Tom Schlagkamp blew our socks off with his Rock n Roll manifesto for Visions magazine. Now the YDA winner has been signed to leading Parisian production company, Quad. 

You’ve just signed to Quad in Paris – any chance that this was influenced by you winning first prize in the European Web Film category at the YDA in Cannes? !

I met Olivier Domerc of Fighting Fish in a pool in Cannes. He told me about the four Cannes Lions they just won, so it was great that I could reply with something, too.

But seriously, the Cannes Young Director Award is surely a huge help to get recognition. Olivier introduced me to QUAD because Fighting Fish is part of the QUAD family. They also liked my work very much, so I am very glad to have such a great representation in France now, too.

We love your film for Visions and we show it whenever we get an excuse to reel it out. Can you tell us please about how you went about making it, the trials and tribulations of making a film about the trials and tribulations of becoming a rock star?

The biggest challenge was the budget which was very small. But many people loved our idea, so we got a lot of support from labels, artists and concert venues.

For example I was so stoked as Warner Music wrote me that former PANTERA frontman Phil Anselmo agreed to work with us for free, just because he liked our project. Or that we had the chance to shoot during a concert at the sold out Max-Schmeling-Halle in Berlin with an audience of 10.000 frenetic music fans.

I put all my heart into this film, and I was very happy, that I had the chance to realize it exactly as I wanted it, and that it gets such overwhelming responses now.

We love your latest spot for Mini Cooper too – was that a completely different experience to shooting Visions?

The Mini Cooper film is actually a little older than the VISIONS film. It was the last film I shot as a student at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. The budget for this was even lower than for the Rock Manifesto. We shot the background plates in Buenos Aires with a very small team: just the DoP, me and a local PA. The rabbit we shot in a studio in front of green screen – with the rabbit running on a green treadmill. The experience was very different, also from a realization point of view.

The Mini Cooper film had many CGI shots, 2D and 3D, whereas the Manifesto is all “natural”, with no CGI at all.

Where are you based? And what’s it going to be – music videos, ads, content films – or the lot?

I am based in Berlin and besides QUAD in France, I am represented by @Radical Media in Germany and the UK. I am focussing on commercials right now, but some day I would surely love to shoot a feature film.

What’s your favourite part of the film making process?

I must say I love nearly every aspect of it: the writing or the development of a script, organizing and discovering ways how to bring it to life, the thrill of shooting it. But especially the editing, the music and the sound design fascinate me, because of all the possibilities you have to try different ways of bringing the story across and making it more intense.