New image video of the Climbing World Championships Bern 2023 released

Over the next few weeks and months, the new image video of the Climbing World Championships Bern 2023 will be the constant companion for the event to draw attention to the climbing spectacle in August.

The Story

Peter is annoyed. Climbing fever has spread throughout the whole office and the number one topic is, of course, the IFSC Climbing World Championships 2023 in Bern. World Championship posters are hung up, his boss climbs on the specially made office climbing wall – even the cups have climbing holds on them.

All this is absolutely incomprehensible to Peter, who now wants to escape the hustle and bustle and just make himself a coffee. But even that turns into a challenge: after he finds the only cup without a climbing handle, he has to watch how chalk pours into the filter bags instead of coffee.

However, something strange happens and Petra (Klingler) appears, who is just preparing for her competition. Suddenly Peter finds himself in the middle of the action – it is the World Championships 2023. In the arena, he follows the competitions of the various disciplines and he does not know what is happening to him. Sport climbing has absolutely captivated him, he is cheering for every athlete and his enthusiasm grows with every top.

Peter has caught the climbing fever and while eagerly practising pull-ups after his “World Championship experience”, he urges his colleague, who is still in doubt, to come to the IFSC Climbing World Championships 2023. Peter himself has already bought his ticket, of course.

The team behind the video

Behind the story around the protagonists Petra Klingler (Boulder world champion in 2016 and Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 participant) and Roger Bonjour (actor from Bern) is the team of two young filmmakers from southern Germany: Leon Buchholz and Samuel Ramm.

Both have known each other since their studies at the “Hochschule der Medien” in Stuttgart, are outdoor and sports enthusiasts and have already worked on many climbing projects. Leon himself has been at all the German Championships since 2017 with his camera as well as at the Boulder World Cup in Munich and he has been filming the German Boulder Bundesliga.

Now they hope that they can play a small part in getting as many people as possible to come to Bern and cheer on the athletes at the World Championships. “We are always looking for projects where organisations, people, stories or, in this case, an event sets our own hearts aflutter,” explains Samuel, who is particularly excited about the new Boulder & Lead competition at the World Championships. Therefore, they were over the moon when they were told they got the job, as it is a great honour for them that their concept was chosen.

Of chalk explosions and calendar Tetris

After the shoot in Stuttgart (Germany), we dug a little dipper and Leon and Samuel did not shy away, drawing a more complete picture of the project.

Climbing World Championships Bern 2023 (WCH Bern 2023): How did you come up with the story? What is it that should captivate the audience?

Leon: We brainstormed a lot and came up with different ideas and approaches. In the end, I had the basic idea for the film during an evening walk in the woods, which we then worked out and refined. It was clear to us from the beginning that we didn’t want to make the one thousandth commercial in which an athlete prepares for a competition, but we rather wanted to create a nice little humorous story.

WCH Bern 2023: How did the shoot go?

Leon: The shoot went great, the team did a good job. Roger did amazing work and everything went according to plan.

Samuel: Timing was definitely perfect – we finished 30 minutes early, which never happens on a film set. (laughs) But it shouldn’t have been much later, as the timing was tight. If we had overrun, Roger would have missed the last train back to Switzerland.

WCH Bern 2023: What was particularly challenging?

Samuel: The organisational effort of a commercial is greater than the 90 seconds would suggest. In particular, in order to get the free time slots of our actor Roger Bonjour, climbing pro Petra Klingler, film location and crew together, we had to play a lot of Tetris in the calendar.

There was also one idea where it wasn’t clear until the end how well it would work in the final video – it was to integrate our protagonist into existing archive footage from past competitions. In this regard, we had to look through hours of archive footage before the shooting and then found four suitable shots, lit the cheering scenes accordingly in front of green screen, filmed them and put them together in post-production.

Leon: Pre-production presented some challenges: Where do we get 15 cups with climbing handles? How do we create a chalk explosion? Can we find enough extras for the office? Can we screw climbing holds into the wall? When does an athlete have time? Luckily, we found answers to all the questions, so all the problems disappeared before the shoot.

During the shoot, the chalk explosion in the kitchen was definitely very exciting. For one thing, it was quite a timing issue: the explosion had to happen at the same time as the chalk/coffee pack was tipped in. For this, Roger’s acting, an electric fan and the clapping on a chalk bag had to be synchronised with each other. And secondly, both the kitchen and Roger had to be cleaned of chalk after each take. So, it was clear from the beginning that we had a maximum of three takes of this scene… Fortunately, everything worked out perfectly in the second take.

WCH Bern 2023: Do you have any fun facts for us about the work behind the scenes?

Leon: Well, my personal little highlight was when we got permission from the office location to screw the climbing holds directly into the wall – and then actually doing it felt all the better. On the negative side: We changed the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling in the entire office so that they had the right colour temperature for us. This was extremely annoying and took several hours each time.

Samuel: We also saw that climbing is fascinating people as it was easier than ever to get extras for our office scene.

Many thanks to the team around Samuel Ramm and Leon Buchholz as well as Roger Bonjour, Petra Klingler and the numerous extras for their commitment.

Photos: Labor BB