Moving Adventures Medien: Film Tours that Turn Everyone Into Heroes

Moving Adventures Medien organizes film tours on the subject of the outdoors. Why does this topic fascinate you and your audience?

Joachim Hellinger: More than ever, the outdoors is an alternative to our everyday lives, which are becoming increasingly fast-paced and dominated by digital media. Outdoors, we can find authenticity and live an alternative lifestyle for a short time. You can overcome yourself and experience community. The medium of film is ideal for conveying precisely this feeling. With our films, we inspire people, give them food for thought and encourage our viewers to get active themselves, for example to cycle to work in the morning or go hiking.

Smartphone cameras and drones open up new possibilities for filmmakers

 

Moving Adventures Medien GmbH was founded in 2001 – what has changed since then?

Hellinger: The first tour already had 16 stops throughout Germany. In the beginning, we just pasted posters on the walls and handed out flyers. Since then, we have grown more and more organically. We used social media early on, first Facebook and now the entire range of communication tools.

Film production itself has also changed and become much more digital. Cameras are much smaller and lighter – today you can produce cinematic images with an iPhone. Filmmakers are much more independent as a result and can be closer to the action: much higher in the air, much deeper in the sea, much further into the jungle. With drones, you can now get shots that you would have needed a helicopter for in the past. This opens up incredible opportunities for us filmmakers, but it also poses challenges. Because it's not just us who can use these technologies, anyone can. So we have to find out: Where is the value, the story? What material is really suitable for a professional film?

You now organize your live events in 13 European countries. What makes the film tours so successful?

Hellinger: From the very beginning, our concept was to bring people together. “Outdoor” was still a rather vague term when we organized our first events around 25 years ago. There were nature and sports enthusiasts, but they were very segmented into groups – there were the alpinists, the kayakers, the mountain bikers. They didn't see themselves as part of a large outdoor group. Now things have changed: outdoor has become a lifestyle in recent years. Today, we appeal to a much larger, more homogeneous target group with our events because the different athletes feel like they belong together. As filmmakers and organizers, we want to entertain this community first and foremost. However, we also highlight issues such as nature and marine conservation and want to make a conscious statement.

What characterizes your audience?

Hellinger: Our tours are visited by up to 400,000 spectators of very different generations every year, and the number is constantly increasing. These are dense communities that interact a lot with each other and maintain lively contact with us – we experience this particularly on social media or in our customer service. Our community is characterized by the fact that they are really enthusiastic and inspired by our films and topics. We once received a postcard from New Zealand from a visitor who had cycled across the country from north to south after taking part in one of our tours. And that is just one of many examples.

What role does Bavaria as a media location play for you?

Hellinger: For filmmakers, proximity to media companies and technical service providers is enormously helpful – and that's a given here, because Munich is a top media location. But the location is also almost a logical consequence for us as a company from a thematic point of view: with the mountains on its doorstep, Munich is a popular destination for outdoor and sports fans throughout Europe.

You have your own programme team that selects the films for your tours and optimizes them in post-production. How exactly does that work?

Hellinger: We visit film festivals around the world and receive many films submitted digitally via a portal. We have also been networked with many protagonists in the outdoor world and filmmakers worldwide for over 25 years and therefore often find out about exciting projects at an early stage. With our production company, we sometimes participate as a co-producer. This collaboration can look very different. For example, we are approached by filmmakers who come back from an expedition with 80 hours of film material and ask if we can make something out of it. Of course, we also develop film projects on our own. We also research online or on social media for people who are currently experiencing an outdoor adventure and consider whether this could be turned into a film.

Live events are the main format, the streaming platform is an additional offering

 

Does your company HelliVentures only produce films for the Moving Adventures Medien film tours?

Hellinger: Also, but not only. Broadcasters such as ZDF or Arte are involved in some of our productions – these films can then be seen in the respective media library or on linear television. We also take our productions to festivals.

You also run your own streaming platform, Outdoor Cinema. What is the concept behind it?

Hellinger: The platform was created during the pandemic. It was a completely new situation for us at the time and we had to think about how we could stay relevant and keep our community. We were very quick to set up the platform and offer our films digitally, which gave us an advantage and the demand was very high. Today we see: Many people who have watched a stream once come back again. However, the platform is and remains an additional offering to our live events and does not represent the entire portfolio of our tours. As soon as we were able to fill the halls again, we realized very quickly that this is our format. We want to facilitate real encounters and bring people together. In turn, our community appreciates exactly that: that they can look forward to a curated evening as part of a community.

Media use is completely different today – social media has changed demands and attention spans. Do you also notice this in your audience?

Hellinger: We do notice it on social media. With our trailers, it's the first few seconds that count – if they're not there, the user's attention is gone. But there's almost the opposite trend with our movie nights themselves. We used to show shorter and more films and have noticed that our visitors prefer to delve deeper into stories. They want a sophisticated dramaturgy and a certain slowness. It is much better received when we give a few topics more space and time.

How do you respond to new needs and demands on social media?

Hellinger: We are constantly developing new formats on social media and thinking about how we can tease our films. Several factors play a role for us when playing out content: Which content makes the most sense on which platform? How do we build trailers for social media? How do we stand out? Which format is best received? But we also involve our community and include content from others in certain formats, for example in the “Shot of the week”.

AI is used in processes – deliberately not in design and live events

 

AI has conquered our everyday lives at a rapid pace. What role does the technology play in your work? What impact could it have on your business model?

Hellinger: It's incredible what AI can already do – and what it will be able to do in the foreseeable future. We use AI to optimize certain processes and workflows or for research. However, our claim for the outdoor film tour is: “This is real”. For us, the seal of quality is “authenticity” – and completely without AI. Everything creative is “real”, from the evening event with real emotions to the film content.

What is your vision for the future with Moving Adventures?

Hellinger: Of course, we always have the goal of reaching even more people with our content. Primarily via the live events, but also by bringing even more content to interested parties outside of our events and further expanding our streaming platform “Outdoor Cinema”. We want to be open and inclusive and move people. Physically, by getting them out into nature and encouraging them to hike, swim and cycle. But also mentally: we want to encourage people to take more personal responsibility and show that everyone can be the hero of their own life.