This is an academy that welcomes dreaming and the invention of stories. And when everything turns out well, it all comes true, at least on the big screen. 71638 Ludwigsburg doesn’t exactly sound as if Hollywood is just around the corner. Nevertheless, the 2007 Student Oscar went to a filmmaker from Ludwigsburg. Such awards can motivate the winners, and Martin Busker is no exception. He got his first camera at the age ofeleven, shot short films during the summer holidays, trained as a media designer in sound and image, was assistant to the famous German director Rosa von Praunheim and is about to gain his diploma in film directing from the film academy. “I never really thought I could direct. I thought I was more of a technician who knows how to handle a camera and edit.” But his short films HerzHaft and Höllenritt prove the opposite. They are both showing on German television in 2009. What’s more, Höllenritt is being screened in February at the Berlinale. So the red carpet awaits him at Berlin’s international film festival.
In the meantime the 28-year-old student is focusing on his next big challenge: Martin Busker is working with two fellow students, a screenwriter and a producer, on his debut 90-minute feature film. With a touch of awe he says he’s never made such a complex and expensive film before. But he feels his studies have prepared him well. After all the course in Ludwigsburg is not just a matter of dreaming; it concentrates especially on acquiring a solid grasp of the knowledge and hands-on skills in the highly competitive film business.
“I’m studying film in Ludwigsburg.” Such a statement probably provoked a slightly condescending smile in 1991 when the first 25 students signed on at the film academy. Until then people studied film at the major academies in Berlin, Potsdam or Munich, but not in a charming Swabian town near Stuttgart that most people have to look up on the map. Now, after almost 18 years, the film academy is nearing the age of majority, and has become one of Germany’s top addresses for film studies. It has gained international recognition. Its young talents regularly win awards at international film festivals and get to know the Hollywood dream factory at a workshop in Los Angeles. Gone are the days when Ludwigsburg was a no-name in the film world.
Today there are 450 prospective film professionals studying in the redbrick buildings of the former barracks. The 14 subjects cover the whole spectrum of film ranging from directing and screenwriting through production and camerawork to film music and animation. The campus has everything that is needed for filmmaking: studios, film set workshops, a casting office and a technical equipment storeroom. It even has its own cinema and a students’ café called The Blue Angel after the film classic starring Marlene Dietrich. In the academy buildings you walk by innumerable posters announcing the students’ own productions, pass promising filmmakers with handheld cameras, encounter a team heading for the studio to work on the set for the next shooting. The courtyard is often transformed into a small-scale film set when students practise overhead camera movements with a crane.
“Our courses are very much practice-oriented. We work with over 300 lecturers from the film and media sectors, and we produce around 200 films a year, which is more than other academies,” says academy director Professor Thomas Schadt. The study programme is in big demand with between 800 and 900 applications every year and around 100 places for new students. Professor Schadt says: “Filmmaking calls for a whole range of personal characteristics. Self-assertion, patience and teamwork are certainly among the basic essentials. But the courage to be subjective and the desire to develop one’s own character are equally important.”
Apart from all this, talent is another important ingredient. Daniela D. König, 30, can tell gripping stories with fascinating characters, and she really enjoys writing. The budding screenwriter grew up in a film family and she vividly demonstrated her gift in the entrance exam. “I handed in a draft screenplay for a mad mystery story. I reckoned the film academy might think I’m crazy.” But her imagination won her a place. During the first two years of study Daniela König completed an interdisciplinary foundation seminar programme, in which all new students participate. She attended lectures on film history and law, directed, learned how to handle the camera and make video clips. She is currently putting the finishing touches to her final practical project – a concept and screenplay for a TV series. No, it’s not a mystery story. This time it’s a comedy.
Comic hero Batman as a rubber doll and science fiction baddy Darth Vader as his dummy: welcome to the world of animation and special effects at the Institute of Animation, Visual Effects and digital Postproduction. The institute has already collaborated with star director Roland Emmerich on his Hollywood blockbuster Independence Day which won an Oscar for best visual effects. The students here love powerful computers, sophisticated animation software and, of course, films. One example is 24-year-old Peter Hacker, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones fan. He says: “The great thing about studying animation is that there’s just no limit to playful imagination. I like visually impressive films, where people applaud with enthusiasm – in other words cool films that win awards.”
But instead of film prizes, student director Martin Busker has other things in mind: long evenings with his screenwriter in their shared room discussing the next challenging film project. By the time shooting begins in early 2010 the precise narrative has to be finished, finance secured, the film team including actors has to be complete and the locations have to be fixed. So Busker still has a good deal of work to do. But the up-and-coming director looks determined. His dream of his first feature film will hopefully become reality on the biggest possible cinema screen.
