Back to the future II

Jens-Uwe Bornemann, head of the UFA lab. (twb)

The UFA, formerly "Universum Film" and founded in 1917, stands for the shining past of German filmmaking, and it equally stands for its future. Jens-Uwe Bornemann gives an insight into the work of the UFA lab, the new media content laboratory providing customised content for all new digital technology and distribution platforms.

As the film industry is about to merge with the game industry media makers have to meet new challenges. The UFA does crossmedia and transmedia experiments, and they started by providing a flat in Berlin-Kreuzberg equipped with all the infrastructure creative people need to produce any kind of digital content. "New media companies are driven by technology", Bornemann says, "but we care about content". The heart of the UFA lab is a development infrastructure where freelance talents can start developing whatever they are up to. One of the latest UFA lab projects was the transmedia movie "Who Saves Dina Foxx", a transmedia project of the German ZDF.

Media content and games, the web and mobile platforms, all mixed together: There are so many facets of media making yet to be discovered.