VEB FILM Leipzig is a netlabel, primarily known for producing straight to internet movies.

The first movie "Route 66 - an American (bad) Dream", a 104 minutes experimental, gonzo-style road movie, was released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA in 2004 and quickly became popular as Germanys First Open Source Movie. Footage and other sources of the movie are being used by Universities, VJs and other artists.
The second major VEB FILM Leipzig production is announced to be released under Creative Commons BY in 2008 and is expected to be the first free High Definition feature film.
The founder and driving force behind the labels Free Culture ideology Stefan Kluge frequently represents the label on events related to Open Source, Net Culture and Digital Culture in Germany.

Neither Gerald nor I are able to recall it, but I did find some evidence: That's equation number 1 from the diploma thesis we wrote together, dated "Leipzig, 02/18/2002" and it's the first proof of a collaboration between us.

Three months later, New Mexico: we are walking through the desert on a dirt road, supposedly Old Route 66. Our attempt to cross the US in a wreck of an oldtimer failed. It's serious enough to leave the camera behind in the car, with which Gerald was filming our road trip.

while I'm looking at the footage and starting to turn it into a 100 minutes movie with Tom and Matze, Gerald is experimenting with multi-layered high resolution textures, for a change.

"Route 66 - an American (bad) Dream" became Germany's first Open Source movie. We are eager to get the next movie project going. Separate from this, Gerald's first texture collection DVD is being released, buying him the independence to help me prepare the new movie as a Script Doctor and Production Designer.

set as a 3D model

I'm finishing the Script of "The Last Drug", it's Summer 2005. Gerald is designing the sets in a 3D tool to prepare the construction and lightning and to enable us to use computer generated shots in post production. As we start to shoot he takes up the Director of Photography position and comes up with a confident aesthetic and a few awesome effect shots. As in this driving-car-rotating-dolly-shot:

In 2007 Gerald starts to render the computer graphic shots, which will be assembled into the footage by Matze, or which will be used as completely virtual shots in the movie.
We will release all computer- & 3D graphic project files and sources when "The Last Drug" goes on-line.

Matze, who forgot to raise an objection against the military draft, and I, who asked to be part of a paratrooper division, are waiting for the train to the barracks. In 12 hours we will be roommates and property of the Federal Armed Forces for ten months, sharing the room with 4 other guys which probably snore and stink.
In his backpack he carries a bunch of pencil drawings - Matze seems to think that the army is interested in his creative advancement. A few steps away I am carrying the first load of a Commodore 64 home computer system around to finish my latest computer game in leisure-time, in the barracks. ?

This car is catching fire any second. The pipe fell off a long time ago and the carbone monoxide is pouring through the floor of this monster. Matze became silent already and Gerald seems kind of dizzy in the fond. The Cadillac is dragging itself through the desert but it became clear now, even to us, that we won't get much further in this wreck. A dog is barking at the backfiring V8 as we pass a Ghost Town, after that, the road turns gravel and a few miles later the motor dies.
Desert everywhere. No car seen for hours, no Internet, no nothing.
Matze stays at the car. Gerald and I walk into the desert.

We kind of blogged about this road trip live in the net. Back in Germany I'm starting to turn our live report into a book, having Matze help me. Tom is stumbling over it and invites us to his sound studio to experiment with the video footage we shot during the trip. A week later Matze has to leave for his bread&butter-job. I'm staying at Tom's studio and we create a 100 minute movie.

2003, America, too - but this time far down south, on the Peruvian territory, 15,000 feet above sea level:
This time I'm traveling as a backpacker. Matze and Martin joined me after two month. The video cameras are up and running again.

A bloodcurdling scream from outside. It's 11pm - wrap on the set, quitting time. Matze is doing pretty much gaffer work, besides playing himself in our new movie and picking up the directing when I can't. Our studio is a huge unheated storehouse somewhere in Eastern Germany. It's been 40 degrees Fahrenheit for two months now and we lost the first crew member to a pneumonia.
Matze was going to turn off the generator when it began to spark. "I got about 15 seconds until the shit hits the fan here!" he is thinking to himself, putting his camera on the side of the road, running to his car to bring some light to the place. He speeds towards the sparks spitting machine, hits the brake in the last second and stops with his right wheel on his camera. "AAAAAAAAAAAAA" - that's the voice of someone at his personal limit and all of us could have joined right in.

Matze is helping to get a few pick up shots done, and starts the compositing of "The Last Drug" creating animations, assembling virtual into real shots and doing the color correction.

I'm driving with Andrea in this fucked up motor truck which we rented from Sixt to move Tom's sound studio from Western Germany to the new VEB headquarter in the east. Tom was asked to give a concert this night, but he got thrown off stage when he announced the top act caling them a bunch of amateurs.
He then tried to catch up with us at the autobahn but after an hour of high speed driving the turbo of his old Porsche blew up:
"Scheisse! You have to unload the truck without me! Kluge: keep Matze away from the equipment - if he breaks my Moog, you got yourself a silent film."

Tom bought the Mini Moog from a studio in London where Phil Collins recorded his third album in 1984. The speakers of my old Sager laptop burst at the first intern preview of the Route 66 soundtrack and all Tom had to say was "My soundtrack is not designed for your infantile equipment!"

Anyway, something just flew through the loading space of our truck, hitting the back wall with a startling crash. Some asshole lost his spoiler on the autobahn and the cars on all lanes simultaneously hit the breaks as if Ahmadinedschad just put a nuke into the McDonald's in front of us causing the car computers of all those Bavarians heading north in their BMWs to shut down at 150 mph.

Andrea grabbed her dachshund and starts laughing her ass off as I try to stop the truck. She is the one rarely mentioned at VEB, still constantly working in the background, joining every sick project and getting along with all the weird people involved.
Since she is the one doing the shipping at VEB, she is familiar with every single mailbox in the middle, south and west of the republic. Actually, also in the north.

Funnily enough, we also got to know each other at the Computer Science studies. She was one of the two girls that did make it to the diploma in that class. Although she once set out to study museology. And despite us being more busy driving around on souped-up motorcycles, shooting soft porn pictures at the time.
Meanwhile a one-line-1000-characters-Perl-script was automatically crawling selected websites in my studio - at that time, dial-up internet connections were utterly expensive, but you could cheat by sending a certain impulse which was reserved for the phone company technicians for testing purposes ;o)



Andrea was there when Tom and I produced Route 66 for three months nonstop, 18 hours a day. When the first magazine called me to get Route 66 out on 500.000 DVDs. When we shot "The Last Drug" at 40 degrees Fahrenheit in an unheated storage hall. When Tom examined all the water towers, train stations, ammo bunkers and other bizarre buildings he could get his hands on for more than a year, to check if they would make a good VEB FILM Leipzig headquarter and residence for himself, finally finding a hospice, buying it and getting it up and running.

Back in the truck: I can smell the burned tires. The dachshund is looking funny and Andrea searching the traffic radio. Suddenly it turns into one of those rare moments where you can feel the work of a year getting down to a single moment: the radio announcer tells us that VEB FILM Leipzig is moving into a new headquarter, south of Leipzig. As always: Andrea is there.