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.