{"id":3895,"date":"2020-02-27T08:04:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T07:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/?p=3895"},"modified":"2020-02-27T12:53:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T11:53:12","slug":"prost-mortem-filmakademie-studierende-ueber-ihre-schwarzhumorige-krimiserie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/2020\/02\/27\/prost-mortem-filmakademie-studierende-ueber-ihre-schwarzhumorige-krimiserie\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Prost Mortem \u2013 Film Academy Students Discuss their Darkly Humorous Mystery Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
Six months from the screenplay\u2019s initial words to completion of a four-part TV series: four Film Academy Vienna students took up this challenge and produced the series Prost Mortem \u2013 Die letzte Runde.<\/i> Director Michael Podogil, screenwriter Matthias Writze, editor Sebastian Schreiner, and producer Lukas Zweng spoke with mdw Magazine <\/i>about their TV project\u2019s parameters and peculiarities.<\/h5>\n
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\u00a9 Felix Vratny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Post Mortem <\/i>is an Austrian-German mystery series that\u2019s piled high with black humour: Werner, the husband of restaurant proprietor Gitti, has been found dead in the restroom. Gitti doesn\u2019t believe that he\u2019s killed himself; she thinks it was murder. She hence invites back all the guests who were at her place that tragic night for a last round, during which she undertakes her own bit of sleuthing to find out which of them killed her husband. The interrogations by the restaurant proprietor, played by Doris Kunstmann in a dramatic tour de force, bring to light various secrets about the guests. There\u2019s the alcoholic regular Bernie (played by Simon Schwarz). Then there\u2019s the ambitious politician Eva (played by Elke Winkens), who\u2019s simultaneously the deceased\u2019s sister. And there\u2019s also Eva\u2019s young assistant and lover Steven (Timur Bartels) as well as the waitress Zoe (Janina Fautz). The entire plot plays out at a charming watering hole called \u201cBierkavalier\u201d, and flashbacks show viewers more about the protagonists and the events that led up to Gitti\u2019s tragic loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a picture-book phone call,\u201d says Michael Podogil when describing how cable broadcaster 13th Street\u2019s commission to produce this series originated.<\/p>\n

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Michael Podogil \u00a9 Dana Netolicky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Podogil, who directed it and wrote the script together with Matthias Writze, was already a familiar face since he and his team had won the channel\u2019s short film competition Shocking Shorts <\/i>in 2018 with their film Fucking Drama.<\/i> What\u2019s more, most of the people who\u2019d done Fucking Drama <\/i>were also on board for Prost Mortem.<\/i> This well-oiled team mastered the challenge represented by their project\u2019s tight schedule of just six months by writing the screenplay, seeking out the location, and casting the actors simultaneously, rather than sequentially like in other projects. An essential task was to find the filming location, since the plot unfolds in one single place and the brief production period didn\u2019t allow for the construction of additional set elements or studio filming.<\/p>\n

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Sebastian Schreiner \u00a9 Peter Hengl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To this end, producer Lukas Zweng set out together with set designer Winnie K\u00fcchl and cameraman Valentin Lilgenau on a tour of Vienna\u2019s abandoned restaurants and bars. They eventually hit upon a place that met their requirements, and since the script was still being authored at this point, the story could be \u201cwritten into\u201d the newfound set.<\/p>\n

By virtue of its focus on just one place and the small number of actors involved, their series ended up as something of a chamber drama. \u201cThe great thing was that we knew what conditions we\u2019d be filming in, so we could write the script in a way that made it possible to film it within a very short period,\u201d says author Matthias Writze.<\/p>\n

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Matthias Writze \u00a9 Anselm Peer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For this entire series, which lasts a total of 80 minutes, the team had a mere 15 days of filming. By way of comparison: for the 17 minutes of the short film Fucking Drama <\/i>they had a full five days, and a typical made-for-TV movie requires around 20 days of filming. Another thing that was key to filming this series within such a short window of time was exacting preliminary work. \u201cHere on the production end, we did a lot of thinking beforehand about how we could squeeze the greatest amount of actual filming time out of those 15 days,\u201d explains Lukas Zweng. The lighting and camera concepts were planned in such detail that setup and takedown times were reduced to a minimum. And another time-saving measure was beginning the editing process while the film was still being shot. What\u2019s more, working in parallel \u201calso made it possible to exchange ideas about what pickup shots we might end up needing to do,\u201d explains editor Sebastian Schreiner.<\/p>\n

On writing the script itself, Matthias Writze recalls the following: \u201cOne interesting thing is that we didn\u2019t do it like they normally do in detective shows: instead of developing the murder case first, we started with the characters and constellations and only then figured out the murder.\u201d And it helped to begin developing all this material with archetypes\u2014such as that of the politician and her young lover-\/assistant. The focus on character development instead of on the murder itself was for good reason. \u201cThe cases in German and Austrian detective series have already been repeated a gazillion times, and we didn\u2019t want to reinvent the wheel,\u201d says Lukas Zweng. So instead, the team prepared by studying Agatha Christie movies in an attempt to understand how the architecture of their crime cases had been designed. In the mysteries by Agatha Christie, the elderly self-styled detective Miss Marple investigates various cases on her own initiative, not unlike Gitti in Prost Mortem.<\/i><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Felix Vratny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Doris Kunstmann, whom they approached with an initial, incomplete version of the script, was quick to declare her willingness to play Gitti. And for the other characters, as well, they did without a classic casting process. 13th Street stipulated that the various roles had to be divided between Austrian and German actors. \u201cThe yesses we received from actors like Doris Kunstmann and Simon Schwarz were particularly motivating for us, since we\u2019d hardly had time to reflect on whether they might actually like the material\u2014so their agreements to participate were like compliments and a pat on the back for us,\u201d recalls Lukas Zweng.<\/p>\n

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Lukas Zweng \u00a9 privat<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s always interesting to see how you first develop a character that then gets cast with an actor, who adds value to the whole thing and ends up changing your perspective on the character yet again. The important thing is to remain open during the entire process and be grateful for it,\u201d says Michael Podogil.<\/p>\n

The team felt good working together with the station, whose editorial staff helped them lend each episode some additional refinement. \u201cIt was interesting and enriching to see what the people from the station were focussed on,\u201d says Sebastian Schreiner in summary.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Felix Vratny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Prost Mortem <\/i>was very well received by critics, and the series celebrated its free TV premi\u00e8re on the station Puls 4 in February. Such success amounts to an endorsement of this Film Academy team\u2019s approach, and it\u2019s left them eager to take on new (record-time) projects together.<\/p>\n

Availability: this series can be streamed via Sky on demand<\/a><\/i>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Six months from the screenplay\u2019s initial words to completion of a four-part TV series: four Film Academy Vienna students took up this challenge and produced the series Prost Mortem \u2013 Die letzte Runde.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":3901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[924,179,50,947],"class_list":["post-3895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-2020-1","tag-film","tag-filmakademie-wien","tag-serie"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3895"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4024,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3895\/revisions\/4024"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}