Maike Maier
-Grip-
GERMANY
Don’t take yourself too seriously!
My mother used to say: “one can’t always do big things, but one can try to put something small into big things”
Also you don’t have to prove yourself (which unfortunately I had to at the beginning of my professional career in 1993).
In my job as a grip, I find it important to capture the energy and feeling of the actors and actresses to generate the best result in image.
… to explain my job I say:
Grip means to harmonize statics, movement and a feeling for the scene.
I like films like Timbuktu or Lemontree, or TelAviv on Fire.
Whereby the political situation in one place is described from the life of “normal people”, with great actors and impressive pictures.
My mother Almut!
In the 70s she managed to separate us three small children from our father (who hit her) and gave us the opportunity to do what we liked without clichés and following our respective needs. For this she had to start again from scratch.
My godmother Marga
She became a chief detective in the 1950s, without considering this “special”. She worked on an equal footing with her male colleagues at the time.
In addition to my mother, I am very grateful to my two brothers Niels and Knut. Our father died in 1983 when I was 12 years old, my brothers 17 and 19; despite the age difference, there was great solidarity.
My brothers founded MaierBros.de in 1989, a film technology company.
I helped out there from the beginning, until I started my first internship at another company after graduating from high school, and then found my own way.
For 22 years now, I’ve been working as a freelancer mainly with my brothers, which I see as a great gift.
Maike was born in 1971 in Wuppertal, and grew up in the Bergisches Land, then from 1974, after her parents separated, she lived mainly in Cologne-Ehrenfeld.
In 1993 she graduated, then she did a three months internship at the Pille company (camera, light and stage rental)
From the end of 1993 she started working on several university shoots. She worked, for example, three times ‘at’ Filip Hering production driver (‘The Shameless’, ‘The Moving Man’, ‘Voll Normaaal’)
Between 1994 and 1996 she worked on various productions as a lighting trainee, assistant, springer light / stage
From 1995 to 1998 she was the camera assistant to Jürgen Steil (mostly international films) and also to other stage directors such as: Harald Scheidt, « Schere ».
Since 1998 she works as first camera stage / key grip.
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