It was the first year of the pandemic. With lockdowns, all our projects at the Berlin office (JvM/Spree) suddenly came to a halt. So we started supporting our Hamburg colleagues.

This was the very first brief. And to be honest, it was a rough start. I remember the CDs politely rejecting all of our concepts in the first two meetings. Corona, uncertainties, a new setup…

By the time we approached the third round, the pressure was building.
I spent the whole night browsing for inspiring lockdown stories. There weren’t many.

Then I came across Cornelia Vertenstein. A 92-year-old piano teacher who continued her lessons over FaceTime during lockdown. I immediately wrote the script.

At the time, it didn’t feel like a jackpot. I was just trying to save the day, get one idea into the deck. But the team loved it. Then the client did. Voilà.

So in many ways, my lockdown story has some parallels with Cornelia’s.
Okay, maybe mine isn’t quite as inspiring, definitely not enough for an emotional film. But still, this one ended up being the highlight of those strange months for me.