BOOOM!
Fitting video and the 100th Anniversary of the First World War together. People from different countries created videos about that hard moments in their countries and especially in ther hometowns.
I was quite excited to prepare that kind of video because I am interested in the history. These were my first thoughts when I became a member of the group which is creating the video about the First World War.
The idea of connecting a video with some acting was nice for me so I decided to help. During our first meetings we just thought about our actors and, the simple but interesting, idea of using projections. The idea was to film poeple in different ages: from youth to old, meanwhile there are surrounded by pictures and sounds of the First World War. However, it was simply too hard to find an old person and a child in a very short time. Therefore, we decided that two people from our group will be actors. On one hand it was quite easier but on the other hand we were confused to quit our first idea.
Asking ourselves what could be an emotional and realistic way to intefere expressions of the First World War. All in all, our new idea worked out: Field Post! Letters from home - from a lonely wife and and letters from her husband who is on the "Hell of Verdun". First of all, me and Marco Hassler (a member of our group) refreshed our knowledge about the First World War to get a feeling of that time. We tried to find real letters of a couples from a front. We succeeded and after reading some memories we realized what really happend and how dreadful the First World War was.
Those letters showed us how short and miserable the life of the soldiers in the front was. Impressed by the love and the deep emotions which were transmitted in those letters, Marco and me wrote similiar onces for our video. However, still there was the problem of the projection because we haven´t got any photos and videos which could be projected ona screen. So me and Max Hafemann (an actor of our video) went to Muenster´s archive to search for some photos we could use for our film. We found many. Some of them showed us the mobilisation of soldiers in Muenster. Some of them, for sure, were frightening. We were really amazed of the photos of weapons, trenches and dead soldiers laying crippled on the ground.
To be honest, it was very intresting to see how it was but in one point i felt really touched by awfulness of a war. On that point extremly difficult moment came. Marco Hassler, our editor, nedeed to spend many hours in front of the computer. He was editing the marterial for our projection. Recording day finally came. All of us met in Bürgerhaus Bennohaus. The actors listened to the letters many times to feel the spirit and be prepared for their roles. Me and Marco set up the equipment and Carina Laßek (our camerawoman) was ready to film. After hours of filming, we finally did it! And thanks to God Marco still had power to edit.
All in all, I think it was very interesting to refresh history and to produce a film about the first world war‘s situation in Muenster. Now I pay attention on the details of thee first World War and this is the most important thing for me, for sure. I would like to thank to all Guys involved to this project. First of all Marco Hassler – an editor, of course Carina Laßek - for her filming and developing the idea together with Daria Jaranowska. Special thanks to our actors: Francis Heikoetter and Max Hafemann. Thank you guys! It as a pleasure to work with you!
Pascal Renka
