The RDI Animations are an unexpected venture into the realm of video animation, that I produced during 2018. The RDI (Raum der Information / Visitor Center) is a building that was added next to the Bundeswehr Memorial in Berlin, in order to introduce the stories and the lives that the monument commemorates. The animations are part of the permanent exhibition with free public access.
The original duties I had (just storyboarding the short films) expanded into the full production of the animations, which I carried out through clean and respectful animation of archive pictures. Hundreds of scans of newspapers articles, documents, microfilms, original photos and television clips found their way in 12 short films, which had the difficult task of summarizing tragic chapters in the history of German Army, where soldiers lost their lives on service.
Aside from the visual animations, I curated another important auditory chapter of the permanent exhibition, the audio drama “Stimmen der Hinterbliebenen” (Voices of the bereaved). Conceived as a sound installation with headphone, the piece collects emotional interviews with people (relatives, acquaintances, professionals) that were affected by the losses narrated in the exhibition. I curated the sound design, music and audio mix of the piece. Due to the intimate contents of the interviews, I decided not to present a real excerpt here, but just to extracts some moods (with music and studio work with actors) without the original voices.
“Stimmen der Hinterbliebenen” Moods
Credits RDI Animations
Production: beier+wellach
Research and Screenplay: Exponauten
Direction and Animation: Michele Pedrazzi
Credits Stimmen der Hinterbliebenen
Production: beier+wellach
Direction: Ruudi Beier, Ingo Rudloff, Michele Pedrazzi
Interviews: Ingo Rudloff
Sound Design and Editing: Michele Pedrazzi