week four

Week 4 was the first week that Humbolt University was actually in session, so we shared the halls and the cafes with all the other students milling around, trying to get to our classes. This also marked the first week of the super early classes (eight a.m…. dun, dun, dun.)
I had just gotten back from our class trip to Koldenhof, so I felt particularly appreciative of Berlin this week. When you are in the city so much, you tend to forget how great it really is and all that it has to offer, so I intended to take full advantage of Berlin this week, since I did not have weekend plans to travel that weekend. The day we got back from Koldenhof and walked to the U-Bahn station, I felt almost in awe of being here in the city and started taking several pictures of our neighborhood and little things I want to remember when I don’t live here anymore. There’s nothing like a little weekend trip out in the country to make you feel refreshed and ready to be back in the city. I was determined to do every single thing I could and to be out and about as much as possible, as well.

For our first 8 AM class, we all met in the new classroom at Dorotheenstrasse to watch this week’s film, Germany Year Zero. I liked that it was the first film we have seen in class with a constant, easy to follow plot and it was extremely interesting to see the actual Berlin rubble documented in a film. I couldn’t believe that it actually looked like that here those years after the war. In all the German history and culture classes I have taken in the past, no one ever really told or taught me about how Berlin was doing immediately after the war (and judging from the film, apparently it was not faring all so well). It was also interesting that the characters spoke in Italian. Nathan mentioned that he thought that the Italian perspective gave the characters more Italian attributes and mannerisms.
I felt that the final scene of the film (that we watched more than once in class) was a really epic-type scene that I would expect to analyze in a film class. The hidden meanings behind what Edmund’s last actions were in the film really blew my mind—especially the comparison someone thought of when Edmund slides down the plank right before he jumps off of the building as if the plank were a slide.
Although the film was kind of a downer, some of the best films are, I think. Sometimes happy endings make the film a little too boring and thoughtless, in my opinion, because it’s as if the director is giving in and showing the viewers what they want to see. The viewers can’t always pick what they want every time!

During the Friday class, our film group screened our short film project (Point of View) for the class, and I thought the final product turned out very well. Initially right after we were done filming the party scene, I was a bit worried that it wouldn’t turn out the way we had intended. However, when we all edited the film together as a group two nights before, I began to feel more and more confident about our final product, especially when we managed to splice the end scene with the party scene flawlessly. Also, I was very happy with how the intro looked and the beer bottle opening sound we added in worked nicely as well.
It feels a little weird to tell people that “yeah, our film consists of three takes in total” and “we actually got most of our footage on the first try”. Normally, people might assume that we didn’t really care or spend much time trying to get everything right for our final product. In truth, I feel that it was with a great deal of luck that everything went according to our plans the first time. We had intended for the majority of the film (party scene) to be one long take because it would look unnatural for it to consist of different takes. Also, the less takes for the party scene the better because we were using so many of our classmates as extras in our films that they might have lost their “party energy” for the scene so to speak if we kept telling them to do the same thing over and over.