To put up a full week of seminars and workshops is already a tradition in the HFF Film and Television School in Munich. Every year in March during the semester vacation, studios, auditoriums and the facilities are open to receive dozens of lecturers and professionals for a full week on experimenting equipment and to interchange knowledge. The concept is not so much directed to students but to professionals and teachers to improve knowledge, to get acquainted with new equipment, new trends and most of all to learn from each other’s.

On stage all lecturers of the Hands On xK International

This year was specially different. More workshops, more companies involved a lot more state of the art equipment supplied by the manufacturers and rental houses. It was indeed a very hectic week. In the building, every single studio, seminar room, theatre was occupied by a lectures in a total of 36 masterclasses running at the same time. Almost all fields were covered. Post-production, VR, Advanced post, VFX, 360º degrees, Camera, Lenses, Lighting, Documentary Film, Sound, sound for 360º degrees, Production, color grading, green production, green shooting, thesis shots for phd’s researches and extensive testing of cameras, lenses done by many of the lecturers present.

The industry, let’s say, the manufacturers and rental houses support the initiative by supplying large amount of equipment for experimentation and testing. This year was a record breaking of a considerable number of lenses. Rehoused from P+S Technik; Vantage with several anamorphic; spherical from Zeiss, ARRI, SW Sonderoptic/Leica and Fujinon. More than 50 companies amongst manufacturers, rental houses, post-production houses were represented during the week which culminated with the screening of all tests and workshops in the blue cinema room where attendees and lecturers shared their experimentations and tests.

To put all this together is only possible with the support of the SFT (Das Studienzentrum für Filmtechnologie) which stands for – The Study Center for Film Technology – which is an independent institute associated with HFF Munich. The aim of the German institution is to mediate between the users and manufacturers of film equipment, supporting a wide range of exchange activities of industry projects. The Institution supports various industry forums, in collaboration with the film trade associations and other organizations like Hands In International lead by Katrin Richthofer and Peter Slansky head of the technological department of the film school.

This is a unique event with educational purposes for advanced professionals and teachers in the field of image capture in the world with this proportions condensed in one week.

One of the masterclasses dealt with LED lighting its behaviour in colour space.	One of the exercises consisted of a experiment for a Cinematographic thesis and this is one of the moments of this experiment which was shot by Nina Badoux, Axel Block and Roberto Schaefer.
Uli Mors in his studio for masterclass workflows	Improvised rental house for the week managed by Zeeno
David Stump ASC giving his lecture.	Benjamin Bergery (Thefilmbook blog) testing flares on lenses
ARRI presented its recent large format sensor camera. Alexa LF	Philippe Ros amongst tons of lenses to test. You can pick up with long beard Tahvo Hirvonen spotted the photographer.

Michael Neubauer BVK Manager of BVK opening the usual session on Wednesdays at HFF «talking about a cinematographer» with BVK president Johannes Kirchlechner. In the centre Roberto Schaefer ASC with Peter Slansky the host.	Discussion moderated afterwards by Axel Block and Benjamin B.
Philippe Ros AFC and David Stump sharing their test conclusions in the last day.	Tahvo Hirvonen FSF the well humorous Finnish president slating before Johanna Taufenbach for a lens test.
Philippe Ros lecturing – Tests workflows on texture.	Marc De Backer and Marijke Van Kets preparing a shot with by  using different lenses. Marijke has just finished a PhD degree based on a research project  about cinematography called «Emotion of the lens» Articles to be soon published here in this website.

All photos taken by Tony Costa aip

The huge list of companies present at the event:

Adobe
ARRI Licht
ARRI Kamera
AVID
Bebop
CANON
CINEPOST
CW Sonderoptic GmbH
Dedo Weigert Film GmbH – Phantom
Dedo Weigert Film GmbH – Licht
Dedo Weigert Film GmbH – Strreamlight
DJI
DOP Choice
DVEAS
DVE
DVEAS Testlizenzen Nuke
DVE-X
EDIUS (3D-Schnitt)
EIZO
Filmlight
Fujifilm
FUJINON – Videor E.Hartig GmbH
Hanse Innotech – s.MBF
HP
Jeti
Kameraverleih Licht & Ton KLT GmbH
K5600
Kinoflo
Ludwig Kameraverleih GmbH
Magic Multimedia
MBF Filmtechnik
Mors Media
msf – Michael Sänger Film
NMAV- Camera
NMAV-Da Vinci
P&S
Panther
Panasonic System Communications Company Europe (PSCEU)
Pomfort GmbH
Radeck-Film
RED
Renollet Rantel Paris
ROSCO
Sennheiser
Sony Deutschland
SMM Deutschland
Teltec
Vantage Film GmbH
Videocation GmbH
VIDEOR
Vision 2 see
Vitec
ZEISS
21Unity
Sennheiser: Ambeo VR Mic, Ambeo Smart Headset
Neumann: KU100 Kunstkopf (über Sennheiser)
Zylia: Zylia Microphone ZA-1 & Software
Schoeps: ORT-Cross Array
Ambient: Recorder & Zubehör
3DIO: Omni-Binaural Microphone