one camera fails, which can easily happen in the summer heat in Athens, the whole shot is gone. Data backup and management must be operated very meticulously. Only a low-res preview by radio, by an additional two-eyed VR camera, is possible. To cope with the challenges of Virtual Reality storytelling we directed the viewer’s attention through visual and additives impulses. By using every 360° sphere as a big screen to show consecutive “cuts“ side by side, we surrounded the viewer with different events and gave him the opportunity to conceive the situation as it is happening around him. As we were shooting the project in 2D we created depth by choosing sets with a broad horizontally staggered arrangement. Thus we looked for places in Athens which naturally fit to this concept. In the vertical axis we wanted to give the viewer more opportunity to look around. Athens offers a lot of appropriate places since it was built in a valley between two mountains leading down to the Mediterranean sea in the south-west. In the city centre, many narrow sloes between high-rise buildings offered the possibility for telling not only views through streets, but also heights. In certain situations we lowered the camera to a child’s point of view. By recreating the refugee child’s low angle view on Athens we wanted to imply a certain feeling of being lost and also subtle bewilderment. For more information on 360° camera work and VR filmmaking I recommend the following article of Georgy Molodtsov How to learn 360 filmmaking? Michael Throne, DOP of Lionhearted April 2017 On recording sound for Lionhearted - a VR documentary: Check out the field report of Marcus Fass the sound engineer on recording 360° sound. Looking back on our shoot in Athens during September 2016, I still remember the challenges that where brought upon us and how I prepared the audio setup to compensate for the new situation with a 360 camera. A 360-degree shot makes the use of a regular boom impossible, especially for a documentary, where the action often happens in unpredicted ways. Often I couldn’t tell where the main focus would be in post production. As a result I needed to be able to record sound coming from all directions. At the same time I had to record with a channel format that would allow interactive panning and listening back to the sound, depending on the users head-movement and viewing-angle, later on. My setup still had to be completely battery-powered and light enough, for me to be able to carry it around a whole day. Once I figured out the workflow, and knew how to combine my lav-mics with my main-mic, it was a matter of anticipating the upcoming scene as best as I could, carefully setting levels, pressing record, quickly hiding out of the shot and listening back. This was quite an interesting and refreshing change compared to “regular“ documentary-work. Depending on the location, the occasional backup shotgun-mic to a second recorder came in very handy. Fortunately, our crew was very focused and in most cases we had more than enough time to setup and get a feeling for our surroundings. Some of the most fun situations, however, were those when we did a guerilla-style-shot and had to set up as fast as you could, hit record, run, and hope that video and sound would be recorded in the way you anticipated. Sometimes you only got one chance to get it right. For further information check out this blog post on spartial audio by Robert Hernandez! Marcus Fass, April 2017 In the end of August 2016 I came to Athens to research the current refugee situation. I had the idea in my head to shoot a documentary with a young girl as the main protagonist one month later. I have to admit, that as a documentary Director I was also constantly looking for a girl with character, spirit and endurance. The girl must have to have a mixture of spontanity and creativity and patience, curiosity and concentration. Shooting 360° the young girl had to understand the function of the camera, so she wouldn´t interact in the stiching zones.
I spend weeks at different community centers, refugee shelters and had the chance to visit the refugee Camp Skaramagas several times. My journey led me to Hotel City Plaza. This very special hotel is a self-organised refugee shelter. I saw a mixture of hope, desperation and idealism. I kept going to City Plaza again and again. I volunteered in the kitchen, I met many new friends. People shared their stories with me. Their hopes and wishes. Refugees, volunteers. Then between this sizzling place, full of poeple, full of children screaming, laughing and playing I met Rida and her family. It took me some weeks until I had enough courage to ask Ridas parents if they could imagine Rida to be part of my film. I explained them the project and my idea and they agreed. So we knew - Rida would be our star. Who is Rida? Rida was 8 years old, when we shoot the film. She turned 9 the day after our last shooting day. Rida is witty, full of spirit, very intelligent and a language ace. Her mother tongue is Urdu but she was able to speak English on a good level, so we could communicate through out the whole project very well in English. Rida also speaks Greece and tested me on some very easy expression I kept forgetting again and again. She is a self confident child. A great role model for others, giving hope to many in doubt. Sometimes it seemed this child is not afraid of anything. Of course that is not true. Throughout the escape Rida experienced some dark moments. Her family had to fleed Pakistan being threatened by the Taliban. Rida tells of her fears in our documentary. We get to know the different facets of a young girl, who can inspire us. Rida inspired me, for sure. The crew behind Lionhearted is a mix of students of the Filmacademy Baden-Württemberg and some amazing Greek guys we met on the way.
Also the amazing post pro team couldn`t be on the photo like our editor Elena Schmidt, our Technical Director and Lead Sticher Mahmoud Hisham and our Comp artist Jörg Schmidt. Feel free to stalk our crew member on the Team section! ;) |