if I was a ten year old schoolboy today I was probably interested in everything connected with computers, had dreams about a crazy future as scientist in the african wilderness or searching for distant lifeforms in an observatory. in the fifties my dreams were much simpler, probably because of the amount and diversity of information available at that time. when I saw the pictures below, published in a magazine as part of a documentary about the ‘new’ world of television, I had my dream – to become a part of that world as a cameraman operating one of those camera-monsters. over the following years I changed my mind and followed different dreams. much later, when I produced animated films for a big tv-station in cologne, germany, I saw a modern studio with all the lights, cameras, cables, monitors and a huge stage for the first time in reality. it was fascinating and I felt like that schoolboy many years ago.
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.
I have always loved animation, but recently I’ve been making some live action shorts as well. it’s so much faster, and the things you can do with the equipment is so fascinating! It’s beautiful to handle this stuff, and I’m sure it must’ve been even more so in the older days when films were shot on reels.