Imagine it is lockdown and you have to live with your best buddy’s girlfriend in one apartment, while he is trapped somewhere on the other side of the world… and after a while, you both start to like it. #keepdistance
#cast
#press
#synopsis
Everything shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Timmo (Thomas Bartling), is trapped abroad. His best buddy Ben (Jörg Pauly) just got kicked out of his house by his (now ex-) girlfriend. Timmo offers him his couch even though he’s not at home. Timmo also forgot to mention that there’s a new woman in his life, Sara (Farina Violetta Giesmann), who already moved in. The thought of being together with his best friend’s girlfriend during the lockdown makes Ben extremely uncomfortable, especially because Sara’s open-heartedness creates a lot of awkward situations for him.
#about_the_film
It began right when in Germany shops were closed and distancing rules were issued. For a long time, actor Thomas Barling and filmmaker Roman Gonther had planned to pull off a project together, but never found the time. Until now. Everything came to a standstill. All the projects were cancelled. Suddenly, they had all the time in the world with nothing to do. But of course, this was the worst of times to attempt to shoot a movie together. So, the initial plan was, to develop something for the time after. But deep in their hearts Bartling and Gonther knew that somehow, they had to do the project NOW. So, they developed a concept to make a movie under strict distancing rules. It took only three weeks from the first conversation to the finished script.
When Bartling set down in his garden one day during Eastern he originally planned to just write an expose, but ended up with the first draft of the complete screenplay… and only two weeks later shooting began… It was clear from the beginning that Bartling would play Timmo. But within only a week actors had to be found who were not only right for the parts of Sara and Ben but were also living together in one household… with Farina Violetta Giesmann und Jörg Pauly the filmmakers were lucky to have found the perfect couple.
The whole film consists of Skype conversations between the three characters. To meet the COVID-19 distancing rules the film was shot at the home of the actors. There had been two locations in Stuttgart and in Frankfurt.
Director Roman Gonther was sitting in his office, also in Frankfurt, but on the other side of town. The production never brought people physically together who weren’t living together at the time.
The film was directed via Skype. But the filmmakers decided to not just record the skype conferences or use the smartphone cameras, but to shoot the movie on remote controlled 4k cameras. The whole new workflow was developed in record time and the setups were sent around to the actors and all they had to do is place the camera and switch it on. From this point on Roman Gonther could remotely control the cameras from his desktop 200 km away. There also were some light panels in the box. The actors were told where to put the lights to get a beautiful picture. The original plan was to make the images look like coming from a skype session, to add dropped frames and artifacts but when the team saw the quality and how great the images looked – well, it looked like it had been shot on a movie camera- they decided otherwise. They used a simple split screen with no UI overlay or anything, with two cameras that just show the perspective of a web cam but otherwise looks like a movie camera. It was much more beautiful, and it makes it easier for the audience to get attached to the story and the characters.
#cast & crew
Cast
Timmo: Thomas Bartling
Sara: Farina Violetta Giesmann
Ben: Jörg Pauly
Drehbuch: Thomas Bartling
Produzent: Roman Gonther & Thomas Bartling
Musik: Philipp Fabian Kölmel
Title Design: Christian Bigalk
Kostüme & Make Up: Daniela Werner
#distribution
Roman Gonther BVR.
Homburger Landstr. 99
60435 Frankfurt, Germany
mail: info(at)romengonther.de
phone : +49 69 74308756
