week eight

week eight was like the others i suppose, an interesting week and a bit of a different week for me. i came home early from prague on monday to meet my dad and his wife for dinner that night. it was so nice to see my dad after not seeing him for over two years. the next day i showed him around the main touristy berlin sights (unter den linden, potsdamer platz, topagraphy of terror) which i think he enjoyed.
after he left i just kind of was left in a funk for a few days for some reason and didn't feel much like going out in the city. i feel like this is also partly because i had realized that our program has just reached the "only one month left" mark, which makes me a bit sad since i love this city so much and could definitely see myself just staying here.

in thorsten's class tuesday we discussed daniel libeskind's design of the jewish museum for a portion of the class, but we also delved more into the subject that chris and i presented at saschenhausen that last friday-- the question of how one goes about memorializing something and controversies surrounding memorializing. i was really glad that we went back to touch on this subject because i didn't get to speak hardly at all about this at our presentation.

this week was a good one for our film group because i felt like a lot got filmed and talked about. the workshop on friday was particularly successful in helping each other understand more about our group goals, where we are heading with our filming, and what our game plan is for the next week or so.

as it is right now, most of the time usually one person accompanies the person whose turn it is to film their part of the film. i went along with ed and joel to film a lot of footage for ed's quarter of the film, but felt like i wasn't being a huge help to the process because both ed and joel already knew what they were doing and there wasn't much else i could do. i feel like just two people filming at a time is a good enough system because it really only takes one person to film and the other to be in the film. on the other hand, i really appreciate the other ideas from my group members, and this is why i wouldn't mind if everyone wanted to be there when i film my part.
i feel that our group is working really well together so far. we are all really open-minded about eachothers' ideas and fortunately there has been zero conflict so far. if anything, i feel like i would like to do more when it comes to the editing process. joel is very good with editing and really likes doing it, so it is very easy to have him quickly edit what needs to be fixed. hopefully in the future, i will be able to learn from him so i can get a feel for this editing software as well.

i really enjoyed this week's film, lola rennt-- specifically how the director shows prominent areas of berlin as the back-drop for lola's drama. it reminded me of how i would like to make sure to show berlin in a way that could only be seen as "the streets of berlin" for example. i don't think this will be hard since there will be a lot of u-bahn type shots but hopefully i can capture the same sort of "berlin spirit" that is captured in lola rennt.