COMMERCIAL

A Tempestuous Task

	Director, Frank Mirbach, intermixed action-packed sailing scenes with soft, warm images of children.

Frank Mirbach and his camera crew were all at sea - a rough, cold, wet Mediterranean Sea. It was tough going. They were filming the 13-metre yacht 'Klenkes' and her crew as they battled with bad weather off the Greek Island of Levkas. To say they didn't mind the danger, the lashing waves, cold and seasickness would be untrue. But they worked enthusiastically; it was for a very good cause.

Euro Youth of Aachen, Germany, is a charity that helps handicapped children. It commissioned Mineworks Film of Aachen to make Seamiles 3000, a cinema commercial. The film would help raise funds to build a special meeting place where handicapped children could mix and play regularly with able-bodied children. A crew recruited from Aachen Euro Youth would sail 'Klenkes' across the Atlantic and 'sell' sections of the 3000 sea mile journey to sponsors. Director, Frank Mirbach, wanted the film to be emotionally effective. So he intermixed the action packed sailing scenes with soft warm images of three children -- one of whom has Down's Syndrome -- playing happily together. It works wonderfully well.

The rough seas ruled out many of the Steadicam shots planned for the yacht sequences. But Mirbach's team cleverly solved the problem by shooting from Steadibags instead. For other maritime scenes the camera crew secured the operator firmly outside the rails of the boat, so neither he nor his hand-held ARRI SRII left the boat ahead of time! He had a difficult task. Director Frank Mirbach -- not behind the camera himself on this occasion -- wanted shots of the boat keeling over at extreme angles!

The compact Super 16 SRII was the perfect camera with so many hand-held scenes. The Canon 8-64mm, T2.4 zoom lens, a Video assist and a Follow focus gave added flexibility in difficult conditions. Breaking waves often soaked the 4x4-filters with saltwater, making lens changing impractical.

For the shots of the children playing, Mirback highlighted the already warm atmosphere of the playroom with a Sepia 1 filter and small tungsten light units. Six 800W ARRIlites, a Dedolight 150W Masterset and a 4-bank Kino Flo Tungsten created a perfect balance. Two 1.2 kW ARRIsuns provided the 'daylight' from windows. Mirbach filmed in a soft, flowing motion, on Kodak Vision 250D film, shot from a Pick-Up Panther with Minijib. With proper breaks, the little actors behaved extremely professionally while having fun during the 12-hour shooting day.

Mirbach filmed the outdoor shots on the extraordinarily sharp Eastman EXR 50D film. Despite its modest rating of only 50 ASA it created no problems -- even in cloudy weather. Its cool bluish sea scenes contrasted nicely with the warm scenes of the children playing. The budget didn't run to professional actors. Instead, members of Euro Youth played their parts with fun and professionalism.

Gürtler and Pro Cine processed and telecined the negatives. After that, Mineworks cut the 16:9 video material in an AVID Media Composer. Mineworks sound designers added the music, voice over and specially created sound effects before further Dolby Digital processing followed at Soundvision in Cologne. Then Mineworks rendered each frame of the completed sequence to 2K resolution on a PowerMac G4 for transferring to 35mm negative. Pro Cine made the final production and colour correction.

Since November 2000, the commercial has been showing at cinemas throughout Germany and has also been shown on the German TV networks VIVA and DSF.

Data File

Seamiles 3000

Production Company - Mineworks Film, Aachen
Producer - Benno Pauls
Director - Frank Mirbach
Director of Photography - Frank Mirbach
Production Manager - Bastian Kreusing
1st Camera Assistant - Ramin Sabeti
2nd Camera Assistant - Jens Fischer
Casting & Styling - Susanne Wegmann
Avid Editor - Hannsjorg Tietze
Sound FX - Norbert Offermann, Guido Goetzenich
Graphics Design - Fritz Pascual y Layer

Sponsors of the Seamiles campaign were: Mineworks Film; Yacht School Dreyer; Expo-group 52; ASEAG and ContaCt Public Relations.