010.
Lisa Schatz
Commercial director from Kärnten, working in NYC and Vienna.
Hi Lisa, what are you up to now? You told me you just came back from a trip to New York. What’s happening?
What happened is that I met my husband in NY. I just got married!
Congratulations!
Thank you. So the last year I have been travelling back and forth between NY and Vienna. I spend a month here and there, going back and forth. Mostly I work for clients in Vienna, then I go to NYC, where I also can keep working thanks to the internet.
My husband is a musician so we go to a lot of gigs from him and friends of him. That’s great, because I don’t really do that here in Vienna. So he takes me to all kinds of places that play jazz to improvisation and all that crazy stuff (laughs). So it gives some really nice pictures in my head.
And have you found inspiration there?
I’m going back there in May. I hope I have some more time then, I really would like to make some music videos. And then there’s so many great musicians there that are friends of my husband, and when I listen to it and close my eyes, it’s really like film music. It carries me, I get so many ideas. But there’s never any time to actually do something. I can sit there for one hour and listen to the music, I get so many thoughts in my head… what I would want to do. But as soon as we leave the venue, it’s all gone. And it’s always the time thing: I need somebody to give me a timeframe, otherwise I am not doing anything (laughs).
Or I have the feeling “oh my God, there is no client behind it, I can do whatever I want to do, it has to be the greatest thing on earth” and then I don’t finish anything. Or I start a concept, and then I feel like doing something completely different. It never leads to anything.
But you work with commercial clients, and you have deadlines, I assume. So you kind of get the concept from there, no?
No (laughs). Working with advertising agencies, you can’t really work on the concept. Sometimes I get really strict storyboards and I just add the movement to it. There are other projects where I can work more freely, like right now I’m doing work for a sparkling wine company, we’re in pre-production right now. And that’s really, really fun, because everything comes from my side and we are a small team working on this that I really like.
It’s a really good mixture of being paid and commissioned to do something but also being able to do whatever I want.
What’s your roles(s) in this project?
In this project I am the producer/director, concept, screenwriting and responsible for the whole post-production, including editing, retouch, grading and other stuff. I have two photographer guys (Raidt Lager)who always work together, and they will do the whole shooting. We have been working together for a few projects, the Claro and Samsung ads. We’re a good team, I really love working with them. They are from the photography side and I’m from the film side, so we get together and make moving images. We developed our own style, I would say.
I am actually really jealous of them because they are working together, as partners. That’s something of a new concept for photographers, I think. You mostly have only one person. Sometimes I get a job and I call them, or they get film jobs and call me. We’re all very equal and it works out well, we’re lucky.
How did you get into working with moving images to start with, you have a lot of animation films in your portfolio too. Did you study film?
Ah, I have no education in that field. Well… we started in high school. We had one subject was called “media”, and one year you would do photography, film stuff, and so. We never got really deep into it. But I really liked the photography subject. Like every girl with a DSLR (laughs). Taking pictures of my feet and shit (laughs). Artsy black and white, grandfather’s analogue camera and little teenage girl’s motives. Now they all use Instagram.
So that was my introduction to it. It sounds kind of funny, but it’s true. I grew up in a very small town. And to get somewhere, you needed a ride. So at 16, everybody got a license for a moped. And I got a video camera for the same price, so I said “fuck the moped, I want a video camera” and so I got that. And I had no idea about the whole technical stuff, none. But I just filmed and learned to operate the editing, we learned that in school. So I started doing my things. I made two or three attempts for short movies.
What were they about?
(laughs) The first thing I made when I was maybe 15 years old or so. My family would get together on Easter. A lot of people were there, my aunts and uncles, girlfriends and sisters, and so on. I would set up for two or three days a sort of “workshop” together. Together with my father’s girlfriend we wrote a script and filmed it. Like “hey you, do that now!” (laughs). The script was something like an Agatha Christie/Miss Marple kind of thing (laughs). It was really good. And then there was my cousin, a bit older than me, he was like the detective. Some weeks later when I was home I made him do the voice over, he was the narrator.
Yeah, but I think I lost it, the DVD has to be somewhere. I want to get it back. When I think about it now, the narration part, the black-and-white filming… I was incorporating all those techniques I saw in movies. Like stuff you would learn in film school about directing.
So you’re a natural.
Maybe if I would watch it now I’d be really embarassed. But I think it was really nice.
It was a kind of mystery-crime film?
Yeah. Because there is, you know, the traditional Corinthian Easter ham. Like a big piece of ham. And somebody stole it (laughs). So the detective goes from person to person, do face-to-face interviews…
Please put it online.
(laughs) Probably not. Then there was the big confrontation in the end, where shit’s going down. It’s a pretty solid movie, I would say (laughs).
And from then on you kind of kept your momentum.
(laughs) And then, after that, puberty really kicked in, I wasn’t interested in neither school nor artistic filmmaking. I was using my camera mostly for shooting party videos. I remember every time we had like, an open day for the public in school. Every time there was something to do video-wise for my high school, they would ask me. That was great because I could always leave class and say “I have to go and film something”. That was pretty nice, being the film person in school.
And then there was university. I remember that I knew I wanted to study in Vienna. There were FH:s in Vorarlberg and Salzburg, I think, where they have multimedia educations. I wanted to go to Vienna, but my parents couldn’t afford sending me to a school where they had to pay. They told me “you can do whatever you want as long as we don’t have to pay for it” (laughs).
At that time I was so uninformed about the options. I just wanted to go to Vienna, really. So I started studying what everybody else were studying: theater, film and media.
There are a few people who are really interested in theatre and everything, but I would say that from my experience — I might be wrong — but from my experience, in every class, maybe around 50% of the people, they would be like “okay, I have seen every important movie there is, I have learned this director’s biography by heart, so I’m gonna be a director!”. I was thinking, “you have never held a camera in your hands, you have no idea how that actually works”.
You wanted to get into the film school?
Oh yeah. I tried once at the Filmakademie. I was called to the first interview round. It was really painful for me (laughs). Because I told you, I am not a person who learns directors’ biographies. I watch at least one movie a day. I don’t care who made it. I don’t. I am interested in style and technique, I don’t care who made it or how they made it, I only care about the product.
And they wanted to know that?
Yeah. They were very mean (laughs). I was just so young. And Michael Haneke, he was totally, he killed me. I went out of there and I was crying. He basically told me that I didn’t belong in the film business thing at all. He said that I was a young girl who thinks this is fancy, but that I have no idea about anything. He’s the directing teacher there. I didn’t try the second time. Everybody told me, you have to try 2–3 times first. But I said, “no, I’m done. I’ve talked to these people. I don’t want those people to teach me, I don’t like them!” (laughs). I was done with film school.
I was then continuing my theatre/video course at the university for four or five years. Then they were in the process of changing the curriculum, right when I was finishing my studies. I didn’t want to do it anymore, didn’t see any point in continuing it. And I thought I owed it to my family to finish it. I only had to do three more classes to get my degree, so I did that. Those three classes took me another two years, because I started working (laughs). I always had shitty jobs, but I had money. I was afraid I would end up homeless or become a taxi driver or whatever.. I had the feeling that I don’t know anything. Because I didn’t specialize. At the beginning of every semester I was sitting there and taking classes dealing with subjects that I didn’t know anything about. Like “Jewish theatre between the wars”, or something like that. I would pick stuff that I didn’t know much about. Yeah.
I also didn’t think my film skills was worth anything. I had internships, like at the Jewish theater of Vienna. I did the whole DVD production, but felt that nobody will employ me. I think I also kind of knew that I didn’t want to be employed (laughs). Then, beginning of 2010, my aunt was working at the union ÖGB, in the press department and media relations. She told me they had an opening for a freelance position for the video department. I was offered the job and was happy to not be dependent on anybody else, because that was always a big thing for me. So I started there and my boss, I like him a lot — we still have beers together — because he really supported me and let me to do whatever I wanted to do. “We have a demo there, a press conference there, we need to film that”. Apart from that, I was free to work as much or little as I wanted. I learned a lot about handling cameras. Also digitalization and archiving videos.
The union has a great archive of film material. My boss Christoph and I said that we need to do something with it, but it never happened. I was working there for a year or so. And I thought it would be good to learn After Effects — so I started to teach myself how to do that.
A graphic designer/art director friend wanted me to help him with motion graphics to Hollywood in Vienna, it’s like a big music gala. Michael (Balgavy) was responsible for all the visual stuff going on there, and took me in as assistant. Which is very different to my previous, non-glamorous, workers union-job. We’re talking about editing fancy Hollywood movies for them when the orchestra is playing, it’s like, oh my Goood (laughs). That was amazing. Because of copyrights you couldn’t show Harry Potter and you had to do animations that looked like Harry Potter… so much fun (laughs).
He eventually asked if I wanted to move into his office for the last weeks of production. His office was the office of a design and branding agency, Rosebud Inc. It turned out that I stayed there for two years. He kept getting jobs from these agencies and would pass them on to me. He would show me stuff and say “I wanna do this and this, can you do that?”. I learned so much on the job— instead of going to school.
You are still there?
No, by the end of 2012 I moved out of there. I had the feeling I wanted to do my own thing. At that point I was making all my living from this agency and I knew that if I moved out, I won’t get anymore jobs from them. I’m still happy that I did it, but back then it was really not clear. I was then in two or three different co-working spaces. Not really organized places. But for some reason I thought I needed some office. But I really don’t.
There was another director (Max Parovsky) that I was assisting back then, around 2013. He was asking me “why do you want to work in an office?”. He’s also working from home and makes amazing things that look so good. If you knew that many of his final products are just him, his camera and his computer.. you’d be amazed of the technical level that can be accomplished. The approach was to make the most of almost nothing. And make it look like big time. When I see the stuff I see all the thinking that went into it. Having a good feeling and having a good eye goes a long way. And a sense of humour about it. They are creating something that is so much better than other stuff I see being produced with a shitload of high end equipment and money thrown on top. But if you have no feeling or your idea sucks, all the technical toys in the world can’t help you.
People like toys.
Yeah exactly, toys. And I have the feeling it doesn’t matter if it’s a bunch of cameras or toy trains or toy planes. That’s not creative work. Just playing with technical toys. And having no sense of design, or how stuff works.
Beginning of 2013, just having moved out of the agency, I was having a bad year trying to do my own thing. Most people in this business send out proposals to agencies and try to get an interview with them, but I never really did that. I don’t know why. So I had like almost a year when it was really bad and I was out of money. I didn’t get any jobs. I counted it; within four or five months I would get more than 20–25 job offers that just ended up not happening. That’s totally normal. There’s so many different reasons why it’s not happening. My boyfriend back then advised me to get internships at production companies. Doing capturing and shootings, watch the big guys how they do it. I said no, I don’t want to be in a production company. I want to make my own thing.
And I’m not the networking type — like all those cheesy networking events. But by the end of 2013 I got the chance to do a job for Jung von Matt. They obviously liked what I was doing. Right now I work for them almost every day. Some stuff is really fun, I’m really happy about it and I’m just trying to learn as much as I can.
All the Erste Bank-work I got from them. Others saw it and got interested, and from that point I heard from more and more people. So right now, I can’t complain.
So you finally feel comfortable at your job?
Yeah… I mean, I’m never comfortable in a way, that I want to stay that way. I always want to evolve and get better. And I went from editing to animation and started to be in charge of small productions. I have the feeling that everything is just happening to me. Everything just comes to me in the right moment. The projects that are coming in now, it’s what I always wanted. I want to be responsible for the production from beginning to end. Well, in terms of the creative process — I would love to let go of the producer position
Now I am trying to move more towards direction. I’m always thinking about the things that have to be done. I am not the person who just endures things that has to be done. If I don’t want to do it, I just don’t do it (laughs). Being producer is Not. So. Good (laughs). I think my next step is to try and get more into the director scene. I don’t think this is something you can learn from school, you have to learn the whole process: how the camera works, working with clients and other people, how post-production works. I don’t do 3D-animation, but I know how it works. I looked into it. I think it’s important to know that, and that you can’t lead a whole production without knowing that.
I like to know what’s going on in the whole production, I like to know what everybody is doing, why they are doing it and what tools they are using. But I also know what I don’t know, and that’s the whole sound thing. I would never do that myself. Because I think there is a reason for professionals in audio. I get really suspicious when people are claiming to do everything themselves. You can’t possibly be excellent in everything — so why don’t you get other pros for those fields where you lack knowledge?
You wanting to go more into directing, in which type of directing? Any preferred type of narrative or storytelling?
It’s interesting, because I’m not really interested in feature movies. I really love advertising. Not your standard detergent commercial. I mean, we did a detergent commercial for Claro, and I think it was pretty awesome I like advertising if you can be creative. You always have a client and can never be totally free, but there is so much so great stuff out there on an international level. There are blogs and magazine listing the best of the best, it’s like its own art form. I think it’s nice to work in a format that is limited to a minute, or 30 seconds.
I cannot work on the same project for like, a year. “I like that project, let’s do 2 minutes of it and try different styles”. I can’t do it the same way all the time. Does not work for me.
Nowadays, people are so used to hollywood movies and special effects, like, five different studios worked for two years with a total of 1.000 people, the effects are so good, smaller production can’t keep up to that. Me making something like that, I would never be able to meet that quality-wise. So the photographers (Raidt-Lager) and I decided to have NO visual effects. Nothing. We want to have everything hand-made. I think you see it now trending, not only in advertising. You really see that it’s hand-made, like stop-motion or some simple tricks. Turning off the camera and changing the objects. You can see that it’s made without any obvious visual effects. Of course you always have to retouch and tweak a little bit. That’s something that I’m intrigued by right now. Also, like “think animation, but do it in real life”. Really animate it, relly put it there to tell stories.
For the detergent commercial you use this style, right?
Everything is real.
I honestly thought it was digital animation trying to mimic real paper.
No. Ten photos per second. It took three days, one for each commercial. The pre-production and concept was taking about six weeks. I had my own way of scriptwriting, it’s only fifteen seconds but a lot of stuff is going on. You have an own timeline, like how many stages does this take to disappear. You have exactly fifteen seconds and you have to meet that. There’s a voice over that is timed. I did that as a teenager with my little brother, we made some stop-motion videos with toys. This was the first time I did it for an actual job. So a lot of thinking went into it. They look very simple but they are not (laughs). There are like five little brown fishes, I took one picture of that fish and animated the rest. That’s the only thing I animated in the computer. Everything else is pictures in motion. It was so much fun, but very difficult.
And now you are waiting for the “next step” to happen?
I think it’s been proven for me over the last few years, if you are just open about it and you kind of know what you want to do, it’s gonna happen. And that you know what you don’t want to do. I think it’s gonna come when I’m ready. Right now I’m directing smaller productions, and I think I need that to be able to direct bigger productions. I think that’s the natural way to go about it. I have to work on my own style a little bit more. I’m so happy we have two or three more projects with the photographer guys. We’re all very happy about it because we want to keep doing that together. To develop our own style. I think I know what my style is, I just want to do more of it.
What’s the style, can you put it into words?
I just want to keep it simple, I want no bullshit. In animation, a lot of people do awesome stuff there, with a thousand things popping up, just overload, throw a lot of effects on top of each other… it’s overwhelming. It can be nice if you use it as a feature. If it makes sense, but for me: no bullshit, it has to make sense. With everything, I just ask “why?” (laughs). I want to keep it as simple as possible and I want it to make sense. For example in film: you can film some scene in a million different cool ways — for the viewers it might be nice, but it needs a reason for it.
If you take Breaking Bad, for example. Everybody loves it. I love it too. But there are so many effect shots. And why? Just because they can do it. A lot of them make no sense. Okay now they are filming through a pipe. You see that the camera is in the pipe. But why?? Is something happening with the pipe? Just because it looks cool. Those effect shots immediately disrupt my viewing experience and I’m not in the story anymore — I get reminded that it’s only filmed on a set. Watch goddamn Citizen Cane! It has so many brilliant effect shots, but your head stays with the story — because they make sense.
Regarding the style in Breaking Bad, that’s probably because they have so many different directors for the episodes and they’d surely want to establish their own visual style to be recognised for it, to get their name out.
You see, this is the part where I say “I don’t care” (laughs).
Again: why? You know? For me, what counts, is the product, not the ego of the director. Wait, it’s like Columbo.
The detective?
Me and my husband were re-watching the whole thing. There is a period where everything is so bad. Everything. The camera work is most of the time out of focus.
You said you are trying to establish your own style, are themes or topics also relevant in this phase?
This is nothing you can do in the commercial world, of course, but for me, if I have some time on my hand… the thing that bothers me a lot is that people are trying to control their lives, they are really uptight about personal goals and what they think has to be done to accomplish their goals. I want to do something that deals with the subject of coincidence. To be open to what’s going on around you, that’s very important. It could be a documentary which asks people “how did you get here?”. Make them realise it was not planned at all. Most people, if they really think about how they got here, there are so many things at play. The topic is not new, like the butterfly effect. I don’t want to do anything pathetic about the butterfly thingy, I just care about the fact that you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously. I think that’s the biggest problem in everything, that we take ourselves too seriously. For each person on it’s own, and also the human race.
If you look at the universal perspective — it doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if we die out tomorrow, nobody cares. This makes me in my thinking very free, very care-free (laughs).
I want to do a project that transports also that. All those big hollywood movies where we have to save the human race, because natural catastrophies… don’t try so hard, nobody cares. We should try to appreciate the moment more.
It does not matter if your heart has a scratch, in the big picture. Also not in the big picture of your own little life. There are things you can’t change and things you can, things you can actively contribute to change in your life. I don’t mean it like “don’t care about other people”. Just be aware of what’s going on and change something if you can.
There are so many people that are demonstrating, like No WKR-demos, against the right-wing ball that’s going on (in Vienna). It’s good that people are protesting, but at the same time, as they are protesting against hatred against immigrants, at the same time those people like to live in the other side of the city because there are less immigrants there, because they are afraid of them.
I’m thinking, “come on, be a little more open, treat foreigners normally”. These things are not big things, like protesting or crying something out. You could go to a restaurant that is not full of typical Austrians instead, for example. That would maybe make even more impact, if we mix more. That’s what I mean when I say that one should do stuff that actually matters. Try to live your life as a good person. I want to transport that: “we’re all humans, for God’s sake!”. Buy this old lady sitting there in rags a sandwich. I may not be able to make a huge difference in the big picture, like saving the human race. I think what’s more important is to keep a little change in the pocket so you can give it to someone in need.
That makes more sense. I don’t say that I’m not worried by what’s going on in the rest of the world, but there is stuff going on in countries I’ve never been in my life and you hear it through the media but I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. You worry about it and you probably should, too. But you can do something right here, right now.
So you could take these thoughts and ideas into your coming film projects?
Yeah, I’m actually thinking of doing work like this with the means that I have. With my equipment and my knowledge. I really think about that. Do something that deals with the fact that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously, that coincidence is something very important. We should give up this fact that we can control everything. I would like to make, not in a cheesy way — or maybe yes — I would want the viewers of that piece of work, by the end of it, feeling that they should appreciate life more. If you’re unhappy in your job, just don’t do it anymore. Do what makes you happy. I know that money is a big thing for everybody, for so many people here in Austria/Europe.
Other people are starving, and we have it actually pretty good in comparison. We have houses, we are not starving. Here we have the feeling we are not making enough money, that we have so much shit to maintain; a third house, the car… all a bunch of shit we don’t need and that’s why we need so much money. That’s why they have to work so hard when we should appreciate what we have. So if you’re unhappy, just let go of that shit. We actually don’t need much.
People are like: “you’re so fancy, going back and forth between Vienna and NY”. Yeah, but I don’t have a car or a loan for a house. I don’t have all this shitload of stuff. That’s why I can go away for a month or two. And I decided that I don’t want to have a job where other people decide if or when I can go on vacation or have to be in the office. I feel that so many people are so caught up in a life they don’t actually want, and that is sad. I would like to make a movie, even if it’s just 30 seconds long, that inspires people to go “Oh my God I am just gonna go and do whatever I want to do!”(laughs).
A trailer for change.
I am not saying that office jobs are bad, everybody can have that choice. I can totally see that you can be happy in an office job. Don’t change anything if you’re happy. I just see so many friends and family who say they are jealous that I can go and travel so often.
It’s the need for safety and insurance which I think is holding back a lot of people. And if you think about the insignificance of yourself, it’s not hard to try and think a little outside the box.
You should maybe go into politics?
(laughs) I think it’s also why I like doing the commercial work. On the one hand it’s financially allowing me to go places, but I also don’t care that it’s not the most deep shit ever. You know what I mean? It’s not my whole life. I find fun and joy in making a commercial for a bank (laughs).
I was working in a call center when I was studying and I had fun there too! It’s what you make of it. “Now I’m learning how to talk to people on the phone” (laughs).
Your Play-videos. They differ a lot from your commercial videos. They are more ambient, you feel like sit back and take in the mood. Is this the style you want to work more in?
I think they are like that because I don’t want to work on something very long. I don’t have the nerve to think about the story or anything. Those 5-seconds videos was more like: “I’m going to film 5 seconds every day because I have nothing better to do” (laughs).
That’s what I was doing. I wanted to see the outcome right away. For self-initiated projects I’m not the person who can work with stuff that takes half a year or so. I’m not cut out for that. The short films were like brainstorming. I was like “what’s my mood today”, or some technique I wanted to try. For the music video, there is a black-and-white music animation video, I chose to do that to visualize what I am seeing when I am listening to the music. I wanted to use the same kind of technique as my husband was using for the music. To kind of program it. It looks the way it looks because I like things that looks raw or real. It depends on the project, but I like when you give the simplest of B&W animations the look of a real, analogue film. I just want to give it the look and feel to it.
There are two things I really like in there, two NYC videos from the 4th of July. The one with the fireworks. That was 2012, in summer. I was there for the first time with a friend of mine. We were there for three weeks. I had my camera with me everywhere. Now I don’t do that anymore. I always wanted to visit NYC, I’d never been there. So when we actually got money to buy a plane ticket and go there we were living in a cheap apartment in Harlem with three musicians to be able to afford being there for three weeks and get to know the city.
The second day we were there was the 4th of July with all the fireworks, independence day. We were at the Hudson river to watch the fireworks. I found the people way more exciting than the fireworks. We came there two hours before the fireworks started, people were camping there, they were having a picnic. It was not a park or anything, just a concrete parking space or something. But people were really celebrating there. It was a really big thing and I was really interested in people’s faces. The children, all the different kinds of people just watching the fireworks, I was amazed by them. I wanted to catch the emotion.
I never thought about it before, but I may not be the narration type of person (laughs). Thanks for bringing that up!
Links
Lisa’s web: http://dankeschatz.com/
Kurt Kotheimer’s music: http://kurtkotheimer.com/
Photographers Raidt Lager: http://raidt-lager.com/
Interview by Anders Khan Bolin / @strayl1ght
