Crime scene: Long live the king !: That was how challenging shooting was under Corona conditions

Crime scene: long live the king!
That was how challenging shooting was under Corona conditions

In June and July 2020 the "crime scene: Long live the king!" shot with Jan Josef Liefers and Axel Prahl – under Corona shooting conditions

© WDR / Thomas Kost

How challenging it was to shoot a crime thriller under Corona conditions, says "Tatort: ​​Long live the King!" – Director Buket Alakus.

The "crime scene: Long live the king!" (13.12., 8.30 p.m., the first) was the first "Tatort" production of the station WDR, which resumed filming in June 2020 after the corona-related break. Due to the safety requirements, the shooting conditions for the whole team were unfamiliar and certainly difficult, explained Alexander Bickel, WDR program area manager for television films, cinema and series, when shooting started. Nevertheless, the joy was great to be back together in front of and behind the camera. And what do the filmmakers say in retrospect?

For the director it was "Heaven and Hell"

Director and Grimme Prize winner Buket Alakus (49, "Another League") celebrates her "Tatort" debut with this Sunday thriller. She explains about the special challenges: "Before Corona turned the world upside down, we had a great script, motivated actors and a great team. We even found our moated castle in 2019. But then the lockdown came. But me I was very lucky. As a newcomer, I was well received by the whole team and we all wanted to keep making the film. "

Basically everyone was forced to be "differently creative", which sometimes led to "great" ideas, but sometimes was also "frustrating". "When we were finally allowed to start filming preparations after the lockdown, filming under corona conditions was new territory for all of us," said Alakus. Although everyone "was theoretically very well prepared for the shoot, the processes had to become familiar in practice," she recalls.

Because a lot of what is actually normal when turning has suddenly become a problem. The filmmakers had to constantly come up with something new, especially in order to comply with the rules of distance. "For example, we had organized a separate box for each actor with his props, in which only he himself could reach in to take out his things, so that it was ensured that no one else touched the objects," explains Alakus. For her personally, the time with the unusual Corona conditions was "heaven and hell".

Did the story have to be changed?

How has the history of the film changed due to the postponement and the new conditions? "Fortunately, we didn't have to make too big changes to the crime thriller, but individual scenes and especially the showdown were revised due to the conditions and adapted to the situation. For example, we made sure to shoot outdoors as often as possible," says Producer Iris Kiefer.

"Within a very short time, our great author Benjamin Hessler adapted the script to the new circumstances and, among other things, rewritten the showdown in which Thiel (Axel Prahl, 60) and Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, 56) originally investigated in the midst of a crowd of disguised extras ", explains WDR editor Sophie Seitz. "This would of course have been a far too great risk for everyone involved, but the new ending is actually even nicer for me in its reduced genius, especially since we were now able to tell the actually existing, secret passages of the castle", Seitz continues.

That's what the "crime scene: Long live the king!"

The "Haus Lüdecke" has a long history and is known beyond the borders of Münster. A body is found in the moat of the old moated castle – in knight armor. The dead person is the newly crowned lord of the castle Manfred Radtke (Anthony Arndt, 68). Was it an accident or is there more to it – as Commissioner Thiel suspects?

Only a few months ago, the former fair king Radtke bought the venerable castle and wanted to organize medieval games here with his family in the future. Central theme: the bloodthirsty story of the Anabaptists in Münster. Boerne is appalled by this; You don't have fun with Münster's blackest chapter! But the preparations are already under way. Does the whole project have to be called off in view of the dead man?

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