This week we didn't get too much done seeing as it was the week of Thanksgiving. The previous Friday, Jesse went out to Dr. Pongs to shoot. I stayed in to work on the project for Thorsten's class. I looked at a couple of the clips and it looks like he got a casual interview with at least one girl. I'm not sure how good most of the footage is though.
I traveled down to Munich on Thursday so there wasn't much filming I could do. Jessica and Jesse went to the ping pong tournament at Zimt und Zunder. I was really hoping there would be a lot of people there and some good action shots. Unfortunately from what Jesse and Jessica tell me, that wasn't the case.
For the coming two weeks...well we need to finish our project completely. We still need a few more iconic Berlin shots and definitely some more interviews. I'd love to get shots of people actually training but the person that Jessica contacted never replied. Somehow we're going to have to put together a film with what we have and what we can get within the next couple weeks. We're all going to have to kick it into overdrive to get that done. We plan on going to Sez because Chris McCarter told us there is some really intense ping pong there. I'm hoping he's right because what we've seen so far has been kind of lacking. It might just be that ping pong is more of a summer sport and we just came at the wrong time.
For week 10 we stepped it up a notch. Jessica went and filmed the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor and Potsdamer Platz for iconic shots in the movie. Afterward, Nathan and I went to the construction site on Friedrichstrasse to attempt to shoot a time lapse scene. We got about 20 minutes of footage before the battery crapped out. All of us tried to go to Sez where Chris said there is some really good ping pong but when we got there we realized it was a fitness gym that you had to pay to even get into. The next day Nathan and I went out to shoot Oberbaumbrucke, the East Side Gallery, and some more stills of ping pong tables. By the time we got the first two shot we were freezing and it was getting close to class time so we decided against trying to find the three or four ping pong tables within that area.
While we were editing we realized that it took an extremely long time to export. I gave Joel a ring to figure out what was wrong. He told us it would go faster if we shrunk it down to widescreen NTSC. That sucks we can't use HD but I'd rather have a movie that makes sense and looks mediocre than a movie that looks amazing but isn't coherent. We started editing the intro and it looks pretty cool. My main part in the intro besides helping place where things go is the shot of the stills of the ping pong table and the music that is accompanying the intro. I wished we would have gotten more stills because they only fill up a couple seconds but I like the effect it has. Before we put in the music we couldn't figure out exactly how to put the intro together because there didn't seem to be anything decent to transition between each scene. I think the music makes a great transition for each of the shots. I hope it's not too intense for the scenes though. The editing software seems pretty straightforward so far and I would actually enjoy working on it more if it didn't cause Jessica's computer to crash every hour or so.
The next day we spent going to the Eberswalder U-Bahn stop and shooting character intro, training shots, and action shots. We haven't worked with these in the editing software yet so I'm not exactly sure how they'll turn out.
Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh was quite an entertaining movie for how small the budget was for it. I really enjoyed recognizing a lot of the places where it was filmed. The discussion in class was pretty interesting as well. In our group discussion, I brought up that it was interesting that Kutlucan played an Armenian instead of a Turk. Someone's point about making fun of yourself makes it more okay to make fun of others doesn't really apply that much here. Yes, he is making fun of immigrants which he is one of but he doesn't even play a character that is from his country of origin. I wonder if the perception of his character would have been different had he been a Turk. This was played to a German audience which seem to have a lot of reservations about the Turkish population. Kutlucan may have made the main character Armenian so he could be more relateable to the viewing audience. It's pretty well known that there are tensions between Armenians and Turks so maybe Kutlucan played on the German population reservations about the Turkish population by making his main character have an ethnicity that also has problems with the Turkish population.
I think the movie overall though is a commentary about the ridiculousness of the immigration policies in Germany. I think the Marx Brothers played on the ridiculousness of immigration policies as well but in the US instead of Germany obviously. I'm not sure how comparable the immigration policies of the US in the 1930s and Germany in the 1990s are but I'd imagine they aren't horribly far off. I recall looking at the numbers of immigrants arriving during each year and it drops off in the 1930s. That may be because the economic chaos created a much lower incentive to travel to the US.
The anarchy of the immigrants almost seems to mock the immigration policies by attempting to one up them on how silly they are. How can you expect immigrants to come to a country to work and live for several years and then send them home while expecting no complaints? That seems like politicians were trying to compete with who could come up with the most dysfunctional immigration policy.
The stereotyping in the film was kind of mixed for me. While the immigrants did use it to their advantage, they also seemed extremely naive. I'm not sure the German characters were portrayed the best either. For the most part they all seemed to be trying to take advantage of the immigrants with the exception of Frau Dutschke. That seems just as bad as portraying the immigrants as naive.
The views on Seattle with regards to diversity were pretty interesting. Seattle to me seems fairly diverse. Obviously places like LA that are close to the Mexican border are going to have a much larger foreign born population. It's proximity to the Asian eastern coast is similar to ours and so I would expect the Asian populations to be similar.
Berlin, in terms of foreign nationalities, seems to put most US cities to shame. Almost every day I here somebody speaking a language other than German or English. When the question was asked how Berlin compares diversity-wise with what we've experienced, I started wondering what was considered diversity. Is it only different nationalities that count or do different races count too? Germany definitely has a large amount of different nationalities but that's because their immigration policy is still pretty rigid even after the liberalization. I guess German ideas of citizenship seem completely foreign to me due to the US having the 14th Amendment for so long in our history. It seems odd to me that you can be born in a country and still not be part of that nation. Maybe
Monday, November 26, 2007
Week 8
This week we watched the film Lola rennt. I saw the movie a couple years ago and I really liked it. I was really excited to see it again now that I've been living in Berlin for a few months. I wish I could have stayed for the entire movie but Nathan, Jessica, and I had to head over to Serene Bar to film ping pong action that I'll talk about later in the blog. Run Lola Run was even better the second time around, I think. The shots are almost all fast paced which seem even faster when paired up with the superb techno soundtrack. I definitely want to go download the soundtrack and see which tracks are usable for our film. If we can portray that type of fast paced action, I'll be very happy. Techno would be perfect for the intro to our movie which I want to involve very quick cuts that go along with the beat of a song.
It was pretty cool to recognize parts of the city as she was passing by them...although you realize her run is completely impossible for a normal human being to run. One thing that struck me were the construction sites. I remember talking to Sean about them in the movie and he said he didn't even notice them. Maybe they've become so much a part of the Berlin background that people don't even notice them anymore. That, to me, was one of the few defining shots that show it being Berlin in the movie.
On the way to Serene Bar, Nathan and I discussed how she succeeded in the end. We came to the conclusion that the problem in the first two segments was that the two main characters were relying on others to help them out; Manni depending on Lola and Lola depending on her father. It was only when they became self reliant do they come out ahead. The author of the reading seems to agree and takes it a step farther by saying this is an allegory for German culture. He states that the film tells German culture to take self responsibilty. I'm not sure how right that is because I'm not familiar with German culture in the late 1990s. I do agree with his point about this film being about a change in culture though. You can see the contrast in the different generations; Lola's father is business-like and fairly rigid while Lola seems to be the complete opposite.
One phrase I liked in the reading was "chaos theory." I was thinking the exact same phrase watching the movie but for a different part. The snapshots of each random person's future reminded me a lot of chaos theory. How they run into Lola changes slightly each time which drastically changes their lives. I do agree with the writer's use of the word, however.
With regards to the discussion in class on taking a Bell Hooks sort of perspective...well she probably would have inevitably found something wrong with this movie. There were comments in class about her being a sexualized object but I didn't see any of that. Lola's clothing isn't particularly pleasing to the eye and the actress herself is attractive but not overly attractive. Plus you have the fact that Manni depends on her several times to help him out. This is a strong woman that knows what she's doing (excluding the robbery scene with the gun). Actually it didn't seem like that part of the scene fit in at all but it was made up for when she goes to rob the bank and knows exactly what she's doing.
Most of the week was spent finishing our acoustic movie. Nathan and I spent a lot of time going out and retrieving sounds. We attempted to get one of the women that asks "Speak English?" but unfortunately we never got them at a point where they could be heard on camera. That would have been great to have in there because I actually did get asked three times that day but two of them were when I didn't have the camera on me and the third time there was really loud music playing so you couldn't even hear her. We did get a free style rap which I thought was pretty cool and also kind of funny because the guy screwed up horribly. Unfortunately we couldn't get that across decently in the final version. Nathan spent quite a while figuring out the sound editing software and editing the clips. The rest of us were listening and saying how it would sound best. Cross fading is a glorious function. None of the sounds would have sounded nearly as seamless if it wasn't for that function. Even with that we had to fiddle around with volume levels on a few of the tracks. For the acoustic film, we were supposed to get an idea of what to do by listening to the Ruttman sound film but I don't think this correlated so much with that film. That was just sounds of the city whereas this one told a story.
Wednesday night we spent at the Serene Bar. The bartender the previous week told us that Wednesdays are when they play ping pong so we skipped out on the last part of Lola rennt to head down there. Initially there were only a few people playing doubles against each other. After about 15 minutes or so there were a few more people there so it turned similar to Dr. Pongs where you wait in line, hit the ball, then run to the other side of the table. The background in the bar is pretty interesting. We got some panning shots and used the night setting a little bit. I'm not a huge fan of the night setting on the camera because all it does is change the shutter speed and make everything blurry and choppy. Playing was fun though, the three of us all participated in the action and we got shots of it. I was glad when we got a short interview with the bar tender. He thinks the reason ping pong is so popular in bars is because it's something you can do while your drinking. I would think the opposite to be honest. It's hard to drink more than two beers and play in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe future interviews will shed some light on the real reason.
It was pretty cool to recognize parts of the city as she was passing by them...although you realize her run is completely impossible for a normal human being to run. One thing that struck me were the construction sites. I remember talking to Sean about them in the movie and he said he didn't even notice them. Maybe they've become so much a part of the Berlin background that people don't even notice them anymore. That, to me, was one of the few defining shots that show it being Berlin in the movie.
On the way to Serene Bar, Nathan and I discussed how she succeeded in the end. We came to the conclusion that the problem in the first two segments was that the two main characters were relying on others to help them out; Manni depending on Lola and Lola depending on her father. It was only when they became self reliant do they come out ahead. The author of the reading seems to agree and takes it a step farther by saying this is an allegory for German culture. He states that the film tells German culture to take self responsibilty. I'm not sure how right that is because I'm not familiar with German culture in the late 1990s. I do agree with his point about this film being about a change in culture though. You can see the contrast in the different generations; Lola's father is business-like and fairly rigid while Lola seems to be the complete opposite.
One phrase I liked in the reading was "chaos theory." I was thinking the exact same phrase watching the movie but for a different part. The snapshots of each random person's future reminded me a lot of chaos theory. How they run into Lola changes slightly each time which drastically changes their lives. I do agree with the writer's use of the word, however.
With regards to the discussion in class on taking a Bell Hooks sort of perspective...well she probably would have inevitably found something wrong with this movie. There were comments in class about her being a sexualized object but I didn't see any of that. Lola's clothing isn't particularly pleasing to the eye and the actress herself is attractive but not overly attractive. Plus you have the fact that Manni depends on her several times to help him out. This is a strong woman that knows what she's doing (excluding the robbery scene with the gun). Actually it didn't seem like that part of the scene fit in at all but it was made up for when she goes to rob the bank and knows exactly what she's doing.
Most of the week was spent finishing our acoustic movie. Nathan and I spent a lot of time going out and retrieving sounds. We attempted to get one of the women that asks "Speak English?" but unfortunately we never got them at a point where they could be heard on camera. That would have been great to have in there because I actually did get asked three times that day but two of them were when I didn't have the camera on me and the third time there was really loud music playing so you couldn't even hear her. We did get a free style rap which I thought was pretty cool and also kind of funny because the guy screwed up horribly. Unfortunately we couldn't get that across decently in the final version. Nathan spent quite a while figuring out the sound editing software and editing the clips. The rest of us were listening and saying how it would sound best. Cross fading is a glorious function. None of the sounds would have sounded nearly as seamless if it wasn't for that function. Even with that we had to fiddle around with volume levels on a few of the tracks. For the acoustic film, we were supposed to get an idea of what to do by listening to the Ruttman sound film but I don't think this correlated so much with that film. That was just sounds of the city whereas this one told a story.
Wednesday night we spent at the Serene Bar. The bartender the previous week told us that Wednesdays are when they play ping pong so we skipped out on the last part of Lola rennt to head down there. Initially there were only a few people playing doubles against each other. After about 15 minutes or so there were a few more people there so it turned similar to Dr. Pongs where you wait in line, hit the ball, then run to the other side of the table. The background in the bar is pretty interesting. We got some panning shots and used the night setting a little bit. I'm not a huge fan of the night setting on the camera because all it does is change the shutter speed and make everything blurry and choppy. Playing was fun though, the three of us all participated in the action and we got shots of it. I was glad when we got a short interview with the bar tender. He thinks the reason ping pong is so popular in bars is because it's something you can do while your drinking. I would think the opposite to be honest. It's hard to drink more than two beers and play in a reasonable amount of time. Maybe future interviews will shed some light on the real reason.
Friday, November 9, 2007
Week 7
Production this week was pretty good, I would say. Tuesday we went out to Dr. Pong's on Josh's geburtstag. We were planning on getting some footage after our everyone else in the program had left but by the time they did, all the people that were good at ping pong had already left. It was so bad that I even got in the final three...and then quickly ate shit running around the table. The night was not over for us though as we still needed to stop by a place called Zimt und Zunder. There were rum(u)ors of a table there and we were not entirely disappointed. There was a ping pong table and people were playing but they were worse than we were and I think they were Spaniards. Nathan armed with his skills of broken German managed to get some information out of the owner. She told him that most people come and play on Thursdays and Sundays and that there was actually a tournament being held on November 22nd. Sundays are out of the question for our group because for the next month all of us are going to be traveling on the weekends. The tournament is unlikely but still a possibility.
Thursday night we went out to another place that is supposed to have a Tischtennis Tisch called Serene Bar. We planned on stopping there before going back to Zimt und Zimmer for what we were told was one of the big nights for ping pong. Unfortunately there is no table tennis at the Serene Bar on Thursdays; it's on Wednesdays. The bartender was really helpful though and said he would send out an email to all of the regulars to tell them we would be there filming next Wednesday.
This week we talked to Wolfganng Kohlhaase. It was interesting to see how movie design went in the eastern part of Germany. I thought it was really weird that he thought Solo Sunny was his favorite movie to work on. Out of the three of his that I've seen, that one was definitely the worst. Maybe I was reading a little too much into his statement, he did just say that was his favorite to have worked on, not his favorite. The one thing I recall writing down was, "shoot what you know." That seems to make perfect sense but unfortunately I don't really know that much about film making and in spite of having been in Berlin for so long, I don't feel I know enough about it. Our group is trying to get involved into the ping pong scene to get a feel for Berlin and I hope that comes close to accomplishing its task. Ping pong is pretty fun and seems pretty unique to Berlin and Germany as a whole.
The movie we watched this week was Die Mauer. I think a few of the shots in this film were pretty useful. Our group has been trying to get iconic shots of Berlin but for some reason we never thought about the Wall. We definitely need to get shots of the East Side Gallery in our film. Our film of the Reichstag and the Fernseherturm are great but what most people know Berlin for is the Berlin Wall that was in place for 28 years. The interviews in the film were kind of hit or miss to me. Some of them seemed kind of awkward or contrived. It seemed like some people wanted to talk as much as possible so they could get their 15 minutes of fame. Hopefully our interviews don't go like that. I'm not sure what was up with that woman in the dress that seemed to be molesting the Wall.
The destruction of the Wall seemed to be a monument in and of itself. People came just to see the destruction of the wall that had been up for so long. Some people even seemed to take anger at it having been there and were just beating it with a hammer. I really wish the government would do some better restoration on the artwork that is still there because it starting to look like crap. From the pictures I've seen, it had
The guards seemed out of place to me. Not so much out of place, I guess, as useless. All they were doing was standing around not knowing what to do. By that time their jobs had become obsolete but they hadn't been put out of work yet.
Thursday night we went out to another place that is supposed to have a Tischtennis Tisch called Serene Bar. We planned on stopping there before going back to Zimt und Zimmer for what we were told was one of the big nights for ping pong. Unfortunately there is no table tennis at the Serene Bar on Thursdays; it's on Wednesdays. The bartender was really helpful though and said he would send out an email to all of the regulars to tell them we would be there filming next Wednesday.
This week we talked to Wolfganng Kohlhaase. It was interesting to see how movie design went in the eastern part of Germany. I thought it was really weird that he thought Solo Sunny was his favorite movie to work on. Out of the three of his that I've seen, that one was definitely the worst. Maybe I was reading a little too much into his statement, he did just say that was his favorite to have worked on, not his favorite. The one thing I recall writing down was, "shoot what you know." That seems to make perfect sense but unfortunately I don't really know that much about film making and in spite of having been in Berlin for so long, I don't feel I know enough about it. Our group is trying to get involved into the ping pong scene to get a feel for Berlin and I hope that comes close to accomplishing its task. Ping pong is pretty fun and seems pretty unique to Berlin and Germany as a whole.
The movie we watched this week was Die Mauer. I think a few of the shots in this film were pretty useful. Our group has been trying to get iconic shots of Berlin but for some reason we never thought about the Wall. We definitely need to get shots of the East Side Gallery in our film. Our film of the Reichstag and the Fernseherturm are great but what most people know Berlin for is the Berlin Wall that was in place for 28 years. The interviews in the film were kind of hit or miss to me. Some of them seemed kind of awkward or contrived. It seemed like some people wanted to talk as much as possible so they could get their 15 minutes of fame. Hopefully our interviews don't go like that. I'm not sure what was up with that woman in the dress that seemed to be molesting the Wall.
The destruction of the Wall seemed to be a monument in and of itself. People came just to see the destruction of the wall that had been up for so long. Some people even seemed to take anger at it having been there and were just beating it with a hammer. I really wish the government would do some better restoration on the artwork that is still there because it starting to look like crap. From the pictures I've seen, it had
The guards seemed out of place to me. Not so much out of place, I guess, as useless. All they were doing was standing around not knowing what to do. By that time their jobs had become obsolete but they hadn't been put out of work yet.
Week 6
Well I didn't expect Columbo to be an angel that's for sure. I kind of wonder why Wenders picked Peter Falk as one of the main characters for Der Himmel über Berlin. I realize that Berlin was supposed to be seen as an international city but Peter Falk, to me at least, does not seem like the perfect portrayal of an American. Dung's point about there being no clear Berliners that are main characters was interesting. It seems like there would be at least one character that was from Berlin. I kind of wonder though, what personified a Berliner at that time? Was it Homer that was constantly searching for Potsdamer Platz? I could see him personifying Berlin (with regards to it searching for its past) but not necessarily a 1987 Berliner. Even today it's hard to pin down the exact stereotype of a Berliner due to there being so many different social groups.
Bell Hooks, despite being near certifiably insane, I think made a decent point about the lack of feminism in this film. She was pretty far off base when it came to the racial (or lack thereof) aspect of them film. It did not seem like that was a topic for the movie at all. While it did show some elements of race such as the car with a Turkish man, it did't seem to focus on that at all. It seemed like most people in the class agreed but it might just be because there weren't really that many minorities in the group. She does make a good point that Berlin is not a 'white city' like her friend said but it certainly isn't as diverse as your average American metropolis of several million people. Bell Hooks may be looking at it from the wrong perspective as well.
It did seem kind of odd that the female character wasn't complete until Damiel came into her life. There's also the fact that Marion did seem like a fairly sexualized character that was seen as an object of desire for Damiel. But that may be an incomplete view of the subject. The male angels in Der Himmel über Berlin were very gentle characters. Gentleness is usually seen as a more feminine trait. Couple that with the idea that angels are usually supposed to be more perfect than humans and you might be able to make the argument that Wenders was trying to say that men need to take on more character traits from women.
This week we didn't get too much done in the way of filming for tischtennis. Jessica went out and took some shots of the Reichstag which were pretty good. We actually do need to get some more shots of icons in Berlin so it was good that we at least got some footage of that.
Bell Hooks, despite being near certifiably insane, I think made a decent point about the lack of feminism in this film. She was pretty far off base when it came to the racial (or lack thereof) aspect of them film. It did not seem like that was a topic for the movie at all. While it did show some elements of race such as the car with a Turkish man, it did't seem to focus on that at all. It seemed like most people in the class agreed but it might just be because there weren't really that many minorities in the group. She does make a good point that Berlin is not a 'white city' like her friend said but it certainly isn't as diverse as your average American metropolis of several million people. Bell Hooks may be looking at it from the wrong perspective as well.
It did seem kind of odd that the female character wasn't complete until Damiel came into her life. There's also the fact that Marion did seem like a fairly sexualized character that was seen as an object of desire for Damiel. But that may be an incomplete view of the subject. The male angels in Der Himmel über Berlin were very gentle characters. Gentleness is usually seen as a more feminine trait. Couple that with the idea that angels are usually supposed to be more perfect than humans and you might be able to make the argument that Wenders was trying to say that men need to take on more character traits from women.
This week we didn't get too much done in the way of filming for tischtennis. Jessica went out and took some shots of the Reichstag which were pretty good. We actually do need to get some more shots of icons in Berlin so it was good that we at least got some footage of that.
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