Medienstürmer Reports on the Soapbox Event in the Children's Village

In cooperation with a regional coaching company for organizational consulting and team development, the editors from MEDIENSTÜRMER visited the Caritas Kinderdorf in Irschenberg last week. The highlight of the day: Another company, Trend Micro — a provider of IT security solutions — spent their company outing building soapbox cars with the children, culminating in a spectacular race. The Medienstürmer editorial team produced, among other things, a short film about the event. The result was unforgettable scenes and great interviews.

By 6 PM, we finally made it. A hot espresso in the evening sun at Cafe Dinzler allowed us to forget the latent pain in our burning legs for a brief moment. It was quite a challenge to run after the little, overzealous children in their sleek soapbox cars with high-quality camera equipment. But what wouldn't one do for a successful camera shot and a memorable film recording?

Fortunately, we only had to push our legs to an unusually high stride frequency during the final race. During the day, things were a bit more relaxed. Since there were three of us on site, we could distribute all the tasks among several shoulders. While Philipp captured memorable photos, Felix and Benjamin moved on to "dragging" the key "players" of the day in front of the camera to ask interesting questions.

But "dragging" might be the wrong term, as the willingness to step in front of the camera was unusually high among all participants. After all, over 60 people took part in this event — typically, you'd encounter more camera shyness. But not here in the Kinderdorf and not on this day.

Thus, the first interviews were quickly in the can. This left plenty of time to capture more impressions and insights through the lens, ensuring the video wouldn't end up monotonous. After all, there was plenty worth filming on site. First and foremost, of course, the lively children, who, in oversized protective suits, sprayed their soapbox cars with colorful paints with great joy and enthusiasm. Before that, they were screwing, filing, and sawing to give the soapbox cars their final shape.

These were indescribable scenes, and as most participants themselves said: "There's nothing like a child's smile." And yet, for a proper video, a child's smile alone isn't enough. More impressions were needed: of the grounds, the participants, the work materials, and, of course, the buffet. The table, adorned with quinoa, tomato-mozzarella, veggie, and meat burgers, not only made a solid impression in front of the camera — no! It tasted great too, and the caterers could be sure of their praise.

But the absolute highlight of the day was found far from the buffet. More precisely, the climax of the day took place on the hill behind it. Clearly, for a soapbox race, you need a hill. Without it, it doesn't work. The self-built racers have neither an engine nor any other drive, but they do have a steering wheel and a brake lever, which you have to use at times — as the first two daredevil drivers immediately demonstrated to us.

Both pilots crashed into the barrier at full speed in the second corner, with the second car even bursting a tire. Clearly, action-packed scenes are never bad — but you can't achieve the best time this way. However, car number 3 managed to set the first podium-worthy record of the day with a descent time of 19 seconds. With soapbox 3, the cameraman running alongside couldn't take a break in the second corner either — endurance was required until the end.

It certainly wasn't going to fail due to the equipment. To shorten the running paths, some of the children were allowed to ride with our GOPRO, which also captured memorable scenes. And the good 2.5 hours that the children and their helpers from the IT security company took to build and make the soapbox cars road-ready were captured with an additional camera in time-lapse. Then a few final interviews here and there, a big group photo, a brief end-of-day chat, and then off home. After a non-stop day of filming, we had certainly earned the good Dinzler coffee in the evening sun.

The spectacular images that resulted can be found in the following gallery: