Pixel shadows

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Pixel shadows
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2011
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Anil Jacob Kunnel
script Anil Jacob Kunnel
production Gerd Haag ,
Kerstin Krieg ,
Frank Seybert ,
Anil Jacob Kunnel
music Josh Childs ,
Ben Taylor
camera Mantas Jockus
cut Ingo Monitor
occupation

Pixelschatten is a German film from 2011 that tells the tragicomic story of a group of friends from the Münster area . The film is based on the written diary entries on the fictional online blog Pixel Shades , which are interpreted in the film using point-of-view sequences.

action

Small-town blogger Paul, known as Pixel, notices two years after graduating from high school that his formerly popular autobiographical entries are no longer reaching anyone and that his friends are longing for new surroundings. In the inability to take his future into his own hands and in the pursuit of attention, he provokes his best friends Dunia and Lutz and his girlfriend Suse with his entries so much that they turn more and more away from him. When he can no longer find another way to communicate with them, he decides to cut off all contacts and disappear without a trace. The only message he leaves is a blog post with an intimate video of himself and Suse.

Weeks later, the local scandal surrounding the Pixel and Suse video has faded. Dunia, Lutz and Suse have drifted apart more and more, and deal with pixels of unexplained disappearance in their own way. One day Dunia has had enough and uses Pixels' now silent blog to tease out a sign of life from him. The new entries are getting new attention as many former readers believe Pixel has returned. Dunia persuades Lutz and later also Suse to write Pixel through the blog and give her grief an outlet. Together they do what Pixel never managed to do, namely to turn the blog into a life-affirming community project that connects young people from all over the area.

Overwhelmed by the great response, the friends decide to end the blog with a proper party before they part ways and Suse goes to Oslo for a year. The "Pixelfest" is a complete success, the blog more successful than ever and for the first time the friends have the feeling that they have achieved something together. Only pixel is missing any sign of life.

background

production

The film was financed by ZDF with a small budget of 110,000 euros as part of the "Bodybits" tender by the editorial team Das kleine Fernsehspiel and represents the only fictional contribution to the tender. After the production of a pitch film and funding from ZDF, the script became a film Written by Kunnel between January and August 2010. The 15-day shoot then took place in August and September 2010 in Münster and the surrounding area. Was produced pixel shadow of the Cologne production company Tag / Traum and a production team in Münster. The film premiered in March 2011.

script

Structurally, the film follows the logic of an online diary, which is divided into written entries and reader comments. While Pixel addresses itself to its readers before its disappearance, after its disappearance its friends turn to Pixel itself to get it to return. The film addresses the ambivalent virtual environment, in which it is not always clear whether the alleged narrator Pixel really experienced the events we learn about on the blog. In addition to the interest in the cinematic concept of the unreliable narrator in films such as Badlands and The Rules of Attraction Kunnel was the concept of diegesis of Gérard Genette and through his involvement with online topics in the study of communication sciences inspired. Another major influence, according to Kunnel, is the authentic portrayal of teenagers and students in the films of John Hughes, as well as the films of Andrew Bujalski and Joe Swanberg , which are attributed to the mumblecore genre. A scene in which Suse comedically thematizes pixels rising chest hair is a direct reference to a scene in Swanberg's film Nights and Weekends .

Cinematic implementation

Blog interface

The film visualizes the surface of the blog pixel shadows in an unusual way . The words appear dynamically in the written blog entries with the voice of the narrator and give the viewer the impression that they are there live as the new entries are created. At the same time, the reader's comments were animated in such a way that they give the appearance of a live chat. In addition, individual uploaded online videos appear on the blog, which are marked by a red progress bar. While Pixel's entries have a blue background, Dunia's entries have a green background, Lutz's entries have a yellow background and Suse's entries have a red background. These sequences were animated by Benjamin Jager and Daniel Rakete .

Point-of-View Sequences

The written blog entries were implemented through the rare cinematic perspective of the first person to experience the world through the eyes of the supposedly unreliable narrator Pixel. After Robert Montgomery's Die Dame im See from 1947 , Pixel Shade is the first full-length film that exclusively uses this perspective for its cinematic narration. In order to enable the point-of-view sequences, image designer Mantas Jockus and camera assistant Clemens Szelies constructed a new type of camera headrig that enabled the main actor Ben Gageik to act as authentically as possible in the scenes and to use both hands. The point-of-view sequences create an immediate, intimate proximity to the main character's blog entries without being able to see him himself.

Film music and soundtrack

The score was composed by British musicians Josh Childs and Ben Taylor . In addition, Childs is also represented on the soundtrack with his side project Mothers Auxillary , on which various German independent musicians such as Antilopen Gang , Joasihno , Sebastian Witte and Vimes are also represented. In addition to Joasihno and Sebastian Witte, the band Jason & Theodor also appears live at the end of the film.

Themes / motifs

In addition to the unreliability of the virtual environment, the film describes the influence of modern communication technologies on personal relationships, which is expressed primarily in the tragic love affair between Pixel and Suse and in the way friends deal with Pixel's disappearance. The fact that Pixel's blog only becomes really successful when its friends take it over highlights the importance of classic relationships and friendships for the success of such media.

Web links