Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download
ePaper created 2012-09-05, 10:45:04 | version 1.24.0
Perspektivwechsel| HFF 89 „Man musste jedes Semester einen Film drehen, bekam etwas Bargeld, eine Kamera, Rohmaterial, und lernte, wie man mit der Kamera umgeht … Und weil das Geld knapp war, mussten die Kurs- teilnehmer … reihum als Beleuchter, Kameramann, Darsteller oder Tonmann bei den Filmen der anderen mitarbeiten. So haben wir Film gelernt.“ HFF-Studenten am Set des Dokumentarfilms „Was wird bleiben von uns“ (Buch und Regie: Knut Karger), in Produktion 2007 Bernd Eichinger on the beginning of his career Bernd Eichinger is the epitome of the successful producer, so singular a figure that you wonder what he has that the others don’t. He got started while studying at the HFF, 1970 –73. “I am convinced that producing films means understanding films. Back in MGM’s heyday when the studio bosses were still scrap metal and fur dealers, it was enough to have a feeling for the business. To understand the films they took on people like Irving Thalberg.” At film school Eichinger learned that it is a long way from dream to realization. “The most important thing is putting your idea to the test. We had to make a film every semester. We learned to work with the camera and lighting and to use the editing table. And there was little money and the eleven course participants had to work on each other’s films as lighting technician, cameraman, performer or sound man. That’s how we learned about film. … But then you realize that you’ve got nothing on film that’s called a ‘magic movie moment’. The weaknesses lay mostly in not paying enough attention to the narrative and stressing the atmos- phere. … A bitter experience: meagre story, weak images, no theatrical presence.” But Eichinger gained an all-embracing understanding of the role of the producer. “Today you have to choose whether you want to produce or direct. This is a big mistake, because almost everything important for production can be learned on the side. As a producer you have to distinguish between a good and a less good story, to have a vision, but instead you are taught to be a glorified book keeper. This only builds barriers – here the producer who’s worried about the money, there the poor director – that’s not what it’s about. As a producer you’re not the line producer, but someone who realizes a vision creatively.”