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How Lakewood's Wake Her Soul Became a Student Film Milestone
Wake Her Soul is a 2019 narrative short film created for Lakewood by students at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Germany, running approximately one minute and thirty seconds and earning three New York Festivals Advertising Awards finalist certificates across cinematography, editing, and original music in its debut year.
The film centres on a character named Henry who picks up a dusty acoustic guitar and is transported through a sequence of memories. The creative conceit transforms a retail product moment into an act of emotional recollection, using the physicality of the instrument as the narrative trigger. The campaign was published in Germany in March 2019 as a single film asset, produced entirely within the academic environment of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg GmbH, the Ludwigsburg-based production institution that generated the work, according to records at nyfadvertising.com.
As documented on clapboard.com, Wake Her Soul is a student and spec production rather than a formally commissioned brand campaign, a distinction that shapes how the work should be read. No verified evidence places it within an official Lakewood advertising programme. What it represents instead is a proof-of-concept execution: a student team applying craft-level discipline to a retail services brief and producing a film that attracted international festival recognition. The Clapboard Score for Wake Her Soul is 72 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition within the structural constraints of a student production. In the German market, where retail storytelling traditions are robust and emotionally literate advertising has a documented history, the film's tonal register is well-calibrated even if its distribution context remains academic.
Lakewood occupies a niche position in the German retail and beverage landscape, with no other advertising campaigns attributed to the brand in public advertising databases, according to clapboard.com. Wake Her Soul therefore functions as a rare creative document for the brand, albeit a student-originated one, offering a window into how a narrative retail film might position the product within a broader emotional register.
The strategic insight driving the film is that memory and sensory experience are more compelling retail arguments than product specification. By grounding the campaign in music — a domain where emotional recall is near-universal — the creative team at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg constructed a brand association that operates outside conventional category advertising. This positions Lakewood implicitly against the functional messaging more typical of German beverage retail competitors, where brands such as innocent Drinks and Rewe's own-label juice lines have historically leaned on provenance and health credentials as primary differentiators.
The broader market context adds relevance. Pure-fruit-juice consumption in the EU declined four percent between 2014 and 2018, according to kenresearch.com, a trend that intensified competitive pressure on mid-tier juice brands across the German market to find emotional rather than functional footholds. In Germany specifically, where retail media environments are competitive and consumer scepticism toward conventional advertising is documented, a narrative film that foregrounds feeling over product claim represents a defensible strategic posture. The global fruit-juice market reached approximately 45.4 billion liters in 2018 and was forecast to grow at roughly 1.8 percent annually through to 2024, according to beveragemarketing.com, suggesting modest headroom in volume terms and an elevated need for brand differentiation through story.
Christian Schilling directed and wrote Wake Her Soul, bringing a unified authorial vision to both the script and the on-set execution of the film. The production was shot by director of photography Tim Weskamp, whose work on the film earned a New York Festivals Advertising Awards finalist certificate in the Student Cinematography category, as confirmed by nyfadvertising.com. Nicola Pantzke served as producer, overseeing the logistical architecture of a production that achieved festival-standard output within an academic setting.
The editing, credited to Ernst Lattik, also received a New York Festivals Student Editing finalist citation, according to nyfadvertising.com, indicating that the film's rhythm and pacing were judged at a level competitive with professional-tier work. The original music, composed by Alexander Wolf David with sound design by Robin Harff, completed the audio landscape and earned a third New York Festivals finalist recognition in the Student Original Music category. The density of craft recognition across four separate disciplines — cinematography, editing, music, and sound — is unusual for a single student production and points to a high degree of intentional collaboration across the crew.
The film's visual grammar, built around memory, repetition, and tactile detail, relies on close observation of physical objects and the human face. This approach, while common in prestige commercial filmmaking, is technically demanding in a short format where every cut must carry emotional weight. According to records held at The One Club, Wake Her Soul was also awarded a 2019 Young Ones ADC Student Gold Cube in Motion and Film Craft Cinematography, compounding the evidence that Weskamp's camera work and Schilling's direction met a rigorous international standard. Crew United identifies the film as a spec commercial, per reporting archived at clapboard.com, which underscores the voluntary ambition that defined the production from the outset.
No verified commercial performance data for Wake Her Soul is publicly available, which is expected given its status as a student and spec production rather than a formally released brand campaign in the German market. Assessment of its impact is therefore grounded in festival recognition and structural creative analysis.
The film received three New York Festivals Advertising Awards finalist certificates in 2019, spanning Student Original Music, Student Editing, and Student Cinematography, as documented by nyfadvertising.com. It additionally received a Young Ones ADC Student Gold Cube in Motion and Film Craft Cinematography, according to oneclub.org. Accumulating four distinct international recognitions across a single ninety-second film is a meaningful indicator of craft cohesion. The creative team under Christian Schilling and producer Nicola Pantzke produced a film in which every technical layer — image, cut, score, and sound — was judged independently and found to be competitive.
Structurally, the film demonstrates the effectiveness potential of narrative retail advertising in Germany when emotional truth is foregrounded over product demonstration. The memory sequence built around Henry and the acoustic guitar creates a durable brand association that a product-led execution would not generate. For Lakewood, a brand with no other documented advertising history in public archives per clapboard.com, Wake Her Soul represents both a creative high-water mark and an unanswered strategic question about what a sustained brand voice at this quality level could achieve in the broader German retail market.
Wake Her Soul is a 2019 student narrative film created for Lakewood by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Germany. Directed by Christian Schilling, the approximately ninety-second film follows a character named Henry who is transported through memories while playing a dusty acoustic guitar. It earned four international student advertising awards.
Christian Schilling directed and wrote Wake Her Soul. Tim Weskamp served as director of photography, Nicola Pantzke produced the film, and Ernst Lattik edited it. The score was composed by Alexander Wolf David with sound design by Robin Harff, all from the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg production in Germany.
Wake Her Soul received three New York Festivals Advertising Awards finalist certificates in 2019, covering Student Original Music, Student Editing, and Student Cinematography, according to nyfadvertising.com. The film also received a Young Ones ADC Student Gold Cube in Motion and Film Craft Cinematography, as documented by oneclub.org.
Wake Her Soul is a student and spec production, not a formally commissioned Lakewood brand campaign. Crew United identifies it as a spec commercial, and no other Lakewood advertising campaigns appear in public advertising databases, according to clapboard.com. The film originated entirely within Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg's academic programme in Germany.
Wake Her Soul demonstrates that emotionally driven narrative film can carry a retail brand brief with craft-level rigour. Produced in Germany amid a documented four percent decline in EU fruit-juice consumption between 2014 and 2018, per kenresearch.com, the film offers a model for differentiation through storytelling rather than functional product claims.
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