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.