Florian Froschmayer

"Faster. Louder. Younger," marveled the Swiss newspaper "Blick" in 1999 about Florian Froschmayers directorial debut "Exklusiv". At the time the movie accomplished the seemingly impossible - a Swiss film became a box office smash. Realized without any public funds, just with the director's creativity, sponsoring and crowd funding, for which there wasn't a word yet. It established Froschmayer as a doer and visionary in Switzerland, as well as in his chosen home, Berlin. Froschmayer approaches his newest project with the same verve as he does movies. SCRIPTtoMOVIE is his answer to the daily grind of filmmakers. A web based platform, connecting the creative, logistic and administrative areas of film work for the first time. Movies, TV-shows or commercials, SCRIPTtoMOVIE adapts to every film production's needs. Forschmayer has been fascinated by computers ever since the early 80s. He created video games with an IBM computer he bought from his math teacher. Later he taught himself how to code HTML in order to design websites that were up to his high standards. Born 1972 in Zurich, Switzerland, Froschmayer started as an actor in several productions of the Züricher Kindertheater. There, at a tender age of 7, the theater's head teacher Rosmarie Metzenthin identified him as a future director. "She noticed that I liked telling the other kids what to do," remembers Froschmayer. "Clearly, I only told them when and where they had to stand." On Februrary 28, 1985, at the age of 13, a life-altering decision was made. That's the day he saw Robert Zemeckis' "Back to the Future" for the first time. "When I left the movie theater I knew I was going to be a movie maker. At 13, I knew what I wanted to do with my life." Self-made man Froschmayers path to becoming a director was not without obstacles. After a business-apprenticeship he quickly got tired of sitting in an office. When Swiss TV was looking for editors he was offered a job by a friend, provided he'd learn the craft in self-study. He quickly quit his job working at a video store in Zurich and started shadowing an experienced editor for a week. Every night, until 7 am, he edited his own pieces and after two weeks he got to cut the first story that aired on TV. He had landed the job. For five years he was editing documentaries, TV-shows and over 1000 news stories until the TV format became too constricting. His first feature film "Exklusiv" sent shock waves through the Swiss cultural society and media. Never before dared a young director to ignore traditional conventions of Swiss filmmaking, which was almost entirely produced with public funds and money provided by cultural promotion. His innovative style opened new ways of financing Swiss art and made more recent Swiss films like "Achtung, fertig Charlie!", "Ernstfall in Havanna", "Katzendiebe" oder "Who killed Johnny" possible. The editor in chief of the film department at Swiss TV DRS, Madeleine Hirsiger, praised "Exklusiv", a crime caper set in the world of news, for its "wonderful imagery and biting dialog" and the film was described as "revolutionary" by the news magazine FACTS. Despite the enthusiastic reception of "Exklusiv", Froschmayer couldn't see his professional future in his homeland. "There's no movie business in Switzerland," he explains his decision to move to Berlin in 2001. "I don't want to make a movie every six years, I want to make six films a year." Success in Berlin Once in Berlin the motivated filmmaker shot several episodes of TV-shows like "Küstenwache" and "Die Sitte" before he traveled abroad. His second feature film L.A. X. is a road movie about a loner (Martin Rapold) traveling through the American west while looking for himself. With a micro crew of only a camera operator, an actor and a director the film was shot in only 14 days and was one of the first Swiss films shot in digital format. The film website cineman.ch wrote: "A quiet and reflective movie." Back in Berlin Froschmayer got an offer to direct several episodes of the German TV-drama "Tatort". Episodes like "Der Polizistinnenmörder" with Eva Mattes as the detective or "Borowski und die heile Welt" with Alex Milberg in the lead were received with much critical praise. TV movies followed, like "Die Route" (2009) or "Nicht ohne meinen Enkel" (2013, ARD/ORF) with Thekla Carola Wied and Christian Kohlund in the lead roles. His talent as a filmmaker was described as "sensitive and without pretense, with a clear focus on the essentials" by Stern magazin in 2009. It is this focus that has made him direct not only 50 successful feature and TV-movies, it was the motivation for his newest project. SCRIPTtoMOVIE is a software that will streamline a filmmaker's work process. SCRIPTtoMOVIE SCRIPTtoMOVIE was created on set, out of Froschmayer's frustration over cumbersome procedures. The sophisticated computer program facilitates the communication between director, production team, cast and crew and eliminates hours of administrative overhead. SCRIPTtoMOVIE works for all areas of filmmaking, be it shooting a feature film, TV-shows or commercials. "My goal was to shoot my movies with the best possible software. It would make me very proud if other filmmakers in Europe or overseas were interested in making films with my cool tool as well."