Weeks 3-5

WEEK THREE

This week we changed our complete idea for our film. For the better, as far as I’m concerned. I wasn’t ready to tackle the topic we originally came up with. So instead we managed to get pretty excited about the idea of documenting Tisch Tennis in Berlin. I think it’s a good idea with a lot of potential. The guys got really excited about the project, and I think interest level is one of the most important elements for our group. So we’re buying all the necessary equipment and planning to practice up.

I’m hoping the movie will go the way of another pseudo-documentary I’ve seen on Berlin currywurst, where an American woman decided to see what Berlin was all about through the Imbiss. I’m really hoping to meet some people and get a chance to talk about, first of all, their interest in ping pong, and second, their opinions about their own city. We’ll see how it works out.

Watching movies in class has been helpful, although I’m excited to get to post-war films. I have an easier time relating to the film process once color, sound, and more modern equipment are introduced. But Kuhle Wampe was great, and said so much about Berlin at the time that it was made. The introductory sequence was my favorite, with the bikes and the jarring music. Music and score have always been probably my favorite element of film, and the way that Brecht uses the combination of such intense, almost uncomfortable music with the rapid, desperate movement of the bike wheels was perfect. Like I said before, I’ve been most excited about the editing process, and especially the audio. I’m glad our group has the acoustic movie assignment, because audio editing will be SO great to learn.

I already have in my head how I hope our end project comes out. I think we just need to start shooting, especially the outdoors as much as possible. I think the weather isn’t going to stay as nice as it has been lately.

WEEK FOUR

Last week we watched Germany Year Zero. Definitely my favorite film so far. Rubble films evoke such a bizarre atmosphere in film. I can’t believe the city existed like that, and for so long. I think what I enjoyed the most were the long periods of just walking, just the boy walking through the desolate city. The whole movie revolves around what people are doing, and not what they are saying.

In reference to our own film, I’m hoping we can capture the feel and expanse of the city somehow, especially for our introduction. Jon and Nathan and I tossed around a few ideas for the organization of our film. I think we can introduce the city through a kind of Berlin montage, just to make it clear what city we are actually in. I’m thinking we will probably end up having to do a voice-over in order to really introduce what we’re doing, but we still aren’t sure about that part. We’ll eventually somehow bring the introduction to focus in on the ping pong tables that are scattered throughout the city. Since the tables are now so empty in the autumn, we’ll have to somehow introduce the indoor realms of Tisch Tennis. I think we will also need to introduce US as participants in this whole thing, so we had a kind of funny idea about doing freeze-frame profiles of each of us. So we can pop up a video or picture, then maybe even use text to bullet-point our names, ages, and probably what will end up being humorous trivia or commentary. But these are all just preliminary ideas. Who knows what this project will actually turn into? The process is still kind of scary for me. I’m always the first one to assume we will be struggling to scrape together something that isn’t entirely embarrassing by the end of the quarter.

And actually we have failed to make much progress so far. We went out as a group for the first time to find a ping pong club, and the first one was closed. We fell back on a place called Dr. Pong, which was cool (everyone runs around the table in a circle taking turns hitting the ball), but to me it felt like the crowd was very young and very foreign. I want the real CLUBS, with ping pong tournaments, teams, etc. We are covering both the array of bars with tables, and places that exist solely for ping pong, in order to display the true expanse of the sport within the city. We really haven’t found what we’re looking for yet.

It’s been great seeing the small projects made by each group. This week Josh/Cynthia/Joel/Ed showed their “point of view” film, and they did a really amazing job. It was encouraging because the camera picked up very clear and very good sound, which we will really need for our acoustic movie. Next week the other acoustic group will go. Hopefully we will get ideas for our own, which is still kind of up in the air.

WEEK FIVE

We decided on an idea for the acoustic movie that sounds very do-able (something I think we need right now.) We are going to try to capture the journey to school every morning through sound. Should be interesting.

We watched A Berlin Romance this week. As we discussed so extensively in class, this was the first film to feel really “Hollywood-ish” in the sense that the plot was character-driven and fairly simple. Because the content of the film was more enveloping than that of, say, Ruttman’s film, I spent less time looking at cinematography and more time considering the characters and their relationship to the divided city. I can’t WAIT for Kohlhaase to come to our class. Screenwriting is so impressive to me. I’d do that for a living if I could. I don’t know what questions to ask, but will work on coming up with one before his visit next week.

The divided city is such a strange concept to me. It was especially bizarre when the border was still open, and people could go back and forth. You were allowed at that point to really consider each side and their differences, and how you related to each. While films made in the GDR had to adhere to certain regulations, I feel like a Berlin Romance really pushed the consideration of Uschi and Hans, and their character’s statement on their respective regions. Hans isn’t any kind of evil capitalist fascist, but rather just a boy looking for work. While the statement on unemployment in the capitalistic system is obvious, I feel like there is more going on. What struck me most about both Hans and Uschi was that they both had a dream they wanted to pursue – boxing and modeling – and the film didn’t really conclude what place those dreams should occupy in their lives. Neither is allowed to pursue them, but they aren’t necessarily completely condemned as foolish (although modeling is an obvious statement on consumerist capitalism, the GDR had models too, so the topic is less of a statement.) I feel like neither character was entirely resolved in the end, and while they become “just another couple in Berlin,” they still have obvious issues to address. Personally, it made me sad that Hans couldn’t pursue boxing, something he was obviously talented at but unable to continue. Was the film implying that he could pursue such a dream in the GDR? I couldn’t tell, and I also have no knowledge of the place that sports took in the old Soviet and socialist states.

More bad news on the ping pong clubs. We have failed at three places now, and hopefully will finally find some this weekend. But the whole endeavor HAS managed to get me out into the city more, and into regions I haven’t been in before. Instead of a bar with ping pong, one time we instead found a tiny little pub that took up almost its entire floor space with Foosball tables. They were free, and Jesse and I immediately took a turn against one of the scary reigning teams. We lost, 10 to 2. I made our two goals with lucky goalie-kicks, so they don’t even count. Those people were INTENSE. It makes me almost wish we had done our project on THAT small-ball sport, and not ping pong. But we are persevering, and hopefully things will finally start to come together. Who knows, maybe we can include a little blurb about Foosball somewhere in our film.

We have at least started to gather footage of the city in general, which will probably be necessary to fill in the film at various points. I really just have no idea where we will end up with this project. Hopefully we really get it together soon, because we are all going out of town every weekend of November.

Weeks One and Two

Unfortunately my work habits (or lack there of) being what they are, I have left the production of two journal posts to the last day. So this entry will be a composite reflection of the first two weeks as a whole, and likely a reflection on my first month here in Berlin as well. I apologize in advance for spelling and grammatical errors, as I am one of a generation hopelessly dependent upon auto-correct, a feature sadly absent from Internet cafe web windows.

The first two weeks of the program have been both encouraging and somewhat daunting. Production of our own film projects, while enormously exciting (and the draw of me to this program in the first place) has produced in me an inexplicable dread. Our group has literally no experience, and I feel like Nathan, Jon/Frodo, and Jesse came here for different reasons not entirely or maybe even remotely connected with film. I'm encouraged by their enthusiasm to film and we definitely have no shortage on energy, but our project and its focus has yet to develop into any clear form. I personally am most excited about the editing process, and was hoping to assign myself to the majority of that responsibility, but it has become clear that we will all be doing much of the work together, as a group. It will likely turn out much better this way, but I'm intimidated both by our topic and by the time we have to produce a body of footage.

Originally our group was drawn to the notion of a comedy film, somehow giving whatever we produce a funny twist to keep it interesting. I still think this is an excellent idea, because making anything entirely serious, overly artistic, or intellectually challenging may end up in disaster. We want to keep it light, in order to keep ourselves interested and also to keep from getting into anything over our cinamotographically adolescent heads. So our tentative topic so far will have something to do with Berlin counter-culture and its history. Which aspect we will focus on is the difficult decision we will have to make within the next week in order to begin filming. A few (myself included) in our group are interested in the sociological explanations behind Berlin's legacy as a center for deviance and rebellion against certain social norms and stereotypes. This issue, however, is a difficult one to address in film, especially in a manner focused and succinct enough to fit into a 2-month process and 25 minute final product. So I'm left uneasy and unsure of where to go. Eric provided an interested suggestion surrounding squatters in the city, a group with a history here and much pertinent to the topic at hand. We will be looking into the options and researching the history as much as possible this week. I find my biggest reservation surrounding the necessary interviews we would need to sufficiently address these topics. Approaching some of the groups we are considering will be an intimidating project.

I have to interject here, it has been an extremely technologically frustrating week. I say this now only because I just took a 40 minute break from writing just trying to figure out how to switch the word processor over to English on this terribly slow computer. Now I have the luxury of spell check, but it cost me 30 cents to get it. I can't wait for Internet in our apartments, which should arrive this Tuesday. Everything will be easier. Research, correspondence, posting, coursework, and leisure. All of these things will no longer come at the cost of .50/hour and we can do them from the comfort of our own apartments.

Also throwing a hitch in getting things started is the now-apparent lameness of my computer. My relatively new Toshiba is not only at merely 50% operating capacity, RAM-wise, of what it should be but also pathetically low on free space. Tomorrow I will take in my computer to get it upgraded, and hopefully get the ball rolling on this whole film-editing process. I am excited to get this film software for free (or not-so-free, considering the $3000 program price-tag) and even more excited to have it for use after the program. While I have no experience producing or editing film so far, I have watched the process in the past and have many friends engulfed in the frustrating process of trying to “make it”in the film world. While I aspire to no such goal, film is the medium to which I feel most inclined as an artistically-challenged individual. I could never draw or paint, and while I can play a musical instrument, composition is like a frighteningly foreign language. But film I can understand, and if this process goes well and in a way that I find encouraging, I will consider devoting part of my life to it. If not, it will at least be a skill I can use as a hobby for the rest of my life.

Aside from technological hiccups, these first two weeks of class have been extremely exciting. As a history and sociology major, the topic foci of the two courses are perfect for me. A large part of the reason I came to Berlin was to experience physically a place I have so many times experienced intellectually. While my focus in history was quite broad, I have taken at least three courses discussing German history and its influence on the movements of Europe in general. To put myself at the center of that history is exciting. Having a teacher a tour-guide of Thorsten's caliber is awesome and I can't wait for all the weekly excursions. Last week I volunteered to take the first “special assignment”in Thorsten's class on collective memory and culture. It was a daunting task, and I don't think I managed to cover it adequately, but my efforts at least brought home to me personally all the psychological depth involved in a city like Berlin. The layering of memory is intense, and the whole city seems to vibrate with the unseen. So much change happened so rapidly in the last century. In Kracaur's essay Farewell to the Linden Arcade he addresses this social transience, as he refers to it, and also develops his discussion of “passageways” into a discussion of movement and transition in general. His last sentence I found particularly haunting: “What would be the point of an arcade in a society that is itself only a passageway?” For some reason the notion of society as passageway strikes me as eery. From where to towards what are we traveling? His reference to fascism is shocking in its accuracy, and makes the reader consider historical trajectory. It made me consider Germany and Europe today, and Berlin as the center of new historical direction as unclear as that of Kracaur's Berlin in the 1930s.

All for now. I have surpased both the word requirement and my lunchtime.