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Interview with Dennis Stöcker (Set-Design)

WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES IN YOUR DEPARTMENT?
The biggest challenges were implementing our ideas with a small budget and a small team, and of course, getting the stuffed deer to the 11th floor. We failed with the deer; it had to wait at the factory entrance for a week.

WHAT WERE THE HIGHLIGHTS?
Discovering the location and walking through it for the first time. Seeing the set designs through the lense of the camera for the first time and finding that our ideas are indeed working.

HOW DID YOU MANAGE TO VISUALLY REPRESENT THE BLEAK VISION OF THE FUTURE?
The location contributed a lot and created the perfect conditions for implementing our ideas. Especially in the lower class, our factory floor, there was a lot already there that we could easily build upon. In the upper class, it's the contrasts. On one side, we have the gloom that the space brings, this oppressive brutalism with its decaying remnants of large industrial machinery. The dirt in the corners, rust, mold, and cobwebs. Then the stuffed animals and the taxidermy specimens. On the other side, this futuristic cleanliness, the pompous interior, and the excess at the buffet. Plus, the only sunlight in the factory, which pushes its way through the blinds of the too-small windows and into the room. And of course, the plants, which are carefully tended and nurtured as the last witnesses of a better past. The great lighting by Muck adds so much!

WHAT SPECIFIC SOURCES OF INSPIRATION AND REFERENCES DID YOU USE FOR THE SET DESIGN?
We talked a lot about the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, like Delicatessen or The City of Lost Children. Brazil by Terry Gilliam was another big topic, but also 12 Monkeys or Blade Runner. Even though it doesn't stylistically fit, I often imagined the upper class like the hotel room trip in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That's probably how it felt for the two workers. Otherwise, '70s Space Age interior was always exciting because it fits well into brutalism.

WHAT KIND OF ATTENTION DO YOU HOPE YOUR JOINT PROJECT WILL GET?
Of course, you're always happy when your own artistic work gets as much attention as possible, especially when you put as much love into the project as we did.

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Photo by: Filip Misiak Orestes

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