American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 94

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6 Sundance Standouts

go to film school because I was always
interested in pictures and photography,”
Kotschi recounts. “I met Bastian during
our first year of school, where we shot
two shorts together.” As a student,
Kotschi arranged to shadow Michael
Ballhaus, ASC on the sets of Uptown
Girls and The Departed, and he later
took a cinematography master class
in Hungary taught by ASC members Vilmos Zsigmond and John
Schwartzman. After graduating, he and
Günther collaborated on their first
feature together, Autopilots (2007).
Part of the filmmakers’ inspiration for Houston came from New
Hollywood films of the 1970s, including Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane
Blacktop; more recent influences were
Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light and the
films of Turkish director Nuri Bilge
Ceylan. Kotschi offers, “We watched
various films with the visual style we had
94

April 2013

in mind, but we especially liked the New
Hollywood films because they offered
critiques of politics and society.”
Kotschi shot Houston with a set of
four anamorphic Russian Lomo lenses
that dated back to the 1980s. “I wanted
the lenses to be integral to the story’s
themes rather than just present a look,”
he says. “We used a 35mm, a 50mm, a
75mm and a 100mm. I found two of
them in Berlin, but the others I tracked
down in Germany didn’t match so well,
so I got the one from a collector in
Holland, and we rented another from a
source in Los Angeles.
“I chose the Lomos mainly for
their defects, which create nice flares
and quite obvious corner distortions.
Our main character is in every scene,
and we often positioned him right in the
middle of the frame — not just because
he’s our leading man, but also because
he would have been out of focus if we’d
American Cinematographer

moved him toward the corners! The
flares give the film an almost romantic
aura and a dreamy ambience. I think an
alcoholic is in some ways a dreamer who
is not interested in reality, and I felt the
look we got from the Lomos expressed
this quite well.”
Early scenes that establish
Trunschka’s character and set the plot in
motion were shot in Germany. The rest
of the picture was shot in Houston,
where Kotschi enjoyed 3½ months of
prep. “Bastian and I scouted all the locations together, and we were always
looking to see how the settings would
work for particular scenes. I took stills
and then used Photoshop to destroy
them a bit to see what our Lomos
would do to the locations. We would
then decide if a particular location
would work.”
The lengthy prep also allowed
the filmmakers to plan their shots for
the perfect times of day, when the sun
would create the most beautiful light
and lens flares. “Bastian really understood the importance of shooting at the
right times for a movie like this,”
Kotschi notes with gratitude. “It was
sometimes difficult for the actors, but
Bastian explained to them why we were
doing it. The shooting schedule was
created with sun-position timetables. It
was hard, because we had a very indie
budget and we needed to find the right
light and the right atmosphere for our
exterior wide shots. The crew was small,

Houston frame grabs courtesy of Lichtblick Media. Photo on page 96 by Katharina John.

Top: German
corporate
headhunter
Clemens Trunschka
(Ulrich Tukur)
struggles with his
alcoholism during
a tough
assignment in
Houston. Bottom:
While tracking an
oil-company CEO
in Texas,
Trunschka meets
Wagner (Garret
Dillahunt), an
obnoxious
American who
proves difficult to
elude.
American Cinematographer - April 2013

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