Hi Be-maggers, we are Tim and Alex from The World Organisation (www.theworldorganisation.de) and we made the cover for this issue. For the stunt we managed to book german supermodel Ben Harmanus. After years of building and painting the Be-Mag booth at Winterclash it was obvious that we had to come up with something special now that the Winterclash had found it’s way to Berlin, our hometown.

The briefing was short and precise “Do whatever the hell you want, but stay on budget.”

We quickly came up with the idea to shoot the cover for the Winterclash issue at the booth. We thought it would be nice for people to get a behind the scene look at the process of a cover shooting and that it would of course draw attention to the booth which brought us to the additional challenge: Making the booth skateable.

Since we knew that issue 36 would also contain the Berlin City Check we decided to build our own little Berlin quoting 2 of the most famous and recognizable Berlin sights. The Berlin Wall and the TV-Tower. Now we needed a place to sell Be-Mag clothing, magazines and of course popcorn. As Berlin is also famous for its “Spätis” and kiosks we wanted to build a small kiosk into the scenery as our point of sale. This is what our first draft looked like, and we sent it off to the Be-Mag guys, who were stunned.

The next challenge was to integrate the be-mag messageboard into the booth, so we transformed the back of the wall into a huge laptop where people could leave their messages, with colour on the wall – with berlin style.

Winterclash Video Update #2 from Be-Mag on Vimeo.

We started collecting stuff for the booth one or two weeks before the contest and prepared the elements, painting everything white and still having no idea how to build the big skyline in the back of the booth because of safety and fire regulations our ideas were all not practicable or way beyond our budget. The same was true for the idea of building the be-mag letters on location like we did for the cover of the 3rd photo issue We had already started cutting the letters from polystyrene when we were told that we couldn’t use that material.

So we went to plan B, our speciality: IMPROVISING. Thanks to the magical powers and a bit of luck we achieved to get the huge molleton frames for the skyline for free. With the booth ready, we just needed to shoot the photo. The skater, of course, had to be based in Berlin. We chose Ben Harmanus cause he wasn’t busy skating the contest and could do the trick anytime without the risk of being injured during the competition and of course Benny is famous for his readiness to attempt stunts.

If you compare the final cover with the initial sketch I’d say we managed make our vision come reality. We were really stoked how everything worked out in the end, except of Alex nearly getting smashed by the big screen during deconstruction. He made it though and we’re all happy and we hope you like the cover as much as we do. Thanks to Jo and Endre for their help and Be-Mag for trusting us with this project!

- Tim Wolff & Alex Schneider

Be-Mag Covershot with Benny Harmanus from Be-Mag on Vimeo.

Read the full story including a Ben Harmanus interview at Be-Mag