«Der Polder» is a sci-fi/thriller feature film by Samuel Schwarz and Julian M Grünthal. Far before the cinema release in the summer of 2015, however, it already existed as a precursor of the film as a transmedia game (ARG) of the «400asa» and «Kamm(m)macher GmbH». The real game took place from 24 October – 10 November 2013 in Zurich West and left a great impression on its audience.
As a project participant of this unique event, my course of study followed the event and documented it continuously in a special way. Together with 2 other students of my class, I was allowed to work out a concept with Samuel Schwarz to capture the augmented reality game in Zurich and to create an interactive advertising for it. Based on the name «Polder» we created the figure «Leopold» (later mutated to Leonie) and casted an actress who played a user of the game.
She recorded her experiences on her specially created public Facebook profile, in other social media channels and via Skype conversations with her boyfriend.
For this purpose, she posted videos of the event and of the conversations with her Skype partner. As a «history in the history» Leo, like the other (played?) users, became more and more addicted to the game and her reality was increasingly mixed with the confused fiction of the game, which was also reflected in the videos.
In addition to the cinematic recording of the mood in the game zone, the aim was to make Leo and her actions in the city a topic of conversation, in order to further increase the awareness of the game in Zurich without being able to determine (albeit guessing) whether Leo was a real player or a purely fictional character.
For this purpose her Facebook profile was realistically filled out, backdated, diligently linked with friends and also filled with other posts.
Another part of the concept was the mystery at the end of the game.
Leo had more or less cryptically communicated a letter in each of her videos. Who had all this letters together could put together the password which was necessary to find out the location where the big finale would take place.
In addition to my participation in the concept, I have taken over the project management, the formulation of the concept and the direction for the videos at «Cast/audiovisual media».
