The old man and the guitar - a love with six strings

Around a year ago, director Christian Schilling released the Mentos commercial "The man with a coin" (Werbewoche.ch reported). Schilling is a directing student at the renowned Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, which has repeatedly provided bright spots in the world of up-and-coming advertising far beyond Germany's borders. "Love" (Calvin Klein), "Black Stallion" (Horse Box Brewery), "ABC of Death" (Volvo) or the classics "Dear Brother" (Johnnie Walker) and "Recognizing dangers" (not authorized by Mercedes-Benz) - the Academy's students regularly deliver small, in most cases unpaid storytelling gems.

"Wake her soul" tells the romantic, nostalgic story of an elderly man who finds his old guitar in the attic - and uses it to bring his memories back to life.

As Schilling explains to Werbewoche.ch, this was also a study project without a client commission. While the digital part was shot with actor Matthias Freihof in an empty villa in Stuttgart, the analog part was shot on location in Italy. "We shot on Super 8, which was a particularly exciting experience for us as filmmakers," he says. "We only had a limited number of film reels in our luggage, so we had to be very sure of what we wanted and needed to shoot." Nevertheless, the feeling of spontaneity had to come across in the shots.

"What made it even more difficult was that, as a director, I couldn't see what we were shooting - not even after the shoot," says the young director about the pitfalls of analog filming. After this experience, you appreciate being able to shoot digitally. Nevertheless: "I would like to shoot more often on real film after this project, but unfortunately the old medium is slowly dying out, as there is hardly any time to wait for the material to be developed, especially in the advertising world. It's a real shame, because the flair and charm of real film is wonderful."