Robin Lachhein, 31, and Judith Schneider, 30, a couple from, Germany, have a very interesting hobby – they travel around the world to recreate iconic movie scenes in the exact same locations they were filmed at.
Robin and Judith met at a friend’s party 10 years ago, and they’ve been visiting famous film locations for the last six years. At first it was just a personal hobby they kept for themselves, only posting photos they took around their home, but then friends started noticing them when they came over and praising their talent for recreating iconic scenes. Instagram had been gaining popularity, so they started their very own page, aptly named ‘Secret Famous Places’, which has gained tens of thousands of followers.
Photo: Secret Famous Places/Facebook
“This is our hobby,” Schneider told Insider Magazine. “We just did it because it’s a lot of fun. But after four or five years, we realized that everybody looking at our pictures is laughing a lot and having fun, so we decided to publish them on Instagram.”
The two film buffs constantly have to reiterate that this is just a fun hobby for them, not a full time job, as many people think. Robin is a mechanical engineer and Judith works at a radio station; they just plan out their vacation with film shooting locations in mind. So instead of simply visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris, they also research iconic film locations for their collections, which so far numbers about 70 scenes.
Picking out what scenes to recreate is trickier than most people think. First of all, they only want to recreate good movie scenes, then they mostly opt for ones with male and female actors, although they sometimes make exceptions, like the recreation of a LOTR scene where Judith played elven heartthrob Legolas.
Every new project has to be very well researched and planned out, as simply going out to a film location and taking a photo doesn’t work as well as you’d think. For example, they once traveled to a certain area of New Zealand to recreate a scene from The Hobbit, only to find that it was missing Mount Cook in the background. They then learned that the mountain was hundreds of miles away and had been digitally added into the background in the movie.
Then there is the weather, which isn’t always the same as in the movie scenes they are trying to recreate, finding clothing to closely match those of the actors, or just curious bystanders getting in their shots. The point is that every one of their photos takes a lot of work and planning, they spend hours scouting the internet for information on certain locations, but it’s all part of the process they love so much.
“We combine taking the pictures with holidays,” Robin Lachhein said. “When we travel to a country, we want to visit the country and want to see great sightseeing spots. The cool part of this hobby is that we don’t just visit sightseeing spots where everyone in the country is, we see spots where movies are filmed, which are so much cooler.”
Robin and Judith say they only use tools like Photoshop for very minor modifications, like adjusting colors so they better match the look of the movie scenes. Otherwise, they put authenticity first, even leaving random objects that they could easily remove in the shots they post on Instagram.
Searching and researching movie locations when planning their vacations, and then finding the exact angle to shoot the photos from is what makes their holidays more exciting, but Robin and Judith say that the thing they love most about their hobby is that it makes other people happy too.
“I like that we are making people smile,” they told Insider. “That’s really, really cool.”
