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.