Kruder & Dorfmeister
”Johnson” (Official Video)
> directed together with stefan pecher
Nominated at:
– EnergaCameraImage 2021
featured:
– BOOOOOOOM.TV
– Wonderland Magazine
– Mixmag Brazil
– Magnetic Magazine
– derStandard
– FM4
– Fazemag
– Electronic Groove
a legendary project for my two absolute superstars.
hard work always pays off. couldn’t be more proud!
Credits
a HØVN films GmbH Production
Directors – Oscar Pecher x Stefan Pecher
Director of Photography – Moritz Uthe
Executive Producer – Manuel Nguyen
1st Assistant Producer – Peter Scherb
2nd Assistant Producer – Alexander Mandl
Choreographer – Lima Pecher
1st Camera Assistant – Florian Noever
Gaffer – Alexander Sprenger
Best Girl Grip – Judith Dornetshuber
Best Girl Grip – Sina Lang
Dolly Grip – Leander Orthofer
H/MU – Camilla Bartha
Production Design – Sarah Heidenreich
Production Design – Alexandra Sascha Latiy
Catering – Alexander Mandl
VFX/Props – Studio Formlos
VFX Supervisor – Jascha Süss
Props Designer – Matthias Timo Finding
Compositing/Animation - Yunus Sezer
3D Surface Design – Leo Miedaner
Music – Peter Kruder x Richard Dorfmeister
Editor – Stefan Pecher
Colorist – Mike Bothe
Titles – Oscar Pecher
Dancer – Lima Pecher
Golden Eye – Fritz Schwärzler
Bathtub Girl – Taisiya Nikitina
Choas Libarian – Florian Senekowitsch
Dining Room Boy – Nico Dapeci
Television Man – Christopher Legner
Sleeping Grandpa – Günther Graf
Watching Grandma – Anita Glatz
Standing Girl – Marie Radlegger
Special Thanks – Florian Draxler, Lukas Kronsteiner, Ernst Dangl GmbH, Mike Lights, ARRI Rental Wien, ARRI Berlin Mitte, Mohanad Suwaed
Supported by Wien Basiskultur – CASH.FOR.CULTURE
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Concept
The idea to create a music video for Kruder & Dorfmeister's first release after 25 years of musical break came up spontaneously during a nightly meeting together with the two musicians and their management. At that time I was working together with DoP Moritz Uthe on the Covid-19 postponed, further realization of our long-term film project, when the idea was born to support the upcoming release "Johnson", planned for autumn, with a music video. I immediately insisted on prelistening the track in the studio, the project of a new release after a 25 year break was completely new to me and I was hooked.
When I heard the track for the first time, pictures immediately came into my mind. The cinematic, atmospherically dense sound, supported by emotional vocal samples, reduced breakbeats and deep basslines gave me a lot of visual input. Some place that has stood still in time, the dark corridors, the mysterious musical mood that fits to the current time, combined with a young, sensitive leading actress whose sluggish movements increasingly develop towards dance as the track progresses. It matched perfectly, the sounds reflected everything I had thought about during the quarantine, just waiting to be packed into picturesque images.
The schedule was extremely tight, the budget very limited due to the current situation in the music industry - the pressure was high. It should not only be the first music video by Kruder & Dorfmeister, but also the kick-off to a new era. The image of the two pioneers of the "Viennese sound", whose mixture of downtempo, electro and trip-hop had had a significant influence on the international electronic scene in the nineties, demanded a high-class music video that should find an international audience, not only because of its visual realization, but also because of the subject matter dealt with.
I knew right away that we had a lot of ideas and asked my cousin Stefan Pecher to direct the video together with me in order to share the tasks and to be able to invest enough time in the decisive details. When I played the track to him for the first time, we immediately talked about very similar approaches - from that moment on I knew that the cooperation would be a success...
Personally, it was important to us to create a music video that would uplift the music rather than compete with it. We were given absolute freedom by the musicians during the creation process and were allowed to dream, experiment and explore. The song is very expressive in itself and rewards anyone who takes the time to listen carefully - so it was important for us to capture our personal feelings and build on them both narratively and visually.
Quite early in the development process we started to cooperate with the Studio for experimental media „Formlos“, to work on the right visual style for the props and VFX elements. We always wanted to make sure that this music video would feel credibly „organic“ at all times. Fortunately, we had already found a concrete idea of how we wanted the scene around the monolith to look. Together with Jascha Süss, Mathias Timo Findig and Yunus Sezer we worked on the appearance to find the right visual solution. Creating the simplicity of this rock-like shape, as well as the right balance of edge and surface details and material variations, was the biggest challenge for us. The aim was to find a porous, black material which looks naturally and does not appear like current or future technology.
During the creative process, the search for a dominant, previously unfamiliar main element of the design quickly resulted in the choice, supported by the conceptual approaches of the storyline. Masks are part of our daily life - we have quickly become aware that it seems mysterious to have to deal without the facial expressions of the mouth in conversations. We have taken the phenomenon of masks and went one step further: a virtual, alien reality as a digital isolating mask covering the eyes, which not only makes them „blind“, giving them unsteady, groping movements, but also completely deprives the viewer of sight up to half of the music video, which again brings with it a highly mystical character. Another studio „Formlos“, was assigned to create 3D printed, highly luminous Mask, tailored to the heads of the actors. The aim was to create a form in contrast to the monolith, or in other words to develop a material next to the design that definitely feels like future technology.
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Creation
The production process was extremely intensive due to the complexity of our concept compared to our limited budget and resources. The pre-production was running at full speed for a little more than a week, especially the search for the perfect location turned out to be more difficult than expected to find a location that lived up to our concept. We knew that this was a very important aspect of our film, as we didn't have the opportunity to do a lot of set changes.
Our executive producer Manuel Nguyen, DoP Moritz Uthe, Stefan Pecher and I spent several days searching for this specific location. We made three day trips across Austria and Germany to look for the right place. After calling different people and scouts, we found a privately owned mansion amidst nature in Lower Austria, which we immediately fell in love with. The impressing, but very much in need of renovation, mansion with a chapel and a manor house, whose history can be dated back to the 13th century, was perfect for the concept. When the owner turned out to be extremely cooperative and fond of the idea, we knew that after the efforts of the last few days we had finally found what we were looking for.
The crew consisted mainly of fellow colleagues from the film business. The average age of 20-25 years was quite young, we knew that it would take a lot of passion, teamwork and perseverance to turn our plans, a six minute music video, into reality within two days of shooting. The core team, of the production, direction and camera, was already well-rehearsed at that time. We had implemented all projects in a similar constellation over the past years and knew that it was up to us to move forward with a well coordinated performance. Besides a well-proven, fast working 1st AC, we knew that it would be essential to have at least three experienced lighting technicians for the scenes illuminated exclusively with artificial light as well as an extensive lighting setup on location - we couldn't leave anything to chance.
We worked out the costume design ourselves in order to dress the talents in a way that they would feel comfortable in their roles and appear timeless, reduced. We didn't want the outfits to look too modern or futuristic to give the partly metaphorically overloaded scenarios neutral elements. Extravagant dressings would probably have led to the designed environments being perceived differently and losing intensity. We mixed mostly pastel-coloured clothes from local brands and original clothes brought by the cast to ensure authenticity.
The production design was a crucial point in order to make use of the existing surrounding, but also to structure and classify it to the extent necessary to develop the picturesque, visual identity of the film. The production design duo Alexandra Sascha Latiy and Sarah Heidenreich were aware of how well thought out the individual rooms were, so we documented every detail during the first scouting visit in order to be able to prepare the overall picture without problems even from a distance. We talked a lot about how to manage the location in which we had placed our characters - how mysticism can be created skillfully and in which rooms it needs certain extras to convey the written down emotion decisively. We worked a lot with metaphors and orientated ourselves towards paintings of the baroque, but still tried not to change the mansion extensively in the state we found it.
Choosing the right talents was another time-consuming factor. It was soon clear that the leading actress should be a young, sensitive girl, reflecting the initially shy emotions of growing up, and becoming increasingly self-confident as the video progressed, until she finally breaks out into strong, controlled movements. For days we searched for the right dancer with acting confidence, until by chance I found her in my sister Lima. With the other talents we wanted to create a variety of characters - from young to old. We chose the streetcasting route, phoned through our contact lists, and finally determined our characters the night before the shoot.
We shot on the Arri Alexa Mini System - when choosing the optics we picked the characteristic P+S Kowa Evolution Anamorphics, which were all provided by our production company HØVN films as a great support. We considered for a long time whether spherical optics would not fit better to the visual concept, but finally we decided very carefully for the anamorphics in order to be able to use the resulting width optimally for the representation of the rooms. For the macro shots we worked with clear filters and pieces of broken glass by which we could create subtle reflections in some scenes.
It was important for us that the cinematography feels very naturalistic, yet painterly stylized. We wanted to create a very specific effect and feeling with our images, which fit to the music of Kruder & Dorfmeister. Therefore, we mainly used artificial light, which means that we were independet regarding the unstable weather conditions and hardly any daylight, so we could concentrate on our production. The camera movement was also very important to us: the whole visual aesthetic is based on very static, slow dolly movements, as well as calm handheld shots, which are deliberately broken at a special point in the music video to give the story extra impact. Together with Moritz we talked a lot about when, how and why the camera would move in which way. We defined specific movements for each part of the track that were in accordance with the narrative structure of the story.
Since the script was written with a strong reference and defined timecode to the structure of the song, we were able to complete the editing process quickly. However, it took us several night shifts to get our relatively complex VFX projects under control in cooperation with Jascha Süss, Mathias Timo Finding and Yunus Sezer from Studio „Formlos". Thanks to an intensive VFX planning, well reconsidered implementation on set and an incredible effort by the three of them, we were able to complete our plans in time and without any major compromises.
For the colorgrading, we carefully selected the German freelance colorist Mike Bothe, who had already attracted our attention several times in the past months with his characteristic, mysterious blue-grey look. We had a clearly defined vision, again inspired by paintings, which Mike was able to realize magnificently, giving the video a very stylized look.
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