i filmed the metalcamp 2008 festival for berlin based video company roax films. conflicts appeared regarding my versatile approach to filming, and regarding the payment of employees whose work got used.
i would, during 50% of the time, move the dolly camera up and down its track. it was set up on a semi-stable wood construction in front of the festivals main stage soundboard. i operated the cam during the other 50% of recording time. my filming style was rather brutal, cause i didnt really figure that filming in and out slowly would really be the best thing i could do. i took a more creative and versatile approach, since moving left and right gave it a rather flying approach, in which i had the camera soar across the audience and where i used the optical zoom to 'fire' from total to close-up within half a second. these movements, despite not being what i was told to film, frequently made it into the multi-camera video cuts.
after returning home, ronald matthes told me that my footage was mostly garbage, and refused my payment. a chanche to re-view my footage was refused.
after discovering some footage filmed by myself (interviews with festival guests, dogs, and 6 nude men directed to scream METALCAMP and collectively run into icecold water afterwards) on the metalcamp festival website, i knew that i had morally won this case. the guy who had supposedly filmed worse than anybody else in the filmteam became the one whose material was the first to ever be released from the roax films metalcamp recordings. i informed ronald matthes that i was convinced of the quality of my recordings and underlined my request for the payment.
in may 2009, ministry released their 'adios... puta madres' live dvd including recordings from metalcamp festival. on studying the dvd including scene analysis, i recognized circa 2.50min of henrik bauer footage used in a 30min metalcamp video portion. in the song 'no w' i recognized 26sec of my own footage used in a 3.00min track. the show was recorded by 12 cameras, therefor an overall percentage of 9% henrik bauer recordings was used in there. which would impossibly justify the statement 'your recordings are unusable garbage' from ronald.
i asked for my fair payment once more and announced to seek a lawyer if money would still not be paid. at that point ronald threatened to counter-sue me for ruining projects of roax films worth thousands of euros such as metalcamp filmed bands arch enemy and carcass. he further threatened to bring my drug consumption into the courtcase, such as supposedly being in the ministry tourbus and buying drugs in there, supposedly witnessed by the band ministry.
i replied that i doubted the business problems with arch enemy and carcass being based on one single camera perspective. i did not admit to doing any drugs, but ensured that any drugs that might have been consumed would definitely have been fired up AFTER work, and would not have been bought from ministry, in whose tourbus i never was.
in june 2009 i picked lawyer philipp beck http://www.beck-law.eu , who would take the case to court. in december 09 he scored a 100% victory for me. the opponent did not appear in court and didnt send a laywer either.
regardless of my official victory in court, roaxfilms continued to refuse payment. the threatened counter-sueing did not take place either.
in march 2010 we hired a court enforcer to confiscate equipment from the roax films headquarters for bailouting the money owed to me. she did not even show up at the roax hq cause she had information that previous attempts to confiscate equipment from roax had been unsucessful.
lets see whats next.
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Last updated 2010-04-27 04:11:38 by: Henrik.