Timo Schaedel

Subaru: The Car Parts
Joint 1st Prize European Branded Short Films
Representation: exod-us.com

When did you first pick up a camera?

That was actually in my black and white lab workshop way back in school. I became famous for a picture in which I made the remains of a hedgehog that my dog found look like an excavation of a dinosaur.

What does winning at the YDA mean to you?

Quite a lot. I feel very honoured to be part of that.

What was the most challenging aspect of making your film?

Well, winning the pitch and then being asked to develop something new gave me the ultimate freedom. It was not too easy to get everybody onboard with such an idea. It calls for quite an imagination from the client in the beginning. Then, simply the design process was a pretty challenging thing. Imagination and experimentation went hand in hand. Of course there are no buttons in the software that make things look real by default, so it’s a pretty artistic process to mix the right ingredients together. What we have done is even more ambitious than integrating the same CG car parts into live-action plates. And, with this approach, you basically sit in front of an empty screen in the beginning. It can become difficult in terms of motivation in eight weeks with more than 15 people behind the screens.

Who or what is your biggest inspiration?

Most things I do, or hopefully will be able to do, are often stitched together from a lot of fragments of ideas. I constantly collect ideas and they start to generate more ideas. I try not to be influenced by other commercials too much. I like all sorts of contemporary and historical creative arts.

What do you think is the future of advertising?

That is a difficult one. The ad industry seems to be heading towards some peak of experimentation with different (social) media, gadgets, technologies. But I think effectiveness will become more important. I believe the big idea is still the most important aspect and will remain so. Then there is cost efficiency. Shrinking budgets have probably made people even more creative compared to more affluent times, like the dot-com boom. Hopefully the situation will stabilise though.

The other big question is, for me, where we will be looking at ads? If technological developments continue to grow exponentially like they seem to be doing today we will soon probably be seeing ads projected into our homes through our windows. Possibly!

What commercial do you wish you had made and why?

I cannot tell you all my secrets. Let me just mention two pieces though. The black and white opening sequence for Tarsem Singh’s amazing 2006 movie The Fall – the cinematography is the most jaw-dropping I have ever seen. And then there is the wonderful Adam Berg short film Carousel. It’s just the perfect blend of live action photography, performance (even though his cast is frozen) and the use of complex VFX. That really caught my eye, in fact it blew me away when I first saw it.

Where do you hope to be this time next year?

On my way back from Cannes – laughing a lot...

If I wasn’t directing I’d be…

A chef, an architect or a rocket scientist.