Two weeks before shooting the director arrived from London. Together with the assistant director, production designer, and camera crew he visited all the locations and prepared the shooting schedule.
Assistant director Gerrit Haaland and script supervisor Robert Lyons played vital roles in the team. Gerrit worked out a shooting schedule together with the director while Robert, whose first language is English, but is fluent in German, liased with Mark and Dieter to prevent possible communication problems over the script.
5 days before the shoot started, the director, producer, and script supervisor met in Zurich with Dieter to discuss the script and finalize Dieter's lines.

> The first draft of the script

Finally we started! From the middle of September to the middle of October 2001, the team found themselves in the strange German world of 1944/45. The design crew and set builders achieved the impossible in building "Goebbel's office", "Hitler’s Wolfsschanze", "Ufa offices", "air-raid shelters", and much more...

We wanted our reconstructions to look as authentic as possible so all the extras not only had to have the right clothes but many also required new hair styles. The costume designer Sonja Hesse and the make-up artist Ulrike Geist did a wonderful job. Although on the budget of a documentary, our "re-enactments" do indeed have a feature film quality, as Sonja and Ulrike succeeded again and again to create miracles with whatever was to hand. Sometimes during filming we felt for the original "Life Goes On" crew in the 40’s, as we also found ourselves constantly forced to improvise.

We were lucky if we worked a 12 hour day – 14 to 16 hour days were the norm. The first two weeks were the hardest, shooting in Krampnitz, an old Russian military base outside Potsdam. A fantastic location, we used the area as much as possible.

> shooting schedule.pdf

> lighting cameraman Stefan Grandinetti

Moving on to Potsdam and Berlin, we shot in Babelsberg, home of the old Ufa where some of the original buildings still exist. We used old staircases, the former entrance gate as well as the famous Marlene Dietrich sound stage where "The Blue Angel" was made.

In Berlin Spandau we had permission from veteran German film producer Artur Brauner to use his legendary CCC film studios and in Berlin we filmed outside the famous old "Volksbühne" theatre.
And so it went, sometimes 3 locations a day – set up, wrap, moving on.

Then in the evening of Thursday, the 19.10.2001 the last clap fell at the university for film and television in potsdam. Over 20 hours of material shot, almost 100 extras appeared, sets built and struck, countless props hired and returned.

> set up for a night shoot

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