German Newsletter

Esteemed clients, dear friends of ARRI,

Enclosed, please find the most recent edition of the ARRI Film & TV newsletter, this time to announce the theatrical release of director Marcus H. Rosenmüller's culture clash comedy My Life in Orange about a time when self-awareness hadn't become mainstream and the Bavarian 'soul' wasn't laid-back yet.

Enjoy the read!

All the best,

Angela Reedwisch and Josef Reidinger

OPENING IN GERMAN THEATERS AUGUST 18, 2011: My Life in Orange

Director: Marcus H. Rosenmüller Screenwriter: Ursula Gruber DoP: Stefan Biebl Production Company: Odeon Pictures, Roxy Film German Distributor: Majestic Filmverleih   DI-Producer: Andreas Mummert  DI-Colorist: Andreas Lautil VFX Team:  Dominik Trimborn, Jürgen Schopper, Nina Knott, David Laubsch, Michael Koch, Rosa Niclas, Tobias Wiesner, Benjamin Kaczorek, Roland Pfisterer, Yvonne Hoffmann   ARRI Services: Lab, TV Post, Digital Intermediate, VFX

Director Marcus H. Rosenmüller, who's made a name for himself with films such as Grave Decisions and Heavyweights, is also behind My Life in Orange. He worked from Ursula Gruber's entertaining screenplay, based on her childhood memories and those of her brother, Georg Gruber, who served on the film as a producer for Odeon Pictures. My Life in Orange is the highly anticipated second collaboration of Rosenmüller and Roxy Film (Andreas Richter, Annie Brunner and Ursula Woerner), the production company that collaborated with Odeon Pictures for this film. Majestic Filmverleih is distributing My Life in Orange in Germany. 

Roxy Film relied on ARRI Film & TV for the following services: Lab, TV Post, Digital Intermediate (DI-Producer: Andreas Mummert, Grading: Andreas Lautil) and Visual Effects (VFX Supervisor: David Laubsch, Creative Director VFX: Jürgen Schopper).

One scene in My Life in Orange involved complex digital manipulation consisting of 36 shots. In it a brimstone butterfly leads the little girl Lili to a Bhagavan hovering above the ground. The sequence was storyboarded before it was created using a mixture of computer animation (butterfly) and digital compositing (Bhagavan in front of a green screen).

The digital brimstone butterfly - and how it was created: Head of 3D, Michael Koch and Creative Director VFX, Jürgen Schopper

Storyboard: hovering bhagavan. On location: The bhagavan on the crane being positioned in front of the green screen.

Left: Rosenmüller and the bhagavan in the background. Right: VFX Supervisor David Laubsch on location

Left: Amrita (Petra Schmidt-Schaller, center) captivated by the words of the great Prem Bramana. Right: Lili (l.) gets into an argument with classmates poking fun at her. Photos: Christian Hartmann © 2011 Majestic Filmverleih GmbH

1980: Spiritual enlightenment arrives in Talbichl when Bhagavan follower Amrita (PETRA SCHMIDT-SCHALLER) and her two children Lili (AMBER BONGARD) and Fabian (BÉLA BAUMANN) move to the Bavarian boondocks with the rest of their numerous flatmates from Berlin. Now primal scream therapy and wholegrain face off with the rifle club and the preconceived ideas of the locals. While Amrita chants Indian mantras, sitting half-naked on the 'rock of spiritual enlightenment,' her ultra-conservative neighbor and major of  Talbichl (HEINZ-JOSEF BRAUN) watches her - speechless - from behind a hedge. To make matters worse, the Sannyasins set up an therapy center in the village ruining the peace and quiet of the locals, whose distrust of the 'strangers' grows until Amrita's daughter Lili, of all people, gets caught up between the fronts. Shunned by her classmates and left to her own devices by her mother, all she really wants is to be part of a normal family. And so Lili starts to lead a double life: At home she continues to wear orange, makes left-wing, counter-culture statements and sticks to a vegetarian diet but at school she changes out of her orange bloomers and into a traditional local skirt and prays the 'Our Father' with her classmates. But this balancing act between Om and Amen isn't meant to last... and things escalate when the Bhagavan's right hand  arrives to inaugurate the 'buddha auditorium' at the communal house  the Bhagavan followers share and at the villages annual fair everyone is suddenly fighting with everyone else. In the end Lili wonders where she actually belongs...