Meet the Producer

Siggi O. entering the studio...




... and talking to Bernd.

Props part 1

Siggi did this wonderfull label for Prostolny Potok's favourite brand: Piwo Bier.

Two guests at the bar

This is Bernd Czelnik. He plays two guests at the bar, of whom one is disguised as a mummy. In real life he doesn't drink alkohol at all.

At the customs

I ordered some foetuses made of plastic at Claudia Rindlers creature store: rotten-art.com, in Switzerland. Unfortunately switzerland doesn't belong to the EU, so I had to spend one afternoon at the customs to buy them out.

Dubbing

We tried something different, we recorded all speach and dialogue before shooting. That may seem a bit odd, but it worked out well. Reason for this was: There are only working two professional actors on the set, so i can avoid bad speach-performances. 2009 I went to Dresden and visited two talented actors from "Theater der Jungen Generation" . Drummer Tobias Fuchs opened his studio for us and improvised a booth for voice recording. Ulrike Sperberg and Ulrich Wenzke (who also act as Magda and Edek in the movie) spoke all parts, we did all recording on one afternoon.

I started filming a few weeks later with Ralph Stegmaier, who plays the role of Edek's "friend" Roman. The prerecorded dialogues where looped, and Ralph mimicked to Ulrichs voice.

So, this is Ralph, preparing to be Roman.

This empty (and by now demolished) one has become Magda's place, for example.

Prostolny Potok

This are some of the pictures Siggi did around the area where we live. This is how we turn Offenbach into Prostolny Potok.

Permutations

I rewrote the 1995 version of AM2ONIAK two times, but kept the structure of the old version. I dropped unnecessary szenes, cut out lots of dialoge and –most important– switched language to an artificial german-english mix.

As for the storyboards, i had to complete more versions (I think I did five or six of them, together with the ones I did during the ninetees). For shooting I blend two versions together: The last I did and -surprise– the drawings of the unpublished comic-book.

Here are two pages of each version in comparison. The one which is "better" drawn is the old version. The sketch-look is actual the shooting board for most of the scenes. Even I did professional storyboarding from time to time, I avoid to give them a "finishing" look, sketches will do better for me in most cases.

Turn 1995 into 2010

This is a concept-drawing I did ca. 1995. Edek doesn't wear his welder-glasses, and has a ridiculous hairdo instead, but –appart from that– fits in the mood the film has today. The Story wasn't called AM2ONIAK then, instead it formed under "100 YEARS OF MEDICINE AND ENTERTAINMENT " (proposterous title, I know by now)

The original concept AM2ONIAK (or ammonia) was written 16 years ago in Berlin. Originally intendend as a super-8-short-film, I ran out of money right before planning the shoots, I even had to sell my camera. I decided to switch my storyboards into a small-comic-book, but my publisher went broke before printing.

Script, storyboards and the pages of my unpublished comic-book where hidden in shoebox, I squezzed some tears, moved around and forgot this episode of my bohemian past.

Than, a few years ago, shortly before finishing our short CELLULOSE, AM2ONIAK came back in to my mind.