The Encore Pictures office is located between a busy kebab store and a tranquil flower store in the heart of Zurich's Kreis 3 district, where many creative people realize their careers. Jürg Steudler lives here next door to Le Mob, the motion design studio of his friend Bart Wasem, who has been involved in most of his professional stations - the glamorous and the more resinous ones. The two produce around 80 percent of their films together. Steudler goes in and out of his neighbor's office, which is deserted during the summer vacations, wrinkles his nose at the stale air and opens the windows. "We work like an old married couple," he says, describing their working relationship. "We talk at each other all the time, but we also know when to shut up and what each other's qualities are."
Steudler became a television producer when television was experiencing its boom period, when it could not be loud and colorful enough (at least in Germany) and huge budgets were being spent for this purpose. After permanent positions at home and abroad, he and Wasem set up their own broadcast design company Regardez! at the beginning of 2000 and created elaborate program and broadcast trailers.
Then the attractive major contracts from the German broadcasters fell away. A phase of reorientation followed. "Looking back, that wasn't actually such a bad thing," says Steudler, because at some point they had had enough of the contentless showmanship and wanted to tell stories. Today, they each run their own company and, in addition to broadcast design, also produce advertising and corporate films, which requires more sophisticated storytelling.
Thanks to strong demand for moving image content for the web, Steudler has found an additional area of business with Animated Explainer Videos. However, this is in a difficult market environment at a time when anyone with a reasonable level of technical skill can make a movie themselves with an iPhone and laptop. Explainer videos are available for (almost) every budget. Steudler deliberately sets the quality bar high and doesn't want to deliver anything average: "An explanatory film from us has to stand out from the crowd. With a stronger story, more suspense, high information density and a convincing argument. People should want to watch our film a second time."
From text to moving image
Producer was a dream job for many of his colleagues in his youth. However, Steudler was not yet drawn to film. "I was very introverted as a child and read a lot. The fantasy world of my youth was literature. It was closer to me than the medium of film." After training at Sawi in Biel, he first worked in consulting at Wirz Werbung (which was "too commercial" for the trained businessman), then at Fruitcake as a copywriter and concept developer.
How does an introverted Swiss lyricist end up on German television in the 90s?
He simply slipped into the film business and then realized that it actually suited him much better than writing. In a phase of upheaval, Steudler applied at random to the newly founded Tele Bärn. In the early days, the station recruited almost exclusively print people, Steudler recalls. The job in the "province" was simply not interesting enough for a commercial filmmaker or even someone from Swiss television. For an autodidact like Steudler, who thinks "homemade things are great", the job offer came at just the right time: "Suddenly I was an advertising film producer and creative director - with zero experience in the film industry. Like the whole team, I first had to learn how to use the camera, microphone and editing suite." He taught himself how to cut the trailer for a program or produce commercials for advertising clients for whom an advertising agency was too expensive.
"I did terrible stuff at first, but I had a steep learning curve," says Steudler. After two years at Tele Bärn, he and Wasem were poached by Sat.1. Swiss modesty was followed by German pomposity. "The German stations were upgrading like crazy back then - for us it was the land of milk and honey," enthuses the producer. "If you needed the Bruce Willis dubbing actor, he was quickly brought in. If you wanted an individual soundtrack, two composers were called in. The graphics department worked night shifts to implement our ideas by the next morning."
When most of their German colleagues had finished their 35-hour week, Steudler and Wasem simply carried on working. "That's how you get better extremely quickly. We were trained to be top TV creatives in Germany," says Steudler looking back. "All it took was a lot of energy. And a little talent."
Ultimately, he is better suited to being a producer than a copywriter, Steudler sums up. Writing has a lot to do with discipline. He is more pleasure-oriented and discipline has never been his strong point. "Writing through an entire brochure was anathema to me as a copywriter." In recent years, he has rediscovered the "more journalistic way of working", the desire to argue, to explain something from A to Z. Stylistically, he relies on independent implementations from a colorful mix of presentation forms and techniques: He creates fantastic brand worlds with virtuoso animations and lots of emotion for his clients. "The world that is sold as real in advertising is far removed from reality. Today, the iPhone sharpens the eye for the real," says Steudler, and with Encore Pictures he prefers to go straight for the obviously fantastic.
Having grown up in the alternative scene around Bern's Reithalle, it was only natural for Steudler to have his office in Kreis 3, where "the graphic design and journalism scene is at home". At the end of August, Steudler and Wasem will be celebrating several anniversaries here at Schmiede Wiedikon: 20 years of working together, 15 years of self-employment, 10 years of Le Mob and Encore Pictures. And they hope they can stay here for a while longer. The hairdresser's store next door was recently evicted because it couldn't keep up with the rising rents in the neighborhood. "With these fixed costs, they would have had to cut far too much hair."
Instead, Encore Pictures simply continues to focus on quality. To defy reality between the busy kebab store and the tranquil flower store with a maximum of fantasy.
