...Zurück bleiben, bitte!...

I'm not finished here, yet...



I'll be back.

...The last stand of our intrepid collegiate hero as filmmaker in training...

Our film project screening was tonight. It was the last official thing I had to do as a college student. I suppose now is a time for reflection.

My, what a way to go out...

This last week of project work was mad with intensity. As crunchtime began to creep in on us, we felt the need to shoot more and more. We had plenty of footage for what eventually became the finished film. However, our time spent in this city lead us to other interesting locals for particular shots.

And then, of course, there was the tagging.

One evening last week, Kelly and Sean headed one direction and I in the other. I wanted to come home and tweak my basic timeline (which was seriously revised for the final film), but they had a few specific shots that the needed to pick up. On their way back to the apartments, they began discussing the idea of tagging The Wall at Mauerpark as an intro to Kelly's section.

This idea was perfect.

This idea also inadvertently sealed the graffiti motif around which our film was built. It also gave me a natural transition from what became the final edit of my section and Kelly's section.

It's so refreshing when things like that happen.

The thing that I know that I most need to work on is sound editing. Our mics were crap, which is a shame because I spent a decent amount of money on mine. Maybe it's not a problem with the mic? Maybe it's the input in my camera? I'm not sure. I just know that our film would have been much better if we had better sound equipment.

But, hey...at least we finished the film.

I think it played well. I was really rather surprised by that. I had absolutely no problems with Kelly's part, Sean's part, or Dung's part. I was rather unsatisfied with my visuals, voice-over, etc. I did, however, like my soundtrack. I'm glad that I was able to include two of my current favorite songs in our little project (Arcade Fire's "Keep the Car Running" which opened things and DeVotchKa's "How It Ends" to close out the film). Those songs have continuously fit my moods over the past couple of months.

And "Keep the Car Running," in particular, stands out because I have a very personal reaction to it. It reminds me of so many things. I recall most vividly those long Oklahoma summer nights which I spent alone driving around in my little Dodge Neon with a Pepsi and a stack of good CDs...just driving and listening and watching the radio tower lights flash and storms rolling across the plains.

It's a song that constantly reminds me of all of the good parts about being alive.

Therefore, I had to include that song in a film about "memory."

And so now I sit here on my bed in my little former East Berlin apartment preparing for one last grand adventure before I depart from Deutschland. I am nervous. My stomach is a mess. But I feel good.

I feel hopeful.

I don't think that I'm finished with living in Germany. Who knows? But it's one of several possibilities to consider...

So for the time being, I will shift my thoughts from memories to possibilities and I will smile.

Wish me luck!

...Journal Entry of Frustration...

Project updates are supposed to be fun. I'm suppose to write about our progress and how things are coming together. I'm sure that the four of us all have the basic shapes of our movie pieces put together. We have things scripted. We have written. And so it has happened, as it has happened so many times before for me, that we have hit quite a large snag.

My hard drive has started to crap out on me.

We have almost all of our footage captured, and we were going to put together large chunks of our movie tonight. However, it seems that this will not be happening. This evening, I'm going to have to figure out a way to recover our footage so that we don't fall too far behind.

I really wish that technology would actually give you a warning before it screws up.

Where is the "Danger Will Robinson! Danger!" of our youth?

In other news:
I will be working on some sequence editing once we are able to access the footage. I may also try to help Sean out with recording his voice-over parts. The idea is that we are going to put together his sequences first, so he can get a feeling for the flow of the scene and thus will know how quickly or slowly to speak.

I want to get the bookends finished by Tuesday night.

I need to do some talking head stuff either on Monday or Tuesday. We will have to see which one is the most open.

I'm kind of frustrated right now and not completely satisfied with my footage, or with technology. As such, I'm lacking any sort of proper transitions from topic to topic.

The film we watched this week, Me Boss, You Sneaker, was an anarchic comedy which lampooned asylum seekers, immigrants, and those living in the country to which these people have come. We had a very good discussion about this film and the readings in the class. More people than usual spoke up, and I was really happy about that. We discussed the idea of the "melting pot" and assimilation, diversity of specific countries and/or cities, and characterization was a key component of discussion. Where people playing the roles or were people actually becoming the characters? This particular concept was best shown in the change of the kid in the movie and the way in which he changed his own identity and self-identified as the son of the non-parent Dudie, even as they were about to be deported.

For me, this raises a whole series of questions regarding identity, how people self-identify, and how people would identify other people. I read somewhere that only 2% of people in the States self-identify as vegetarian, and only about 5% of those self-identify as vegan. Of that 2% that self-identify as vegetarian, I would probably say that there is a sizable chunk of that percentage who some people would not at all consider vegetarian because they eat fish/seafood, or chicken when that's the only option available to them.

I actually had these thoughts in class...I dunno why. I'm probably crazy.

...Lola ran and ran until she hit the wall...

I have been a cinema studies major in some capacity or another since 2002, when I entered into the University of Oklahoma and decided to myself "You don't want to be an English major. Your passion is not here. Always remember the trash compactor."

And so, I undertook the course of study that is sending me careening headlong toward a Graduation Without a Clue of What To Do Next™.

This week's viewing of Lola Rennt has brought me somewhat full-circle in that the third film that I watched in my first film class was this particular film. It is only fitting that it is the second-from-last film that I watch as I close out my college career is the same.

Spirals. Circles. A vortex.
All of these things connote a certain idea of repetition. It is this repetition that gives the a movie life. Without repetitions with slight variations, there would be no movies. This is only one of several ways in which this film nods to the history of the pictures.

The spiral motif harkens back to one of the cinema's earliest predecessors, the zoetrope. This particular link also underscores the cinema's direct relationship to its cousin, animation. Whereas you have a succession of pictures flickering past to create motion and thus a movie, you have a succession of cells flickering past to create a cartoon.

And films are just as real as a cartoon.

I know that Jean Luc Godard once said that cinema is truth at 24 times a second. But he also said that every edit is a lie. I'm not trying to discredit one of the cinema's chief provocateurs, I'm just saying that there is no truth in the cinema, especially when the act of putting together a film is akin, at least according to the later of Godard's statements, to the act of compulsive lying.

Just something to think about, I suppose.

How does this affect our present work on our short films? Kelly, Sean, and I have had a couple of discussions based on our screening and the assigned reading regarding Tykwer's film, and skipping over the spiral motif, Sean has decided to use the idea of Tykwer's vision of Berlin in his film somewhat. It's true, we aren't really able to discern which part of Berlin is which. I suppose the idea is to show Berlin as one not necessarily homogenous whole. Thus we have shot quite a bit of footage at various places around the city in order to piece together a patchwork film that evokes place. The things we have shot span the spectrum of this city, from the subtle nooks to the mundane sites that all the tourists see. We hope that our film will evoke place quite clearly. That, however will be decided by our classmates.

This past Sunday, I played around with the idea of using The Wall at Mauerpark as a cinematic canvas, referencing Jürgen Böttcher's Die Mauer. I walked along the wall with my camera trying to capture as much color as I could, as much graffiti as I could, as much art as I could. I panned across the field, people running across the hill playing with their dog, the flea market down below. And then something quite unexpected happened.

I found a story.

I will hopefully be able to work this story into our film. I'm sure that we can make it work.

...Snow, Film, Film Talk, Coffee Talk (The peanut is neither a pea, nor a nut...discuss)...

And so this is the process of making films, huh? This weekend, I had planned on going out and shooting a lot in and around the city. I had been trusting the weather reports as accurate and so I naturally assumed that Saturday would be sunny and cold with a high of 38 degrees.

I was wrong.

As I set out with my camera and the tripod, the rain started. The rain quickly turned to freezing rain. So I turned around and put my camera back in my apartment before turning around to head back out into the weather. I eventually got to Alexanderplatz before the weather said "You shall go no further." I then took the really cool picture which I have posted here (and have subsequently set as my desktop wallpaper on Sputnik Bob, my laptop).

There were flashes of lightning and crashes of thunder. I was impressed.

But still, no more footage shot.

The following day I woke up and actually did shoot some of the snowfall from my bedroom and from the balcony of the apartment. If we'll be able to use it is anyone's guess really. I also went to CineStar and watched Stardust, which is an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman novel. It was okay. After the film, I snapped a photograph of the red carpet inside of the theater (upper left photo in this post). I hadn't noticed that they have bits of screenplay on it.

Today I bought lightbulbs for all of the lights in our apartment. If we are going to shoot talking heads confessionals indoors, then we must have decent enough lighting. And, we have no lighting rig. I wanna shoot some of my stuff outdoors, but weather may not be cooperative. But we do have to have contingency plans in place, thus the lightbulb purchases.

A couple of weeks ago, I was really struck by how difficult the undertaking of the original film idea would have been. I started thinking about this when we watched Eine Berliner Romanze, in which the two principal characters represent East and West Berlin. The film did a passable job of showing each of the characters flirting with the "other side." I realize the only reason why this film did a credible job of personifying the city is because it was made by people who actually knew the city. The four of us in the group do not know the city. We are slowly becoming acquainted with it, but that is all we are doing. Berlin will be our acquaintance.

This is probably the main reason why I feel that the direction our film has taken is so right. We, each of us, will be covering our experiences in different ways, all under the auspices of character development and understanding. Thus the book-end structure of the film will make sense.

I'm getting excited to see how this takes shape.

Berlin, thus far for me, has been about getting in touch with the somewhat dormant seeds of creativity within myself. I haven't been going out and being as sociable as I would have liked, but I have had a small outpouring of creative ideas that I just know that I will be able to use in some capacity. I've been daydreaming with a purpose. I have made and remade our film in my head 15 times a day it seems like.

While I haven't had the most successful time in Berlin in developing confidence in myself, I have been laying the ground work for my declaration to the world that "I WANT MY CRAYONS BACK!" I want to color outside the lines. I want to let the colors bleed out and go where they want to go.

Seriously, I am about (thisclose) to invoking The Muse in order to write a funny, thrilling, and tragic Good vs. Evil story in whatever genre fits my mood at the moment.

Perhaps I will mix and match my genres. Who knows?

In other news:

I got into a discussion with a couple of people about Der Himmel über Berlin. We were stating our likes and dislikes about the film, and I was delving into some of the structural elements of the film (use of the sky as unifier and its implication for angels, use of color and black and white to denote the presence of angels, etc). And then one of the people with whom I was speaking noted that she just didn't like all of the people only worrying about these great existential questions. Why isn't there someone on one of the trains worrying about whether or not they left the burners on, she asked.

I have been thinking about that. The angels hear all, which is sort of shown by the ambient score of the film (choir of whispers). But they choose the people to whom they would like to listen. This happens, of course, for a couple of reasons. First of all, they are angels - sentient spiritual beings who are concerned with the deeper workings of humankind. Secondly, judging by their own dialogue with each other, they are filled with a certain existential angst. They are fed up with their stations in eternity and want to experience life (thus Damiel orders his first cup of coffee black...bitter, bitter black). Finally, and some would say more importantly, they are German angels. They are philosophical German angels. Pair this with the angst that they have, and it is no wonder then that they only listen to the people with some deep and serious shit going on.

In Thorsten's class we went to Sachsenhausen. I broke down completely at one point and was not expecting that. I talked to my friend Matt about this and he was surprised at my reaction. He said he had a hopeful reaction when he went to Dachau. He then pointed out that I should probably not go to a camp in Poland where they "got shit done," in his words.

Regardless of the severity of the camp, it still wasn't right. And the fact that these things happened, and some things like that continue to happen, hurts me on a very deep, very basic level.

I have been a bit lax about posting in my production journal this past week (read: no posts at all). I'm not sure why that is. I'm no angel, but even so my own existential angst should have no bearing on my output.



More to come...

...Hey Walter, Long Time No See...

I find it interesting that we have come back to Walter Benjamin in Thorsten's class. I spent quite a while reading him in a film theory class I took several years ago at the University of Oklahoma. Now he's back. Caroline Wiedmer's article directly references the essay which I had to read.

Snazzy.

...hey...

Read this...

That article is like a hug for movies.

...Blowin' up the palace looks good on paper, but will it make for good cinema?...

The one aspect of making our Berlin films that stands out as most intriguing to me is the fact that we are going to be capturing this city, at this time, in this way...and it will never be like this again. It is different for other cities, I think. Most other cities don't have the history of rapid change, of destroying the edifices of the past only to rebuild them later, of destruction, rubble, and rebuilding.

Eddie Izzard once joked that Europe is where the history comes from and that we "tear (our) history down man! Fifty-years-old? Let's smash it to the ground and put a car park here."

Every time I walk or ride my bike past the former site of the palace, and soon to be former site of the Palace of the People, I think of that line and wonder if Mr. Izzard knows how apropos that line is of Berlin's cityscape.

One of the reasons that I posted the YouTube link to the U2 video is to show just how different Pariser Platz looked in 1993. Just watch as the bus turns left near the Brandenburg Gate and you'll notice a distinct lack of buildings.

Years from now, when I come back, my embassy will be completed and there will be a tramline in that area. There will, most likely, be less construction. But the skyline will still hug the ground, relatively speaking.

And so, we go out with our cameras to documenting now.

And now is a good time.

...Just the bang and the clatter as an angel hits the ground...

U2 - Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

...We are in the business of making pictures here, not films! Your chracters talk to much and don't do enough, kid...

But it's not all just fun and games, with wild running around shenanigans and alcohol consumption loosening our tongues so that we could/would/should possibly/maybe/eventually speak our broken German to some unsuspecting native speaker.

No, no...we are making movies.

Last week our group made a little short film dealing with "object" and the zone of interaction with the object. We chose a washing machine. You can watch the video here:



We started off by shooting a series of disjointed shots that we were going to assemble together much like a jigsaw puzzle. But then I realized that we were missing the simple beauty of the master shot. The master shot is nice because you can still assemble your film like a jigsaw puzzle, only you use the master shot much like you would the cover to the box in which the puzzle came.

And let me tell you, it makes things so much easier in editing.

The day after we shot, the group gathered around my computer so that I could walk them through the video capture process. Later on that night we started constructing the timeline of our little short. We took the master shot and laid it down first. We then took several close-ups and medium shots and positioned them at their proper places. A few snips here and there, and we were done. We added a "burglar" out take for a bit of humor, and that was that. We had no real ending for the short, because laundry is a cyclical process...one in which you are making some clothes dirty while cleaning the rest of your clothes.

Lately, our minds have turned to our larger final project. It has morphed into something quite different than what we had originally considered. On the second night I was here, I came up with this idea of doing a love story set in Berlin. I pitched it to a few people, co-wrote the script with Kelly, and then started to think about how daunting the task would be. The other people in my group had similar thoughts, culminating in Sean's very practical question (which I'm paraphrasing here): How do you make a love story set in Berlin, about Berlin, when you haven't been to Berlin?

I sent the script to Eric and Jason. Eric had some very good, practical advise and then suggested that we consider making a film about making a film. This would allow us to still use bits of the script as written. We could still shoot certain parts of the script. Then we would comment on the film, the script, etc. It was a good idea, but it turned out only to be a jumping off point for what we are doing now.

I have had mixed feelings about this trip so far. I am in an amazing city, but at times my timidity or insecurities keep me from exploring and meeting people. It's all my fault, I know. But sometimes it's hard to get motivated. There are causes for that which I probably won't share here... But then I wonder, are they causes? Or are they excuses?

On the other hand, I have been feeling a very solid connection with my creative center. The fleeting blips of inspiration that I get in Seattle are becoming more and more frequent here in Berlin, Berlin. We shot some footage at Alexanderplatz that I'm intending to use for an abstract video coupled with an abstract audio piece that I created for a DXArts class last year. I have also started putting together our final project in my head. I'm interested to see what other people have in mind for it. Sean was going to sketch out an outline for structure this weekend.

It sounds silly and nerdy to say this, but I'm really excited because I keep thinking about transitions and sound bridges and cross cutting. I think I'm going to make something really good within the next couple of years. I can feel the electricity building and I'm starting to feel that warm tightness developing in my chest that either happens when I create or I fall in love.

Maybe I'm falling in love with creativity?

...Victory Column...

This is what I did this afternoon.

To explain:

I rode Frank Sinatra to the Seigessäule in the Tiergarten in order to climb its 285 steps to the top. What awaited me was an absolutely fantastic view.

It was cold up there, though.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been quietly stewing about the fact that Frank Sinatra's tires blew out on Friedrichstraße. This week, however, I was able to take the time to buy two new tires and a new inner tube. With some help from Kerry, I was able to get my noble bicycle running again.

And so today, I decided on a little field trip to Tiergarten.

The sun started coming through the clouds at just the right time, so I was able to take some fairly rad pictures, of which this is the best one. I took my time in walking around the base of the monument, checking out each of the brass panels in the base of the column. It was quite impressive. So impressive in fact that people had chosen to take some souvenirs.

Example One (with no head)

Example Two (with no heads, hands, or feet)

Now, I had no problem with climbing the very narrow staircase and the 285 steps to the top. I had no problem maneuvering around the very narrow observation deck. But it was cold. It got up to 42 degrees today. It was a bit cooler on the observation deck, obviously.

Needless to say, I bundled up.

...I need a hard candy shell...

We walked through the "Jewish Quarter" of Berlin on Friday during Thorsten's class. The weather kept threatening us, yet we pushed on and stayed 45-minutes later than class was supposed to run. The walking tours that we do on Friday are pretty amazing, but I found it hard to get through our latest one. It wasn't because of boredom or lack of interest. Quite the opposite is true. The problem is that there were a few times on Friday when I could not turn off my sensitivity and therefore I felt close to losing it.

The "stumbling blocks" and the workshop for the blind specifically caused that very specific twinge of pain in my throat to happen, the one that results from fighting back a few tears.

I have never in my life been confronted with a room in which people hid out from the Nazis, and yet there was one in the workshop for the blind. It was a small, sad room in to which I looked and imagined what it could have possibly been like to play a life-or-death game of "hide and seek." I always do this. I have an over-active imagination that sometimes messes with my emotional triggers.

I say that this particular course of study plays upon my sympathy, and I am careful to choose that word. Normally, I would describe myself as being empathetic. However, I feel that it is impossible to feel empathy regarding the events of the Holocaust. How can any one person who did not live through it, did not survive it, and cannot even begin to imagine the horrors of it pretend to even play at the idea of "empathy?" We cannot know their experiences because we do not have anything vaguely close to the same sort of reference point, and I think that similar reference points are important in developing empathetic attachments to people.

We can feel a great sadness. We can sit in silence and contemplate the importance of specific events. We can be sensitive to the stories and feel sorry for the fact that there was a specific moment in recent human history in which many millions of people were murdered for their religious beliefs, ethnic traits, political beliefs, and sexual preferences. But we cannot begin to pretend to understand the feelings of people who lived through the Holocaust. That is what I believe at least.

...Fahrenheit 451...

Memorial to the Nazi Book-Burning in May of 1933


"Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen."
("Where they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings too.")

-Heinrich Heine



They have these little brass sidewalk "stones" scattered throughout the city. There are over 11,000 of them, each in front of a building in which a Jew or a Jewish family once lived. If the building is no longer standing, then the stone is placed in front of the area on which the building once stood.

Each one of these has the same information:
Geb. (born)
Deportiert (deported)
Ermordet in (murdered in)

It's a small memorial to the thousands of people that were forced to leave their lives and homes, and in so doing, were made to suffer in ways that I can't possibly imagine.

All for what?

This city is alive with history and the presence of human tragedy. It haunts you if you are sensitive to it.

...Two Week Summary...

I came to town on 19.09.2007 and I immediately got used to using that date format. It was pretty amazing and more than a little cinematic that I flew away from the sunset in NYC and into the sunrise in Europe. And, just as if I were the main character in this little movie, the clouds parted right above Germany. As we descended into Berlin, I looked out of my window and saw the Fernsehturm and thought to myself, "Well, I'm here..."

I felt that the best course of action was to move quickly and with purpose, so I found a T-Mobile store, bought a phone and a phone card, called one of our facilitators, Jason, to coordinate a meeting time and then hopped in a taxi. The taxi was well worth the 20€ that I spent. I was a passive tourist and I was just letting the city pass before me. We turned around one corner and all of a sudden there was the Seigessäule. A little farther along and there stood the Brandenburger Tor.

I was here. I was most certainly here.

I got situated in my apartment and then became petrified to go outside and wander. I tried to nap, since I had been up for 24 hours by that point, and couldn't relax. As soon as I heard people speaking loudly and in German, I became quite uncomfortable. I decided to shower, but then realized that I had "forgotten" my soap at a friend's house in Atlanta, and thus I had to go outside. I had to make my way through the streets. I had to find a store. I had to do these things. And I had to do these things while the light was still winning its daily battle against darkness, to sort of awkwardly reference a recent class reading.

Later that evening, after buying a few basic groceries and soap and toilet paper and and and...I got a call from the buzzer downstairs. A couple of classmates were outside wondering if I wanted to go to the store, and so I came along and bought junk food and Pepsi, by god, Pepsi. I then got to notice the very same surroundings at night.

And later on, when we read about "nightwalking" and how the night seems to make the streets endless, I couldn't help but think back to other things I had written, like four years ago maybe. The nights create a different type of life, and there is a very distinct electricity that goes along with it. I remember what prompted me to write about it. It was my first time flying by a window seat at night. During red-eye flights you really get to see the expanse of the darkness and the little constellations of towns and cities some six miles below you. All I could think of was the fact that the city lights at night were a lot like man-made stars to make man feel less lonely.

I got out and did a little bit of exploring my second day once Joel and Jessica were out of their language class and I got to see some amazing things, such as the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche. During our initial readings and our first meeting with Thorston, we discussed the very open ways in which Berlin memorializes the past. This particular building struck me. When I first saw it, I had to remain quiet as a point of reverence, both for the events the lead to its near destruction and for what it meant to leave it in its particular state.

I know that we have read a few articles and have discussed to some extent the matter of reconstruction within Berlin. While I understand and appreciate those points, my eyes are always drawn to the very real and very visible ways in which Berlin deals with its past. In particular, I have been focusing on the brass walkway stones that I come across. Whenever I see one, I stop and I read it. It is a small and tangible memorial to a person, a life, and a life completely destroyed:

Hier wohnte...
Deportiert...
Ermordet...

If you walk around Berlin, you realize that it really is a haunted city. And it will touch you on a very basic level if you are open to it. When I reflect on my days, and I allow myself to think about the history here, I am always moved very deeply. I am lucky to be here in the privilege of the present. I am lucky to be able to move back and forth across the former footprint of the wall. I am lucky to be here and realize that this city, more than any other, was the crossroads of the 20th century. So much of what defined the past 100 years has direct ties to this city. WWI and WWII, Naziism, the fundamental divide, both literal and figurative, between Western Democracy and Eastern Block Communism, the end of the Cold War.

I have clear memories of Regan in front of the wall saying "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I remember being glued to the TV and watching people dance at the Brandenburger Tor in 1989. I remember people hacking away at the wall and swinging it back and forth like a loose tooth.

And I remember the first time I heard the song "Zoo Station" by U2.

This city is still a crossroads for history and a meeting point between East and West. I live only a couple of blocks away from Kreutzberg and Berlin's Turkish area. It's an interesting place to be in an interesting time to be alive.

All of that said, I have been working on the film project for our course. I was falling asleep on the second day that I was here and I just started seeing these flashes of scenes. And they kind of made me smile. And then I heard dialogue and I knew that I would have to get up and write the stuff down. Almost two weeks later, we have a group of 4 people, a script, and motivation.

It has been an interesting experience thus far. I enjoy collaboration. It is important to keep in mind at all times that film, in deed, is a collaborative art form. My group has brought some interesting things to the table that have complimented the original idea that I had and, in some instances, completely augmented it. I think that we have the potential to do something pretty special, if everything falls into place with casting a German girl and all that. Our goals are to capture the idea of memory, but at the same time entertain. To me, that's what the best films are able to do. We are only college students.

To paraphrase Michael Valentine Smith from Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, we are just eggs. But hopefully what we put together will achieve the goals we've set.

...Hallo hallo...

Testing. Is this thing on.........line?

Eh? Eh? You get what I just did there? I made a pun!