...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.