Week 7

After our return from our class trip to Hamburg and Lübeck, we resolved to not fall into the schedule traps that caught us the week before. We have realized that we are to the point where there no longer is any freetime. Every bit of daylight has to be utilized for shooting iconic city shots that we plan to include in our final project. Every night, even Tuesdays has to be explored for new ping pong clubs. When it isn't late enough to head out to the ping pong bars and clubs we shoot acoustic.

We did a good job of sticking to that this week and it really panned out for us. Tuesday I spent a few hours in the morning going through all of the audio that I had collected the week before and cut all the sounds of interest out of the larger files and converted them to mp3s. From there I was able to work with them much more easily in Adobe Premier. My role so far has been the primary collector of city sounds for the acoustic. The camera carrying case that we purchased as a group makes collecting city sounds a one man task. So I've now taken the camera on a couple walks and from that I would estimate that we have about a quarter to nearly half of all the raw city sounds that we will need for the project. What we now need are more specific sounds that we must either shoot in the apartment and actually generate ourselves, or they are things that we have plans for capturing in specific spots along our route to the university.

Tuesday night Jessica, Frodo, and I took all of our equipment to Dr. Pongs where we recieved permission to shoot. We started off first by playing ourselves, hoping that the fact we were participating would make everyone more compfortable about us filming. That is the whole idea of the film, using the game to allow us to get into the niche and community surrounding the game. For a while there was a decent turnout but soon the number of players dwindled to the point that we no longer thought it worth our while to shoot.

Our next plan of action for the evening was for the three of us to head over to a club we had researched the week before. The name is Zimt und Zunder and it is located in Friedrichshain. The place turned out to be really great but because it was so late it was also nearly deserted. I spoke with both the manager and the bartender in German and was able to recieve permission to come back and film, which at that point we made plans to do later in the week.

Before screening the film die Mauer on Wednesday I had my second meeting with Conny. Our meeting was excellent, she was able to teach me quite a bit. I learned that many of our English phrases don't directly translate. An example is the difference between taking a class and zu eine Seminar besuchen. The other really great part about our meeting is that we talked a lot about the stereotypes that each of our countries has of the other and peculiarities like the strange popularity of David Hasselhoff in Germany. To sum it up briefly it was really interesting and enjoyable and I feel like it is a big help meeting with her once a week.

Die Mauer is the first film that we have screened so far that I felt actually gave me some practical techniques to consider in our own film. The interviews in it made me think about the best camera angles for shooting our interviews and the candid footage in it was also of interest to me. All of the interviews seemed to be shot while standing. Die Mauer also only used one camera and I think that lent a very first person feel to the film. Our film will also have that aspect, because we too only have one camera at our disposal. I've seen so many interviews and before this point I never really thought about how most interviews don't have that first person feel to them. In fact most interviews are shot from tripod with more than one camera being used. In Die Mauer the candid footage that I liked caught people interacting with the wall, and with each other in a way that really made you feel like you were an observer catching random glimpses into their lives. Now that I think back on the types of documentary footage that I've seen I must say that a candid first person perspective seems to be the most meaningful, it captures what it sees and therefore has a more authentic feel to it. This is a technique that I will keep in mind while filming our project, but one that is also problematic. While shooting from first person perspective and standing up gives the effect of being an authentic observer, we will have to be careful that it just doesn't come across as shaky amateur footage.

The next day was followed up by our discussion with Wolfgang Kohlhaase which I also thought was very thought provoking for our film. Not only was it interesting to hear from someone that has been in film making for so long, but he had some great statements that really made me think about the story making process in general. The two most important statements for me were the need to include an element of fantasy and the idea that place can push plot. What he mentioned regarding fantasy was that it isn't necessary to tell everything, let somethings be assumed and leave space for interpretation. The idea of showing something and not telling, is familiar to me from the way that I learned to write papers. Instructors have always told me to write in a way that shows by example and brings an element to light rather than trying to plainly state it. Before Kohlhaase said this I hadn't thought about it but it does make sense that a writing technique could be translated so easily to film. The other idea about place pushing plot was that you can't always expect to know what is coming next and when you need inspiration look around you and explore how it could be incorporated with the story you are trying to tell. Those two ideas really resonated with me. I think that utilizing the fantasy element might give our project more depth and I already realize that the direction of our film is dependent upon where each night takes us. In that sense place has a huge role in pushing our plot.

Thursday night was very successful, first we found the club Serene, which is host to ping pong Wednesdays. After talking with the bartender we were able to arrange to shoot there on next Wednesday and he even offered to send out an email to all the patrons on the list in order to achieve a higher turnout for us. Later that night on our return to Zimt und Zunder we got some great footage, met a guy willing to interview and who said that in exchange for a finished version of our final project he would take us on tour of a place where his Tischtennis club regularly trained. Before leaving we were also able to arrange an interview with the manager.

This ended up being a very productive week, a lot was accomplished with regards to the final project and I also got a head start on understanding the acoustic editing software.