News Article

Interview with shortz

Interview Banner

It's been a long time since we have interviewed a moviemaker, so it was about time to interviewed the most famous one, shortz. We have asked him about his YouTube channel, favorite projects, how to be good at movie making, User Choice Award and TMX Driving Academy.

Enjoy!


Hello shortz! Glad you took your time to do this interview with us. Can you introduce yourself?

Hello guys, I'm Christian Theune, better known as shortz to the community, I'm 24 years old and live in Germany. The most time I spend hiding in the editor, building tracks or doing some video stuff, but sometimes you can also catch me online. Besides Trackmania I love to listen to music, going on festivals, doing some Mountainbike trips throught the woods & meeting up with friends.


For people that follows your YouTube channel we see how active you are, and how long you have been active. What is the motivation to keep bring up top level Trackmania videos?

I am active since I started with doing videos back in 2008, first just for fun and for me, later on for teams & competitions. The Motivation for doing so many videos about Trackmania is very simple, this game got just so many facets I want to show, I think I will ever show the full spectrum to my audience tho, since we still see new gamemodes rising.


Picture of shortz

shortz

Name: Christian "shortz" Theune

Age: 24

Team: eSU, MnM

Country: Germany

Used TM perspective: Cam 2

Controlling device: xBox 360 Pad

YouTube channel

Twitter

Facebook

You made the official trailer for TMX Driving Academy, an event we are hosting from 1st of January to 1st of March. Will we see you playing in the event, and if so, what style will you try out?

Of course I will play the competition, I'm always down for some TA competitions in TMNF. Well I mostly will play RPG/Speedtech I would say, since it's the style I can mostly relate to, but I will also try out the other styles, Fullspeed seems already pretty stacked, a nice challenge!



If you should discribe your style of editing. How would you do that? And what sort of programs do you use?

Hard to describe it with just a few words… I guess I just did a bit of everything in the last 9 years. In the Beginning the “cam 2” video era, use a Pendulum song at least once videos, MLG meme edit, Overedit, Cinematics, Tutorials, I guess I contributed to every subgenre of videostyles. Nowdays it's more like ...presenting facts about certain things (Top10's, MTC top5 etc.). For video editing I use mostly Adobe After Effects, somehow got stuck with that program for quite some time now. For Motion tracking I use Boujou, for me one of the best 3D tracking softwares out here.


Music is a big part of the video experience. How do you choose what kind of music you use for each video?

It's different with every video I do, for mappack videos I choose some songs I have listened to lately, for movies it needs some more effort to find the right song, mostly my teammates help me alot with sending me shitloads of music every now & then. And this is also the nice part of video editing, reimagine the music & give the song some kind of a music video with trackmania shots, that is my favorite part in video editing I would say.


You aint only a movie maker. You are also a known driver for eSPORT United, and we see you making maps for big tournaments. Have you ever tried to become a top player instead of a top moviemaker?

Hehe, of course I tried back in the days when I played TMN ESWC, but I have realized soon that I'm not one of the best tech players on the servers I played on. I played several tournaments with some teams or as a guest driver but mostly never had a spot on the match lineups. And then I found my new favorite style, RPG. A mezmerising first contact with this style, I fell in love instantly. Long tracks, mostly some kind of story, riddles to solve, is this real life? I played RPG alot from 2010-2014, managed to get some very good results in most of the cups, I even won one contest. After the hype was over, I also tried myself on fullspeed, a style I totally hated when starting with trackmania for its simplicity, but after being 2 years in team eSU, we decided to start SPS VI with two teams and actually won both divisions!

But for me there was never really a single day, where I thought I would ditch moviemaking for driving, I think you can just achive so much more with videos … I guess I can say I left my Fingerprint on this game.


Is there any project that motivates you more than others? Do you prefer to work hard on community stuff or doing new stuff all the time?

It depends, on how much I can use some new ideas I got in my mind. But I really like to do stuff for the community, like my CCP, MTC & Tournament videos. About doing new stuff sure I try to “evolve” somehow, so it was surprising for some I guess that I actually did the 42k project (still got a trauma of the weeks rendering all the stuff). I really like to point out that my ESWC 2015 video was for me one of the best collaborations, between the players & the tournament host. It was really worth the effort when you can see your whole Newsfeed spammed with your video, its a great feeling I can tell you.


The User Choice Award on TMX is taking place at the moment, and you have some success there in the past years. With winning the movie maker of the year in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Is there any categories you hope to win this year?

Of course I would like to see myself on top again as the best video editor, I contributed tons of videos the past year & also improved it I would say, but there are so many other talented guys out there aswell, who will make it a thrilling race for the crown! I also would like to win in another category if I am nominated, probably the next categories would be best screenshotmaker, Mr. Trackmania & TMX Legend award, but well that's me just dreaming right now, since I would have to improve alot more to achieve such an award.


You're interested in the TMX User Choice Award? All information about the UAC 2017 is available in the TM-Exchange forum post from Sky. Have fun!


After making the aftermovie of the World Championship in Trackmania In 2013, 2014 and 2015 people were looking forward to this in 2016 aswell. However this year we saw another movie maker getting this project. Any reason behind it?

It was always an honor for me to do these clips, but after last years video I have realized we need something new, so I told everyone already when I released the video, this would be my last ESWC contribution, I had a good run with those clips, for me the magnum opus was the 2015 video, I put pretty much all my ambition into this video & also selected some of my favorite songs for it. So there was no real point for me in doing the video for Mania Worldcup 2016, I would've not improved in comparison to the 2015 video…

I think Snowflake Films made a good video, it's different to the last years videos, different style of cut, different music, I like the change & it was needed.


I remember discovering your channel myself some years ago. Being so active makes the amount of videos high, and it's difficult to know where to start when you are new to Trackmania. If there is one video you should recommend to people that hasn't watched any other Trackmania videos before, what video would that be?

That's a pretty neat question, well I would assume, if you don't know anything you should most likely watch this video from me first: This will give you a brief overview what my youtube channel is about.

As we speak about this, I would also highlight this video: I have just contributed a small part for it, but this video by Ozon shows almost the full Spectrum of the last 10 years in competitive trackmania and it still gives me goosebumps everytime I watch it.


Trackmania is a small game compared to other esport games. Have you ever thought of changing your main game to reach a bigger audience?

I thought about it yea, but somehow I everytime I got back and created trackmania stuff, as I said earlier I'm not done yet with trackmania, there are still some things left unshown. Also the Inbuilt render engine, replay editor and all that stuff make this game so unique & handy to use for everyone. I might do some more CS:GO stuff in the future, but that market is already flooded with alot of top notch video editors. :D


The TMX Driving Academy is gathering top players in every style, and people like to see videos with strong times. Will there be some kind of aftermovie of the event by you?

There will be some kind of aftermovie, but I think it will feature most likely only team eSU. Doing a full aftermovie for this competition about all players, I have to decline, but I think you'll find an aspiring moviemaker, who wants to give this competition his unique touch with his aftermovie! :)


I guess you can call the moviemaking community in Trackmania quite small, but is there someone out there who is up and coming? Or is there someone that has been making movies for a long time, but is unnoticed?

As a total newcomer I just got one name right now, WASIMo4. That guy is insane, he's one of my favorites of the past months, great shots & nice ideas. I also would like to highlight right here L4bomb4, Koenz, Riolu & Spam, they are doing huge work for the community, showing the game as Let's plays or stream on twitch, you can't gather new faces with any other way faster as they do. To speak about unnoticed video editors I have to say, if you are new to the game you have missed the best video editors this game ever had, Guys like OleK, Speedzor, SiH, Darkpuddle, @iceman, Dex, YRP360. They all had so many good ideas which pushed the videos so much forward. Also worth to check out boomedits, peiks, DaniXks, MCYCProduction, noxx, Lars & Ozon, producing a video every once in a while, for sure worth to check them out.


Thank you so much for this interview. Is there anyone you wanna give a shout-out to?

Oh well this list will be long… but well here we go!

  • First of all I want to thank you nmd, for giving me the opportunity to get this interview spot, I really like that we had the time to discuss some things! :)
  • My team eSports United, member since 2011 and no doubt one of the best/funniest German teams around, see you at the next clan meeting guys. :v
  • Team BX3, especially Krijn, znik & tintin, I guess without their help I would have quit the game much earlier, thanks for that, you wont be forgotten guys, No loose ends.
  • Team MnM, cool guys, we got fun together, I like you very much, hopefully I can be with this team for some more years.
  • Ozon, that guy actually teached me how to do more custom cams & get better with the media tracker
  • ben3847, for giving me the chance to creat something big with his 42k project
  • tomekk0055, my dobre, who just gave TMUF a rework with his stunning work on TMUnlimiter 1.1
  • TMX, for hosting this site, I don't know if my life would be as cool as it is right now without you. Keep doing what you do.
  • My Audience, without you, the guys who are yet not annoyed by my video spam on YouTube, without you I would not have so much fun as I do while create my videos.

and some more guys: Riolu, Lovva, Brenni, Xeqzion, Sparco, Pascow, Sky, 5teasy, Mom, Dad & that Reindeer standing on the outside of my window right now. Stay healty and keep on playing, cya. :v


Thanks for the interview and everything! Please continue your awesome work for the community of Trackmania.

Stay tuned by subscribing the HuntMania Facebook page!


Comments