The best scenes were filtered out of over 3 hours of video footage recorded during the shoot and finally the following short 1:34 minute video was created. Just in time for the half-year anniversary, we publish the making-of of the first fileee spot here! Please sit back and enjoy:
We had set ourselves big goals: The first fileee spot should convey lightness and functionality and of course be something special. However, instead of relying on complete animation like many others, we wanted to have real scenes with real actors and real documents. For the realisation, we therefore secured the support of ThinkTank Produktion from Berlin. Like fileee, ThinkTank was also founded by friends after graduation - even before shooting began, it was clear that the joint work on the spot would be harmonious!BERLIN, 30 March 2012, weather: slightly cloudy, 8 degrees After a year of preparation, we met with the ThinkTank team at the filming location, a private flat in Berlin. The storyboard was in place, the supply of coffee and good food was secured and 8 motivated people were ready to write advertising history. But first the flat had to be completely cleared out. A casual warm-up for the creative team around the directors Elias Frobel and Daniel Bendert, the main actor Arne and Eike Thies, one of the founders of fileee, who was on site as backup.
Filming got off to a good start, but paper chaos is stubborn. The first challenge was therefore the key scene when Arne throws the piles of paper off the balcony and seals the fate of the documents for the time being!
For this split-screen scene, up to three cameras were used simultaneously at times. Besides the technical challenge, the action content was also noticeable. The paper documents fell onto the passing street, onto the neighbours' balconies or got stuck in the trees. Thanks to the motivated collectors in the team, all the consequences of the action scene were completely eliminated. At fileee, no document is left behind.
At 1 a.m. the last scene was shot. For the so-called "Italian Shot", a letterbox open on the back was mounted. In the spot, Arne looks through the slot and sees the source of the paper chaos: bills, contracts and reminders. The shooting day ended with the desperate look into the full letterbox (the hallway in the background was subsequently inserted in front of a bluescreen). But the tragedy of the scene did nothing to dampen the mood, because the happy ending was known to all. Done and happy, the team called it a day at 2 a.m.!
After the shoot is long before the spot
Now the work began at the desk. We had Eike do most of the editing and 3D animation in-house. He sat at his PC for nights on end, fine-tuning the effects. Despite powerful software and hardware, he also had to resort to traditional visualisation techniques from time to time. Interesting detail: The music was also created afterwards at fileee. Our iOS developer Christoph can do much more than just programming and therefore composed the excellent background music.
Already during the shoot it became clear that the storyboard would not be implemented 1:1 and in post-production many scenes fell victim to editing. But the finished fileee spot made us forget all our efforts:
We are still enthusiastic about the spot today! We would like to thank all those involved, the team from ThinkTank Productions and the main actor Arne. In the meantime, a large fast food chain seems to have developed a taste for his likeable manner:
