Press Release New York, June 1999

HouseWorks digital media designs the new German Filmprize

After about 4 dozen years, the German Interior ministry was looking to change the award statue and complete print package of the prestigious German Filmprize. Dr. Michael Naumann, new cultural emissary of the government wanted a new look with classic potential.

Designer Mechthild Schmidt: " Stephan Reichenberger, creative director for the production company Askania media asked HouseWorks to submit a design concept for the new logo and statue. The challenge: the former award, a flattened spiral had to be part of the new look for continuity's sake. I wanted a moon sickle form, something light, moving. Film IS movement. I wanted the statue to express confidence without being stern, strength without being static. The statue pays homage to Fritz Lang's Metropolis with a nod to Art Deco and the Romanian sculptor Brancusi. The horizontal logo is juxtaposed to the elongated statue. It picks up the momentum of the spiral in a swooping chain of sprockets emerging from the year '1999'. I was very flattered when the team from Bonn/Berlin not only chose the design but found it so convincing that they moved the production up from 2000 to 1999. "

This decision also meant time pressure. While HouseWorks was doing the print package, all other visuals were produced in Germany. It was crucial to communicate the exact look to guarantee continuity across a variety of media - and to minimize supervision and corrections.

The interplay of statue and spiral were so complex that Schmidt decided with Reichenberger to forego the traditional manual renderings for side- and back-views. Instead the designer worked with Mechanism Digital here in New York to make a fine tuned 3D CGI mock-up that would better communicate the form to a large team of artists all working in different cities: stage designers, stage sculptors, web site designers Coma2, to the 3D animation studio Stardust for the TV-open, and of course to sculptor Roman Johann Strobel. As the last step the wax model was shipped to the Bavarian art foundry ARA-Kunst to produce the gilded Bronze statues.

HouseWorks offers state-of-the-art on-line avid editing and graphic design solutions

HouseWorks/Mechthild Schmidt can be reached at 212-213.1636