Week Five

Monday I began correspondence with Conny my new tandem learning friend from the University. Thorsten set me up with her after I talked with him about how I didn't feel I was doing well at progressing my German. Just corresponding with her via email this week has already helped as a refresher. This week I have also been writing to a previous German teacher of mine from the UW, who I hope to meet up with over Thanksgiving break in Bavaria. On top of that, I have got to talking with some of the people in the program that have some German experience and we decided to start meeting once a week. It is just too easy to get stuck speaking English here in Berlin, but hopefully the steps I'm taking will help me get around that.

Another good thing that I think in part came out of my discussion with Thorsten on the bus was the discussion that we had on Tuesday. I have learned a lot over the years through school and also through my German studies about the Holocaust but for me the question of how it happened was never answered to my satisfaction. I understood how it happened, but not how it came to happen. Thorsten answered a lot of questions for me and really gave me a better idea of how I can go about researching it myself. There were so many elements in play, so many steps in the process that led to what happened. Like Thorsten said, it didn't happen overnight and it wasn't a clear line from a to b. What led up to the Holocaust was a complex tangle of events. I felt that our talk on Tuesday was the most meaningful that we've had thus far. The Holocaust was an extremely tragic and devastating event, and while the suffering and criminality of the event should be observed, I think that it is even more important to understand how it was allowed to happen by a modern society in a first world nation. Only by understanding the social dynamic of how those events came to pass, can we really ensure that something equally devastating will not happen in our future.

This Wednesday I really enjoyed the film, "A Berlin Romance", it was also my favorite film that we've seen so far. It was interesting to see the way the East chose to represent the West even though the film wasn't intended to be politically charged. I think that our film project will contrast it to the extent that we will not be focusing so much on character development. That isn't saying much though because I feel that our film is something that is entirely different than anything that we have seen so far. As I said, it doesn't rely on character development, we won't rely on narration. What we will be including will be observational footage, documentary footage, and interviews, all intended to drive the plot. If I had to, I would identify our film closest with the clip we saw today. Like that film, the name of which I have forgotten, our project will include iconic footage of the city and not be just a documentary but driven largely by documentary footage.

Early in the week I took quite a bit of sound footage that I think will be very helpful for our acoustic movie. While we still have a lot of individual sounds to capture I was impressed with what I was able to get. The clarity and sensitivity of the microphone was surprising. For the first time I also dabbled with the sound editing software, which was really cool. I learned how to cut and space sounds, and I successfully made my first, very own, mp3.

I would say our group progress this week was slower than I would have liked and I think it was just because it was another busy week. As fun as it was our little Mexican potluck wasted a night of shooting in ping pong clubs and tonight again we weren't able to capture any action as a group. This week we were just too concentrated on ping pong club footage and iconic city scape shots. Next week I think we can be more productive by focusing on our acoustic movie, which has much less in the way of time and weather limitations. Hopefully Monday night we can get off to a strong start for next week after our weekend away in Bamberg and Bayreuth.

P.S. Erik
Frodo, Sean, Cynthia und ich fahren nach Bamberg, Bayreuth, und Kulmbach diese Wochenende. Wir werden am Montag zurück sein. Schöne Wochenende.

Week Four

After a relaxing weekend in Koldenhof it was difficult to get back on track and move forward with our plan but on Wednesday we put together a comprehensive plan for how we actually wanted our film to look. We continued to refine it on Thursday and by the end of Thursday we had a list of shots we needed along with a long list of Tischtennis clubs and a complete map with all of the ping pong tables in Berlin on it. If as a group we are good at nothing else, one thing that I can say for sure is that we do well brainstorming together.

During our bus ride to the Bavarian Quarter with Thorsten on Friday, I was able to sit up front on the bus and get some great footage through the city. This was something that we had actually been planning on beforehand, so it was great that we were able to on a bus designed for sightseeing, with clean windows. After our time in the Bavarian Quarter we were able to take Thorsten's advice and visit the 20th floor where the Tech Uni Cafe is located. From there we were able to get some good panning shots of the city. The food there was also pretty good.

Friday night we set out to see our first ping pong pubs. After not finding the first couple we finally made it to Dr. Pongs. By the time we got there it was already 1am. Although our outing was more of an exploratory effort, since we were without our camera, we were able to note spots where we would be able to set up the camera and where the lighting was good. After staying for an hour and feeling the vibe Frodo and Jessica decided to leave but Jessie and I stayed to get in on the pong action. We played all night, got to talk to some people and saw some really intense ping pong go down. It is definitely a great place to get some footage and have fun doing it. We stayed until 5 am and at that point there was still no end in sight for the rowdy bunch at Dr. Pong's.

We wrapped up the week on Sunday by traveling the parks between our apartments and Hermanplatz filming four different tables and actually getting lucky enough to catch some people playing on an outside table. It was fun because just asking to film them play allowed us to get to know them a little and for them to give us further recommendations on where we might have success filming.

Week Three

During the beginning of the week we were not making very good progress. Wednesday it became clear to us as a group that the topic we chose was not manageable. The idea of approaching some of the people who were central to the success of our documentary was intimidating and with the language barrier it was just too much.

We did consider making our film more of an observational film, with less emphasis on interviews and more of an outsider’s perspective. A film like that would try to highlight Berlin’s uniqueness as a city with a diversified subculture and sexual openness. While the idea sounded reasonable what we realized is that our final product could be interpreted much differently than we would intend. Instead of creating a film celebrating Berlin’s uniqueness, such an open perspective amateur film, could end up portraying Berlin as a dirty, immoral city. Not wanting to make that mistake we decided to go an entirely new direction.

So from there our task as a group was to go back and come up with something that we could manage as outsiders, with a language barrier. After exploring a new set of options, we came to agree on ping-pong, or in German, Tischtennis. In a city littered with ping-pong tables made of stone, getting the idea wasn’t difficult and accepting it was even easier. The more we looked into Tischtennis in Berlin, the more obvious it became that there is a following and love for the game here that far exceeds the way we think about the sport.

Our idea is that we can use ping-pong as a means to bridge our language barrier in order to interact with some of the local Berliners. By doing this we can create a film that allows us to use our outsider perspective but at the same time work our way into a niche, something that outside of a common game, would be next to impossible. Hopefully we will be able to interact enough to produce something that will not be entirely by outsiders for outsiders, as we discussed with the element of agency.

With a clearer idea of what we had to do we set out to buy ping pong Schläger and took our camera with us on our weekend trip Koldenhof. Of course they had a table there and we were able to get some of our first footage.

die erste Zeit

The only way I can begin, is to discuss all of the firsts that I am experiencing on a daily basis. From a personal stand point this is the first time that I have ever settled in a foreign place for an extended amount of time and the first time in my months of travel in Europe that I have stayed so long as to experience the turning of the leaves and of summer into fall. Academically this is the first time that I have ever been involved with the study of film, monuments, relation and perspective. I have also never been involved with the type of academic atmosphere that I have become a part of here in Berlin. I'm not used to consuming material, ideas, and experiences in order to then analyze them to such a degree. As a business student I am more accustomed to studying and arriving at the inteneded method of thought and common understanding. In most cases, business does not emphasis on questioning intentions or the need for analysis. I am much more accustomed to right and wrong answers not meant for interpretation.

I have found this method of leaning through exploration to be interesting and a very good creative stimulus. Even so, I do have my reservations about concentrating too much on what some of our class discussions arrive at. Instead I tend to place more emphasis on how it was that we got there and what our discussion made me think about. For example, today as a class we discussed the film "Berlin: Symphony of a Big City", and as a class we sought to connect symbolic meaning to so many images, only to discover that the academic society of the time in which the film was produced criticized it for its imagery containing a lack of meaning. As someone unfamiliar with art and film studies, arriving at an incorrect conclusion is the problem that I often associate with analyzing art and film to such a degree. The benefit of all this analysis and careful thought is that the more I scrutinize the films and readings, the more I scrutinize the city around me.

Many of the readings I have found very engaging, "Ghosts of Berlin" which I will from here on refer to as "GOB", is the essential dose of history needed for having a clue at the city we're living in, while the articles often present a new way of looking at the city. The only problem I have is that with each article I feel like I gain a new perspective that could contribute to the group film project but each of them is fleeting because the next article is sure to leave me slanted and my perspective again altogether different. I blame this on the varied perspective of each article but also on my newness to all of this. Being immersed in this new method of study, pursuing a new discipline (film), and a new city leaves me feeling completely impressionable. I hope that as our project develops so will my focus.

My film group consists of Frodo, Jessica, Jesse and of course me. The first question that we had as a group was, "so who knows something about film"? When the answer became obvious, our second question was, "so what is this black stick they just handed us"? The answer to that quesion being, sound boom.

I am confident that the fact that none of us have any idea about whats going on, won't hold us back. At least we know that we don't know anything. It would be worse to be under the confident impression that we knew how to use the equipment only to find out that we didn't. Or worse yet, we could have one person who knew a ton about it and then the rest of us would feel inferior. We just know that we have a lot to learn and fast.

It is hard to have specialization without specialists and for this reason we don't really have any defined roles as a group so far, with the exception of Jessica who will be the primary editor. She really felt passionate about that aspect of the project and we're using her computer, so it works. Our main undertaking to this point was to agree on a topic and a general course of action. After discussing endless possibilities, including our own German cooking show, Frodo's costumed march though the history of Berlin, and a video city tour, we arrived at our chosen topic.

One thing that stood out to us in reading GOB was Berlin's history of tolerance of enjoyment of sexual freedom and sexual intertainment. Combined with the uniqueness of the people living here today, which we encounter on a daily basis, we felt like exploring what it is that makes Berlin so unique and diverse. This is obviously an answer that we don't have yet, but one that we must research. Certainly it has something to do with the mentality of its inhabitants but could a society filled with such a thriving subculture and deviance away from the establishment have a common thread? Could these varied groups all be tied to being a part of a reaction away from a turbulent and at times oppressive establishment? That is what our documentary will be seeking to establish. We have planned to conduct a series of interviews from members of different groups of Berlin's subculture which will lead into our footage of understanding their lifestlye and why they choose to live the way they do.

It is clear to me that this may be a difficult topic to handle, and as we have it planned now must hinge on our success of getting interviews. One difficulty with focusing on people outside of mainstream culture, is that they usually are more difficult for outsiders to communicate with. This is a fact that definetly won't help to ease our language barrier. Understanding this, we have decided to go with it and have assigned general research topics for the group to tackle as a whole. Our first topic to research is Berlin's sexual culture in the 20s, from here we will work forward to the present exploring new factors as we come to them.