weeks ten, eleven, and twelve

Week ten was during the last week of November when we all definitely realized “oh man, only two more weeks”. Not only two more weeks to be here in Berlin but two more weeks to get our films to completion!


This week, my group did a lot of filming for my part of the film, running around all over the city just to get a 10 second shot. It was nice that all of my group members came with me even though only one of them was usually filming because I really appreciated the input from them about what I should be doing in the shot. I wrote the scenes and scripted them in a way that I knew what I was going to be doing in the shot, but sometimes I wouldn’t know what looks the best on film or what is funniest, so it was nice to have a lot of opinions for that. This week I also realized how great our camera’s capacity is for really great effects and also really great zoom (as we have used on my shot of the Brandenberger Tor). After all my shots were done being filmed, Ed and Joel came back, put them on the computer, rendered and renamed all of the clips so they are easy to know which clip is which. Sometimes I wouldn’t even expect them to do these things, and I would come back and see that it was already done!
I feel that our group’s enthusiasm level for both filming and editing our film is very high. Joel will usually even do this for fun, and because of that, editing the film has been an extremely easy and low-stress process.

Since filming these shots this week, I’ve realized that my part of the film bares a lot of similarities to “Lola Rennt” in that it is about a girl who the viewer gets to know quite about throughout the course of the film, and you see this girl running all over Berlin carrying out whatever her mission is. When I wrote my script and ideas for my part of the film, I had not even seen “Lola Rennt” before, so I think it’s kind of cool actually that it has come out with some similarities to that film.

In class this week, we watched “Me Boss, You Sneaker” which was a very different film from previous ones we’ve seen. It was a ridiculous comedy almost in the style of the Marx Brothers that shows the gritty side of life of Turkish immigrants moving into Germany, Kreuzberg in particular. I did enjoy it (although slapstick-like comedies like this is not really my favorite type of film) especially for the shots of Adalbertstrasse and Oranienstrasse, right down the street from where I live. Now every time I walk southwards down the street and see the “Kreuzberg Centrum” apartment complex, I always think of this film and how they used street-life in Kreuzberg. I have never seen a film by the Marx Brothers yet unfortunately so it was a bit harder to relate to the readings which mostly just spent time comparing this film with various Marx Brothers films, like “Monkey Business” or “Animal Crackers”. I am glad I did have the opportunity to see this film, especially since it is not available anywhere else and the “doner fight scene” was priceless.



Week 11 and 12 were definitely “crunch time” weeks for my group. Fortunately, mostly all of our filming was completed by this point, although we still had to film the ending and touch up a few scenes to some of our portions. This week was very significant because our group spent a lot of time together talking, filming, walking, editing which was very good because we were able to discuss exactly the direction we wanted our film to go.

My favorite part of this last week and a half was learning how to use the editing software. I knew exactly where I wanted to piece my film clips together, but had no idea how to go about it on the computer. Luckily, Adobe Premiere is a very easy program to learn how to use and after about an hour, I was editing my part of the film needing little help from Ed or Joel. However, it was very handy to have Joel “on hand” for my complicated editing needs. He knows how to use functions in that program that I would have never even thought about. I was able to put my entire eight minutes of my part of the film together in about four or so hours of editing. I had heard other groups often complain about how long the editing process takes in general. So when I finished, I was thinking “what??? That’s it???” I honestly don’t know why other groups had such a hard time with this!
Each one of us was responsible for editing our own portions of the film and then together, we all present to work on the beginning, in between segments, and the ending. In hindsight, splitting up the work of our film like we decided to do in the beginning was an absolutely brilliant move. It is much easier to cooperate and have creative control over your own part of the “art”. It reminded me a lot of playing in my band—each person being responsible either lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, or drums and each person could get as creative as they wanted with their own instrument. I could see where there would be a lot of problems if two people were trying to play the bass guitar and had different musical ideas of what it should play. Same with making our film. We haven’t argued over anything and we each have managed to make our part of the film work with every other part, like making music. I was thinking a lot about this because I have overheard other groups having difficulties working with each other and varying creative perspectives making it hard to piece everything together. I am very thankful for being placed in the group I was placed in with such talented people but all with very different ideas. It really made our film unique and each person gave their own section a special flavor.
Last night when we pieced it all together, I watched the entire film for the first time and felt really proud of how it turned out. It’s so easy just to get caught up in your own specific section of the film that you are responsible for, but yesterday I really started thinking in terms of “the film” and not just “my part of the film”. I feel a lot better seeing how everything has ended up tying together in the end and fitting together so well.
I am also really impressed with the interest that my group members have taken in helping me film or just being there as a group instead of one person feeling like they have had to do everything. I hope my group feels the same way about that too, because we worked together as a team really well.

When we weren’t filming, editing, or generally thinking about our group film, our class watched the film “Goodbye, Lenin!” I had seen this film before maybe two or three times, but was extremely excited about seeing it now that I know Berlin a lot better and will be able to recognize all of the sites that the story takes place in. I knew I felt different when even the intro to the film (which showed pictures of places in “East” Berlin against a red background with pictures of Lenin) made me feel a lot different than the other times I have seen it. I was happy to have recognized the places in the photographs, but I got this really chilling feeling and goose bumps while watching this. I’m not even sure why to tell you the truth; I definitely think the reflective piano music helped this feeling. Maybe it was thinking about all those places in the context of being “walled off” into their own little country called East Germany.
We also did a little class reading in preparation for watching this film about “ostalgie”. I have done a lot of similar readings about the phenomenon of “ostalgie” for my german culture through film class I took last winter. However, this particular reading brought up points I hadn’t even considered before, for example the thought that perhaps Alex Kerner was putting on this big show for his mother because of his own “ostalgie” and longing for how things used to be in the East. I couldn’t believe how deep the readings went with some of the issues between Alex and his mother. I felt almost silly for having not thought that deep into the story before.