The slow-motion film is based on true events and shows the last known moments of award-winning photographer David Gilkey in Afghanistan and his colleague Zabihullah Tamanna. Gilkey sits inside a vehicle, which is turned upside down and gets hit by a massive impact. Then the film switches to real-time. The film uses Gilkey’s original voice from an interview he once gave about the purpose of being a journalist.

The film ends with charts remembering David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna and leads to our open platform.

All elements were hand-crafted. It was important to us, to apply a newspaper texture onto the models and the stage we prepared, as we are dealing with reporters and the newspaper is the main medium of journalism.

Later, all elements implemented into a 3D-environment. For this we used the technique of photogrammetry to not lose any detail of the crafted elements. We took many photos; these images were then fed into a computer in order to replicate all models in 3D based. Even the fire was built by wrinkling up newspaper – indicating it was his journalistic work, which eventually got him killed.

As this film is based on true events, we had to stick to facts. We used slow-motion animation to stress Gilkey’s subtle facial expression and to capture this moment of realization that his world and life has turned upside down – both literally and figuratively speaking.

David Gilkey was a famous US-photographer, who has been killed while reporting in Afghanistan. His death was not caused by a random attack, but terrorists deliberately killed him and his colleague in a targeted attack. It is unsure whether he was killed by the sole impact or by the burns caused by a rocket-propelled grenade, which generates lots of heat.

David Gilkey and his colleague Zabihullah Tamanna are two of over 100 reporters, who have been killed in a targeted attack since 2016.