Germany has been suffering from a trade depression since 2001. Media and post-production have suffered partly due to bankruptcies among post-houses, and to the stock market crash of the “Neuer Markt” and NASDAQ.

During the past decade Germany has gone through an important structural transformation. Despite a weak economy, the country has become a world leader in innovation and technological development. Perhaps some are not even aware of the fact that companies such as mental images (mental ray), Maxon (Cinema4D) and NXN (Alienbrain) actually come from Germany.

And it is no big secret that there has been a general depression in trade since 2001, especially in the domain of media and (interesting for us) the post-production industry. This is partly connected with bankruptcies among post-houses such as Das Werk, the Leo-Kirch scandal and the big uncertainty after the stock market crash of the “Neuer Markt” and NASDAQ. “But I also see the lack of confidence in the skills of German vfx companies,” notes Thomas Gronert of Missing Link Software Solutions. “As soon as a production has enough budgets to implement vfx, they went to either the U.K. or to the States. Its often about minimizing the risk of capital loss — so it’s logical that you are going to where they already have produced successful projects.”

Andreas Burgdorff, ceo of Unexpected GmbH in Stuttgart, finds the reason in a large number of unfortunate chain of events: “These were in part home-made and partly unpredictable. The global uncertainty of the world economy has definitely lead to the loss of many jobs, which caused, again, a market caution, especially among broadcasters, unfortunately in an extremely unfavourable moment, namely right at the climax or a bit after the `dotcom-bubble’ exploded. Many production companies invested a lot of money in new equipment during the dotcom-era or expanded over their limits; if the personnel that were carrying that weight on their shoulders are rationalized you can lose money very fast. In addition to that, banks became extremely cautious (after the dot.com bust) and everything that was dealing with Internet, vfx etc. was checked out extremely carefully. Our company was not really hurt by that crisis. Since 2001, our company grew by 400%. This has mainly to do with the fact that we don’t have an armada of flame or inferno-workstations to maintain — we are rather working on standard PCs and software.”

Even with its weak economy, Germany has become a high-tech world leader with the rise of companies such as Maxon and NXN, whose founder/ceo is Gregor vom Scheidt (right).

“I believe that because of the all the Internet-hype and the stock market crash, many people and especially the banks lost their trust in the digital business,” adds Max Zimmermann from Fiftyeight in Wiesbaden/Germany. “During the booming phase, we have been asked why we wouldn’t go public with our company. We never could really understand that explosion of prices on the stock market. Maybe the recession that we have now was a necessary process in order to regulate the market.”

The U.K. began to show a trend that has brought back optimism to Germany: 15,000 new jobs have been created there in the post-production-industry over the past few months. Twenty-five percent of the entire budget is used for the creation of visual effects. Unlike British projects, such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (MPC/Framestore CFC/Cinesite/Double Negative), Alien vs. Predator (MPC/Framestore CFC/Cinesite/Double Negative) or Troy (MPC/Framestore CFC/Cinesite), “there were no real international, big budget movies produced in Germany,” contends Burgdorff. “It is very difficult to accentuate advantages or certain strengths compared with London or Paris. But we definitely have caught up on them. Technology-wise everything is possible here and we have excellent educational institutions and a lot of experience in moviemaking and software development. We never had really big vfx budgets in Germany; that’s why we are very good when it comes to improvisation and trying to produce good results with a small budget. I think our market has a lot of advantages over the competition mainly because of our prices. Vfx made in Germany are surely much cheaper than in London or Paris. Furthermore, there are possibilities for co-productions and film-funding.”