Hauke Hilberg: From Here To Eternity

Directing a World Cup TV promo and a Sony Ericsson spot as a student and winning a Nike pitch not long after, Hauke Hilberg’s had such a meteoric career rise it seems fitting he started out filming his Star Wars toys

In most classrooms there’s an outstanding student who sets the pace, and while the modest young director Hauke Hilberg is reluctant to blow his own trumpet too loudly, you get a feeling that when he was studying at Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, the envy of the student body was he.

As a kid, Hilberg sat on the sidelines of football matches in his native Duisburg in West Germany, watching guys on the pitch do something he felt he never could. He was never a mere spectator when it came to films though – at the age of 12 he and some friends found an old camcorder and started making stop-motion films with Star Wars toys, and he soon realised what he wanted to do with his life.

A rising Czar

Fast forward 16 years and he’s settled in Berlin, partly to be close to his production company, Czar (he’s also repped by Bacon in Scandinavia thanks to its relationship with Czar), and partly because that’s where most of his film school friends are. “They like Berlin because of the rough city style. You can explore and find so many locations and ideas, you just cross the street and meet someone from Sweden or Brazil or somewhere. The city never sleeps,” he says before adding, with what seems to be his trademark, mischievous chuckle, “OK, it wakes up at 11am.”

Hilberg was to finish his studies last year but he was too busy with ‘real’ jobs and had to defer to 2011, gaining his diploma a few months ago. In fact he’s been busy since he started studying in 2005, winning his first paid project – a promo for World Cup coverage on a German TV station – just two months into his course, with a treatment he’d written the night before the pitch.

It was a hell of a good start for a young director and he gained momentum with his first European broadcast in the form of a spot for Sony Ericsson, and then a Toshiba commercial last year. Shot entirely in stereoscopic with complex stop-motion, it would have been a demanding 20 days on set for a veteran, let alone an undergraduate.

Infinite variety

As well as the impressive list of clients who have employed him, Hilberg’s reel is also outstanding thanks to its diversity, which is deliberate. “I was always asked for the style I wanted to do because they want to put you somewhere, you know? ‘Are you the funny guy? Are you the emotional guy? What are you?’ But I was interested in doing a lot of different things.” 

The variety on his reel and a slick treatment got Nike interested in him, though he still had to convince them he was the right man to shoot their Manifest spot featuring German national women’s team footballer Lira Bajramaj. “We started to pitch for Nike in December and there were so many directors, but I did some mood clips and test clips to show my skills and they said, ‘Woah! We think he can do it, even if no one knows who he is’. It was amazing that there was that trust in a young guy.”

The finished spot is a typical Nike affair – big, bold, colourful, complicated and expensive-looking. Shooting such a big project didn’t scare him at all though, because in a way he knew the pressure was off. “It’s a lot of fun because you’re the young wild guy and you know that there are a lot of bigger, better directors in the business.”

Manifest has got people talking about him, but Hilberg is reluctant to say it’s going to be the ad that takes him to the next level. “I don’t think about it like that. Of course it opens a door for me but it was just fun to shoot it. Right now I’m not looking for the next level, I’m just looking forward to finding the next interesting project.” And that project could be anything, he says. “When I read a script, it doesn’t matter if it’s Nike or another brand. If the idea’s good and I have a lot of ideas myself, I start to work with the script and develop it.”

Hilberg is currently working on getting a feature made, but he’s more than happy to make more ads thanks to the creative range they can offer. “It’s the colourful difference of the projects. To have the same fun doing commercials and getting good projects like Nike and Toshiba for the next 20 years would be a dream. You can invest all your creativity and everything you can give into those small clips.”

Complete bullshit

Hilberg believes the quality of digital work in general is being forced to improve. “80 per cent of online campaigns are complete bullshit and users are very fast with their feedback. It’s getting harder to impress them. There are only a few ideas that people say ‘wow’ and tell their friends about. This is the way we have to go, I think, to have such quality in the production that everybody wants to see it.”

Take a look at his work and you’d never know it’s only been five minutes since Hilberg graduated from film school. He’s worked hard to become one of – if not the – hottest young director on Germany’s ad scene. A year ago he couldn’t get production companies to look at his reel, now they’re calling him. It’s a “nice feeling” he chuckles, with a cheeky grin. Whether he likes to admit it or not, it’s pretty clear that Hauke Hilberg is top of the class.