Ask the Director: David Aufdembrinke

Your way into filmmaking was like...


… a lot of detours all adding up to form my own way. 

I got introduced to this new, unfamiliar place called “The Internet” at an early age and desperately wanted to create my own website. Photoshop 2.0 became my favorite childhood game. I later started doing animations and small cartoons in Macromedia Flash. After a couple of years of becoming better at it, I was offered the chance to do an internship in the multimedia agency Elephant Seven. The initial two weeks turned into several years after they discovered what I could do in Flash and I discovered their PlayStation. I later started playing school theater and saved up for a Mini DV Camera to shoot my first shorts with friends. After school, I needed to earn money before being able to think about studying film, so I got back to the agency as a Screendesigner – just about the time when someone invented YouTube and a new way of publishing and creating online films. I realized future film productions would largely rely on digital and nothing would give me a better insight than actual productions. I was just lucky to be at the right place at the right time. A failed Motion Design project forced me to learn After Effects and as we had to produce more and more moving content, I founded the film & motion design department for the agency, which gave me a great insight into film productions. After some sleepless years, this finally led me into freelance work as a post supervisor. It took me another couple of years in which I mostly directed no budget shorts and music videos to learn my craft and find my voice until I finally dared to drop all my other post and editing jobs and focus entirely on directing, which is what I always wanted to do deep down in my heart and guts.

What do you like about your job? 

I constantly think in terms of visual storytelling. It’s a huge privilege to be allowed to do a job I love and create images that form how people think. I am thankful for this opportunity to make a small contribution to the world I would like to see by my choices in team, storytelling, communication and casting. I’m always amazed by the various people I’m allowed to meet, work and learn from during these intense periods of production. Also, I enjoy the countless different tasks that demand my creativity and logical thinking and never allow me and my “ADHD”-mind to become lazy. 

What's your process from the idea to the final film? What' s your creative process and what tools do you use?

I try to challenge each film idea by adding something that I have never done before. This keeps me alert and focused to not loose myself in any routines I have built up over the years. I try to always keep myself in a “beginners mind”, benefiting from the experience I can look back on, but not allowing myself to become lazy because of it. For me, this uncertainty is the place where magic can happen as everyone in the team can add their ideas, no matter their position. Of course, to allow that to work, I need to create a solid safety-net of meticulous planning and fallback-options for each moment of the film, because else I wouldn’t feel safe to let go. So, I draw, rewrite, animate, test shoot on my phone and edit intentionally rough to remain unfinished, fluid, always in the process - allowing myself (and my team) to play and make mistakes in a safe environment, until I know what feels right. 

My bad drawings also help me a lot in this process of directing, as they limit me to focus on what I really need to tell the story. This prep also allows me to focus on what is really important for the story and let go of everything that is not. Someone once told me, “only the things fireproof are worth keeping”. I stick with that ever since.

How do you prepare for a pitch and how do you present your idea best?

Every idea is different and deserves its own perfect way of being presented. As I described about my creative process, I try to question my first ideas over and over again until I find the best and most direct image to bring my thoughts across. This can happen in the first minutes or after days of pondering, but at some point, it has to happen – or the project is simply not meant to be made by me.

What leads you to the framing you end up choosing? 

After evaluating all other options, I know exactly what I don’t need and thus know what I need. Sketching frames helps me figuring out the essential information in the shots and decide between what is important for the story and what I can let go of. I also like to use test shootings or animatics to get a feel on camera movements and making sure everyone feels the same vision of what we are creating together. During this process, I can allow myself to try out and let go of my initial, technical idea to eventually end up with something even better, more spontaneously working in the moment. 

What makes a good collaboration?

The ability to play together. Filmmaking is neither fun nor possible without collaboration.

As artists, just like musicians, we have to play together and create a safe space in which each individual can add their own voice and best of their abilities. If this process works well, the pieces can add up to something bigger than the sum of their parts.

How do you finance films? 

I usually work for clients, so the financing is not part of my job. With my narrative shorts and early music videos, I used to put a lot of personal money (and especially time) into them. For the features I’m developing, I’m thankful to be supported by the MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein. This has been an enormous support in finally taking the step from short to feature-length and allows me to work with and pay my dramatic advisers, which I can’t imagine working without anymore.

Do you think social media like instagram/tiktok is changing the film industry?

Yes, especially our perception of realism in film. Putting a camera in everyone’s pocket had a huge influence on what feels real. Not only in terms of casting, locations, makeup but also about the stories we are telling. I believe it is the unwritten duty of every generation to create the collective images they want to live by and pass to the next generation. Over centuries, this has been sped up first by the letterpress, then by moving pictures, television and today, the internet - all the time increasing the speed of social communication and the creation of collective symbols. Due to social media, the pace of new ideas emerging has become faster than ever before. As basically everyone can broadcast and establish their own channels todays, I am thinking about what new ways of distribution and storytelling will emerge next. I just pray it’s not going to become simply the future equivalent of trash TV.

Where do you see the future in filmmaking?

Armin Müller-Stahl once said, “In the future, people will laugh about our effects, but cry about our stories”.

I think we’re just starting to see a more personal way of storytelling as the tools to create and publish films become available to anyone. I also see how in the close future, we will be able to shoot various locations on this planet and others without leaving the studio, thanks to new LED technologies. Same goes for postproduction where the greenscreen will soon become redundant due to the improvement of KI. I also see a lot of possibilities in VR and 360° films, though I think this will open up a new genre of storytelling which is closer to videogames than films – for me, filmmaking still includes the selective framing a storyteller decided for, this guidance of leaning back and being presented with a definite framing and moment, juxtaposing images to create emotions. 

Thanks to this improving technology, films can be made by smaller teams and with a more sustainable approach. Instead of travelling the world, you could shoot sets on every continent without leaving the LED cave. Also, the time it needs to create and publish will become shorter. Yet there is a natural limit of how fast we humans can think, process and understand the many new ideas that we are bombarded with. This is just one of the reasons why I believe a place like the cinema will transform its program, but keep an important role in the future: because it might become the last place in which we don’t get free Wi-Fi and can continuously distract ourselves with the tiny screens of our phones. It might become the last place in which we can still be silent enough to witness something similar to magic.

A perfect film broke down in 5 steps?

For me, personally, it always works to have 
1. a crash at the beginning, 
2. a twist in the middle, 
3. an explosion at the end, and 
4. one hero*ine 
5. unrelatedly dancing.


5 films to watch right now

It’s been hard to find film gems in recent years. I truly enjoyed Promising Young Women for Emerald Fennels take on directing this in a style of college comedy gone seriously bad. Also, Le Monde Est A Toi for Romain Gavras’ depiction of contemporary, flawed gangster characters as they have not been seen before. Some older stuff I’d recommend to watch is Paul Auster’s and Wayne Wang’s Smoke, Leos Carax’ Mauvais Sang / The Night Is Young and Alejandro Jorodowsky’s Holy Mountain or, more recently, La Danza De La Realidad.

Role models?

I guess cinematically, the aforementioned Jodorowsky has been a huge one for his way of finding truth between the surreal and magic (and also his Tarot cards).

Spirit animal?

Wolf. Simply because the leader of the pack never walks in front, but always stays way behind to keep an eye on everyone – and I always found this an inspiring image for the job of directing.

Cool instagram accounts?

@pablo.rochat @daviduzochukwu @filmandcolor @veryuglyplates