'Land of the heroes' wins international jury price best shortfilm at 61th Berlinale!

[Kobe Van Steenberghe]

Hi guys,

We won the international Jury price (Special Prize of the Deutsche Kinderhilfswerk) for the Best Short Film at the Generation Kplus competition of the 61st Berlinale!


Below you find what the jury had to say.

A mother sits at the breakfast table and tests a hand-held rocket-launcher. The longing for power is huge.
But things can change quickly and the question remains unanswered – who is the winner?
Through surprising turns and strong images, the filmmakers create a dense and exciting story about the absurdities of a society in which violence and oppression dominate.


Original thread here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=52776


We would like to thank everybody at RED for building this great camera at this price point! Thanks guys for making this all possible for us!

[Richard Foster]

Congratulations. Well done.

[Rainer Fritz]

Congrates !!!

[George Chiper]

Unluckily for Red the Golden Bear for shorts went to iPhone 4.

[Marco Montenegro]

CONGRATS!!!

[Kobe Van Steenberghe]

Thanks guys!

Unluckily for Red the Golden Bear for shorts went to iPhone 4.

Actually the golden bear went to an iphone 4 with OWLE Bubo mount, adapted for still lenses with the EnCinema 35mm Adapter, so the only thing that remained was the sensor and compression.

It feels a bit strange making the choice for this 'rig' when you see the amounts of material, grip and lighting they have in the making off video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9YYlG5Syq8

But every director is free to make his own creative decisions and it seems that this was the right one for Park Chan-wook since he won! Congrats to him and his team!

This shows that in the end it is always the story that prevails...

BTW George: I checked your showreel. Beautifull framing and inspiring visuals!

[George Chiper]

Dear Kobe,
First please excuse my rushed and impolite post.
I dislike to let myself manipulated, so the whole Red marketing propaganda brings out my skepticism. I think Red should maybe thank you for using their product, but not you to them.
By now anybody who did basic testing knows that red is not anymore the best digital cinematography camera around(if it ever was), so if you are not producing but renting, than Alexa is the name.
Why you felt compelled to trow in the 1000000th post with congratulations to the red team.
Anyway I like what I see from your work, so I wish good luck with your future projects and delayed congratulation! for the award.
Best,
George

[Kobe Van Steenberghe]

Hi George,

I was not offended by your post, but wanted to paint the whole picture. I'm not a 'fanboy', but I feel I owe some gratitude to RED.

First of, let's not get into the discussion whether the RED M or MX or soon to be EPIC is or was or will be the best digital camera. This is a choice we have to make for ourself and should be based from project to project. In fact, two months from now I'm going to produce and shoot a new shortfilm and we will be shooting from S-VHS over Betacam, Digibeta, S16mm and RED MX. The right tool for the job like they say.

The reason why I thanked RED is the following. Two years ago, after graduating filmshool in Belgium me and my collegue Hendrik decided we wanted to do things a bit different. Belgium is a very small country and there are not that much movies made. For a director or producer there is a long way to go before you actually get somewhere. We were anxcious and decided to do things our way so we started a company (www.ateamproductions.be). Part of our buissnesplan was buying our own gear instead of renting. RED provided this opportunity by selling a camera which could compete with 'the big guys' but was priced for the little ones.

There were two reasons for buying our own gear: Pushing the costs of our projects down and stay in contact with the young generation (we did this by providing our camera for student productions at very low prices, something that was not yet possible when we graduated). This is a good way to keep close to new talents. By having our own camera (and lenses) we were also able to push the costs of our productions, which made room for some personal and no-budget projects (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=41456). We also like the idea that tomorrow we could say to ourself, let's go shoot a feature and I could just grab all our material and go do it.

For 'Land of the Heroes' the working budget was very small and we had to shoot two weeks in Kurdistan, Iraq. Having our own gear was a must. Renting would not have been an option with the budget we had or we had to compromise on other things.

Over the two years we existed our company and I have grown a lot and sure I have had my problems with both the camera and Red(at the moment I have an BOMB-EVF on order since July 10th) but in the end I feel this camera has been a part of my and my companies progress in breaking into the industry. Having your own camera and postproductions gives you so much room, beacause like they say Time, Quality, Money…You can pick only 2!

So my reason for thanking red is something emotional rather then rational.

Who knows, if sony would have offered a similar camera at a similar price I could (and would) be writing on there forum right now, but hey, they didn't...

Best regards,


P.s. English is not my native language so if I somehow come off rude or make stupid grammatical errors, please excuse me since it is not my intention!