Jakob Montrasio’s Net.

John Rabe: Some photos from the shoot.

// April 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // China, Photography, Shanghai

In October 2007, I had the chance to join the JOHN RABE movie team in Shanghai and took it immediately. What followed were almost 4 months full of excitement, pain and so much learning and experience. It was the best time of my life. And now, the movie finally started running in german cinemas. It will probably also start running in China on April 29th. I can’t wait to see it.

I started working in the VFX department under the command of Joachim Grüninger. He taught me an insane amount of things and gave me many chances to learn how shooting a movie works, what the rules on a set are, and, and, and… Thank you so much, Jo!

The rest of the crew were super nice people, too… The director Florian Gallenberger was very nice and calm, the assistant directors were very nice, too, and the rest of the international crew also. We had germans, french, chinese and japanese working in the team. And our 2nd unit director was from India, how cool is that. I love it when so many cultures work together.

Now that the movie has opened and many people will hopefully go and see it, I think it’s time to publish all the photos that I took during the shooting of the movie. Some were censored, due to contracts and stuff, but most of them are online now. I hope you enjoy them and the look behind the scenes that they offer.

We shot the movie in Shanghai, Wuxi, Baixian, some photos in Wenzhou… My wife and I were also working as Extras in some scenes - in one scene with John Rabe himself, played by Ulrich Tukur, and in another I was sitting right next to Steve Buscemi, who plays an doctor in the movie. I have no idea if they made it into the movie, though - I only now that my name should be listed in the credits at the end of the movie. Yay!

If you have seen the movie, please leave a little comment about it and how you liked it. Thanks.

Now enjoy the photos sets:

iPhone Wallpaper: My Contribution.

// February 28th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Photography, Technology

I took personal favorites out of my 200 most popular flickr pictures and converted them into the iPhone accepted wallpaper size of 320 to 480 pixels.

Feel free to modify them or whatever, they are all with a creative commons license.

Enjoy these free iPhone wallpapers:

That’s it for now. If I can ever afford an iPhone myself, I’ll probably make more.

I can’t even test them… *cry*

2raumwohnung in Nanjing

// October 20th, 2007 // 2 Comments » // China, Videography

Yesterday was the first official day of the german festival here in Nanjing. The first act on the big stage, where I got an job as a camera man, was a chinese orchestra which performed german classic songs. Was nice. But then came the main event: The german-nationally famous electronic pop band called ‘2raumwohnung’ and boy did they make the chinese people dance! The audience was kinda calm during the first songs but then switched to dancing and clapping and whatnot. Without any alcohol! Unbelievable, I’ve been to some concerts but I’ve never seen anything like this before. Just watch the video I uploaded to get an idea (so how was I able to shoot this while I had to do my real job as a camera man? 2raumwohnung didn’t need a live video stream, they had their own visuals for the background - so I was off work). YouTube is still blocked, I’ll try to make some more videos while being here.

 

 Podcast Video [6:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Rape porn in Nanjing?!

// October 19th, 2007 // No Comments » // China

Now that YouTube is blocked in China, I’ll try to keep you entertained with my own videos…

Nanjing is a city with a sad history. The japanese killed over 300.000 people here during their invasion, the famous ‘Nanking Massacre’. They also raped around and killed women and children. This makes my video even more confusing: I was in my hotel room in a four-star hotel when I accessed the television. You’d think that I’d get CCTV or HBO or something like that, but no, the first thing I see is a woman getting raped! What the hell? The hotel is trying really hard to sell their pay-per-view porn… See for yourself, just watch my video. Warning: Contains disturbing images and sound.

 

 Nanjing Hotel Rape Porn? [1:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download