Professional Meets Experimental – the MIERSWA-KLUSKA creative team in an interview, and stop by their booth at UPDATE-24-BERLIN
CREDITS / DETAILS / VIDEO EMBED LINK
Mierswa-Kluska, and now mplusk films, stand for high-end stills and motion in the areas of cosmetics, interior, jewelry and watches. In dynamic imagery, they stage cosmetic textures, special effects and beauty products from all corners of the globe.
What’s so exciting, even challenging about beauty, an area you have quite clearly mastered? Our approach has obviously always been to find out-of-camera solutions for whatever the briefings demand first. Especially for the scenes with science symbols – you sometimes have to dig around in your old physics experiment kit to find things like that – but also surprising tricks for set construction and good teamwork with the people from SFX are extremely important.
For product shots, the robots and synchronization of the effects meanwhile play a major role. Finally, the challenge is often simply trying to fit all of the filmed scenes into fifteen seconds in a way that makes sense.
The world of cosmetics reflects the zeitgeist and brings innovations, ranging from topics such as sustainability to even audacious experiments with color… How much time do you have in advance for your productions? Ideally, we would have enough time in the run-up to test our ideas and figure out the shot. That would be around six weeks lead time – only few manage that though.
The perfect symbiosis of still and motion can be seen once again in your new campaigns for CLE DE PEAU BEAUTE. What was the challenging part of this workflow? Matching the final frame perfectly with the print campaign is technically complex for various reasons and must be planned well – different optical systems, a different post workflow in product retouch and compositing, or even the completely consistent color spectrum of the entire campaign. But today, this type of thing is definitely our USP.
How did the cooperation with Shiseido Creative come about? We were lucky and already knew part of the team from Leo Burnett Singapore, with whom we’d worked quite some time for another Asian cosmetics brand, SK-II…
Are the goals set by or expectations of Asian clients any different? From our point of view, German-Asian cooperations are a very good match. And from our experience, the processes for the most part are extremely structured, and conduct is respectful and very polite.
You have been working with Full CGI for some time now. Is AI the logical next step? There are, of course, briefings which cannot be realized out-of-camera, particularly when it comes to film. Which is why we found CGI partners early on to support us with it. With CGI, you are in total control of the workflow, but the same cannot be said about AI at the moment.
Is AI already part of your workflow? AI is a practical feature found in a lot of post production software today – which can certainly be considered a positive development. We have generated abstract backgrounds already, too. The technology cannot however be used in a targeted way during the completion phase and allow the input of specific client feedback at the moment. Perhaps it will become another tool like so many others we like to experiment with in the future.
What are your thoughts on the developments in the creative sector – particularly with regard to the topics of AI, technological progress, … ? Now, when it comes to using AI as a stand-alone image generator, we see it from a more critical vantage point. Do we, as a creative community, truly want to sacrifice entirely how we see ourselves as artists, along with the social prestige of the arts and creative professions, to an – admittedly quite impressive – technology, which breaks down the life’s work of all of us into tiny fragments beyond recognition only to remix it all into new artwork to order?
Despite overall enthusiasm for the technology, we do fear it could also, at least, hinder the fulfillment of social insurance obligations, not to mention the much-debated disregard for the copyright situation. Which is why, in our opinion, the commercial use of images created completely with such tools is to be prohibited for various reasons. The strikes in Hollywood indicate the problems we are facing here, but also show us solutions.
What can clients who book M-K expect? They can surely expect a professionally planned and still experimental approach to bringing their vision to life, with an experienced team which respects its clients and their expectations.
Visitors have the opportunity to meet you at UPDATE once again as an exhibitor – how important is the personal contact to creatives for you? Our new showreel is the result of spending the last two or three years in the studio – so yes, it is nice to get out once in a while, and what could be better than to present what you have been doing all this time to others during a personal conversation and receive feedback directly right then and there.
GoSee : mierswa-kluska.de
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