Bunker Concert: How a NATO Relic in Lahr Became a Film Set

A rehearsal room that looks like a bunker because it is one: for WeLive Episode 16 with Lahr singer-songwriter Attila Reißmann, we didn't film in a studio but inside a real former NATO command bunker on the decommissioned Lahr airbase – the same bunker where the band Scaramouche already rehearsed back in the 1990s, where the Lahr Rockwerkstatt's bands have rehearsed for more than 25 years, and which is soon to be demolished.

The Location: A Bunker on Borrowed Time

For this intro, we deliberately didn't go inside the bunker at first, but out onto the sprawling grounds around it: industrial wasteland, old taxiways, fences – shot and scored as quietly as if it were a 1950s newsreel about a forgotten subculture. That subculture is really the heart of the story, because the bunker where Attila Reißmann and his band later perform isn't a built set. It's a real, historic place with its own long history in Lahr's music scene – and with an end date that's now fixed.

From Airbase to Underground Scene: The Bunker's History

The bunker sits on the grounds of the former Lahr airbase, once one of the largest NATO military airfields in southern Germany during the Cold War. In 1952 it became a NATO base for French fighter jets, and from 1967 the Canadian Air Force took over the site as the European headquarters of its NATO forces – flying CF-104 and later CF-18 fighter jets, plus a helicopter squadron. The runway is roughly 3,000 meters long and built for heavy military aircraft, one of the largest of its kind in the region. From 1962 to 1971, American MK 28 nuclear warheads were also stored here, several of them on standby around the clock – an active Cold War frontline site at the foot of the Black Forest. Canada withdrew for good in 1994 after the end of the Cold War, and the base was closed.

What happened to the abandoned bunker facilities afterward is really the interesting part of the story – and it starts earlier than you'd think: back in the 1990s, the Lahr band Scaramouche, whom we ourselves portray in our music documentary "Heart and Soul", already rehearsed in this very former command bunker – long before there was any organized Rockwerkstatt or other bands there. They even recorded songs here, especially for the album "Belle". Only after Scaramouche disbanded in 2001 and the rooms became free did the Lahr Rockwerkstatt e. V. – a volunteer-run association supporting the local music scene, active since 1996 – officially take over the bunker and convert it into proper rehearsal rooms for more than 33,000 Deutschmarks, more than two-thirds of it out of their own pocket. Since then, more than 25 further bands have rehearsed here – over three decades, an improvised band rehearsal space became one of the defining rehearsal addresses of Lahr's underground scene.

In 2003 the bunker already came close to closing once, when the owner wanted to turn the site into a museum – lobbying and support from the mayor at the time kept it open. This time there's no saving it: under a 1996 sale agreement, the city of Lahr is required to demolish the bunker, with demolition set to begin in October 2026. For 13 bands, that means the overnight end of a rehearsal-space home that's more than 25 years old – and actually reaches back much further still. Our shoot in the summer of 2025 is therefore among the last film footage that could still be made in these rooms at all.

The Transformation: From Rehearsal Room to Film Set

Instead of building an artificial set inside the bunker, we did the opposite: we made the band's real rehearsal room look even more like a real rehearsal room. We decorated the walls with old newspaper clippings, photos and concert posters from the place's long band history. At the same time, the room had to work on camera – so we built our own lighting concept that deliberately stages the title of Attila Reißmann's album "Lila", and even modified the bunker's ventilation shafts so light could shine through them. The effort, in other words, wasn't about making a place look more artificial, but about making it both more real and more cinematically staged than it had ever been in everyday use.

The Technical Challenge: Sound and Picture Underground

A bunker is visually compelling, but acoustically it's almost the opposite of a concert room. Bare concrete and a small, box-shaped space produce harsh flutter echo instead of the room acoustics you'd actually want for a live recording – so the mic placement had to be tight and deliberate, to keep reflections out at the recording stage rather than having to fix them in the mix afterward. Visually, too, the location was far less forgiving than an open stage: we filmed entirely inside a single, fairly narrow room, which left little room for big camera moves. For some visual dynamics, we mounted a dedicated automated camera slider on the ceiling that simulated a kind of crane shot over the audience – within that confined space, the three cameras had to coordinate tightly to still deliver a moving image.

Handling exactly this kind of difficult acoustics and tight room conditions – whether at the recording stage or later in the mix – is core craft for our live recording mixing.

The Crew: Three Cameras in One Tight Bunker Room

We shot with just three manned cameras – Maik Styrnol, Raphael Federer and Franz Weber. Maik Styrnol directed on site and was responsible for the production, Raphael Federer took on the cinematography and worked with Maik to plan the set design. Pirmin Styrnol was responsible for financing as executive producer. Lars Hummel was responsible for sound and live sound, and Maik Styrnol helped with mic placement for the recording. Editing, color grading and mixing were then completed at punchline studio.

Result: A Concert Film With Hidden Depth

That evening, Attila Reißmann played a 16-song set from his album "Lila" together with his band – Patrick Lesser (piano), Michael Pretzsch (bass & vocals), Kora Heitzmann (vocals) and Bernd Schüssele (drums). The set closes with the song "Bunker 108" – not a coincidental play on words, but an anthem dedicated to this very place.

What This Means for Your Project

This shoot shows how we approach unusual locations: not covering them up, but amplifying them. This experience with multi-camera concert films at real, often difficult filming locations goes into every concert film production we take on. And if what you need is a single music video rather than a full concert film, we bring the same care for location, lighting and set design.

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