Younger brothers don’t have an easy life.
Especially when they have an older brother who always comes up with new crazy ideas like the following one.

– “Hey, let’s do a postapocalyptic shoot out, I wanna build some miniatures and do some VFX shots!
…and you can step around in a crater we will find somewhere and then I replace the background with our postapocalyptic settlement! What do you think?”

– “Ok, let’s do it!”

My brother, Jim, me and some friends then shot test footage for two days in a park in Vienna and filmed three days in a quarry somewhere in Lower Austria. In summer. 37 degrees Celsius. And my little brother was wearing a knee long leather coat, together with thick pants, my old Doc Marten’s shoes, a leather hat… you name it.

It was a fry pan. Below you can see some stills from the postapocalyptic short film Project 17 (which I will finish postproducing as soon as I have gotten Echoes, the animated science fiction short film, done).

Then I would come up with something like:

– “Hey, Jimmy, how are you?”

– “Fine. What’s going on in your mind. I know this look of yours 🙂 ”

– “I want to shoot a science fiction short film. All shot in front of a green screen! It’s called Echoes and we have a real actress!”

– “Wow, that sounds cool!”

Two months later we spent a week in a green screen fry pan. 5.000 Watts of light. 36 degrees Celsius outside. And Jim did all of the production assistance, without ever complaining.

You can see a still below as well as some shots from the wrap party.

One day, I had another idea. Something shot quick and dirty, without lengthy postproduction. A shooting practise.

– “Hey, hey, Jim! I got this camera rig lying around. Let’s shoot something. Just for fun. We just break into an abandoned building, you walk around and look cool and I shoot the whole thing.”

– “Do you have a location already? Do you know where you want to shoot?”

– “No.”

– “Do you have a car to get there?”

– “Eeeeehm…No. Can you get one?”

– “Yeah. But I always tell you, you gotta learn to drive, John!”

– “Yes, you’re right, but you know… I hate driving. So you’re in?”

– “Yes, of course, I know you don’t have anyone else to ask! But I want something to eat! Take something to eat!”

– “No problem, I’ll do sandwiches.”

– “And take water!”

– “Yeah, I’ll take water this time. Promised!”

What came out was a scene similar to the one described above. But this time, the knee long leather coat was black!

I’ll see if I can find some stills from this shoot on one of my hard drives and will post them in one of the next posts.

My brother is my most loyal buddy. Without him, many of my shoots would not have worked out.

He just got his master in – I think accounting or something? Just kidding, he studied business and administration and though his time schedule is growing tighter every time, he still helps his brother out walking around in a super hot leather coat at midday – in summer.