Ludwigsburg, 24 January 2022

Press release of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg:
AUREA Young Talent Award 2022 goes to the project "NEOSHIN"

Second round of partnership between FABW and MackNeXT

 

 

On Saturday evening, January 22, 2022, the AUREA Young Talent Award, endowed with 3,000 euros, was presented for the second time as part of the AUREA Award. The award went to NEOSHIN, which was created as a diploma project at Animationsinstitut of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. The NEOSHIN team includes Sebastian Selg (director and 3D artist), Jiayan Chen (producer), Ramon Schauer (co-director and technical director) and Roman Schneider (music).

 

Also nominated were the projects DER LETZTE SCHREI and KAGE. Students and FABW alumni who graduated no more than 5 years ago can apply for the AUREA Young Talent Award. It is part of a cooperation between FABW and MackNeXT, which started in 2020. The prize money will go directly to supporting the winning teams. MackNeXT accompanies the further development. The winning project will also be realized in co-production with Europa-Park's Innovation Lab.

 

NEOSHIN is a broad-based cross-media project with a music band of the same name at its core. It is a transmedia animation series for adults on the topic of glass consumers presenting everyday social conventions in drastic exaggeration. The aim is to provide insights into a world in which hedonism, self-fulfillment and mass consumption have become more important than compassion, humanity and sustainability.
The band NEOSHIN does not only function as a character in the series. In fact, the music is a significant, overarching part of the entire project. Each episode will begin with a music video from the band that summarizes the events of the previous episode. The band will also exist in real life and perform live. The episodes of the series will be the focus of the live show, making it an opera-like experience. This focus allows elements of the series to be combined with social media, (live) music and virtual production.

 

Director Sebastian Selg: "We are totally excited! This brings us closer to our goal of bringing the NEOSHIN cosmos to life in both the real and virtual worlds. 2022 will be an exciting year for us: among other things, we will launch the band, two singles are already ready."

 

Michael Mack, managing partner of Europa-Park and founder of MackNeXT: "I am impressed by the creativity that has gone into all three nominated projects. I am very pleased to once again support a promising project with the AUREA Young Talent Award and thus also make a long-term contribution to promoting film development in Germany and in Baden-Württemberg in particular. When I launched the AUREA Award in 2018, that was exactly my wish: to bring together and support innovative thought leaders and creative minds."

 

Prof. Andreas Hykade (Head of Animationsinstitut): "Animationsinstitut congratulates the entire NEOSHIN team on their success. For us, the project is pioneering in many ways: it is not only technologically at the cutting edge, but its mix of cinematic and musical formats also demonstrates the potential of transmedia exploitable IPs. And with live performances in the pipeline, we eagerly await NEOSHIN's next activities. Ride on."

 

The AUREA Award took place on January 21-22 as a hybrid digital and VR event. It consists of a specialist conference on the topics of augmented, virtual and mixed reality. In addition, the AUREA Award is awarded in five categories to the most promising AR/VR projects of the year with an entertainment focus as well as the Young Talent Award. The latter awards innovative and high-quality concepts for media/film projects with high entertainment value.

 

This year, the jury of the AUREA Young Talent Award consisted of:

 

  • Michael Mack, managing partner of Europa-Park and founder of MackNeXT
  • Gerd Nefzer, CEO of Nefzer Special Effects and Oscar winner for BLADE RUNNER 2049
  • Holger Tappe, director and producer (BACK TO GAYA), CEO Mack Animation
  • Anna Katharina Brinkschulte, Head Lecturer of the Interactive Media major at Animationsinstitut of FABW
  • Thomas Lechner, Central Production Manager at FABW
  • Carly Coco Schrader, director and FABW graduate student, winner of the 2021 AUREA Young Talent Award

 

In a keynote, Anna Brinkschulte, Carly Coco Schröder as well as Eddy Schäfer (Interactive Media student) also gave insights into the further development of last year's winning project CYBERCITY LOVESTORY.

 

Photos of the award ceremony (Copyright: Hans-Joerg Haas, Europa Park) as well as of the awarded project (Copyright: FABW) are available for download here.

 

Neoshin | Making-of