Week 5

Ahh, the ideas just keep flowing! I got a couple more for some pretty entertaining movie scenes. We finally are on track and we are going out and about to see what the world provides. Last night my cohorts and I went out to find a night of cultic like pong action, preferably in an underground bar, and to our surprise we wound up with a bust. A night gone to waste wile chasing the never ending game of a ping pong documentary. I know there’s something out there, but where is it??? You can not always trust the internet; they can be faulty on their research! Once we find out who goes where, we’ll be in good shape. I am suspecting that Berlin ping pong is just underground. We need to go there and find it. Some new ideas popped into my head recently, with the intro, some interviews, and just some random things that happen. Here, I can not keep spilling out my ideas; if so than we wont have anything for our movie. So I’ll just talk about the hardship we’ve faced.

Cold weather!!! This is our worst nightmare when were looking to shoot outdoor ping pong tables. Though there are some troopers that rough out the cold, the majority of tables are like ghost towns. So far, our internets sources for indoor clubs are flawed, and outdoor pong is very scarce. I am interested to see how much time will go into transportation to check out as many venues and club playing spaces as we can. I think the hardest part will be getting the time to run back and fourth across Berlin to look for available play settings. Another one of our downfalls is that we are not good enough to get into the finals. Haha…or to even stay in a tournament. It looks like Dr. Pong’s is going to be our home for the next few weeks.

Last week I was stuck in an elevator with 5 of my friends for about 45 minutes, which game me time to contemplate about the movie and Berlin in general. This inspired my new theory. Some people in the group say we need iconic photo shots to signify Berlin, but, Berlin is more than those iconic scenes. Berlin is the place where elevators break down. Berlin is the place where Ping pong is played on Saturday night. Berlin, is the place where alternative teens are looking for new ways to spend their time. Perhaps its good to have iconic shots of monuments, but then again isn’t that pretty cliché? Berlin in space is also a part of time. Its like in the movie with Wolfgang Kohlhaase and how important is it to portray space. We understand that he gave the characters parts which expressed the space of divided Berlin. It’s obvious that the movie is about how Berlin is split. There was not one monument shown to let the viewer know that its Berlin, and you still know it’s Berlin. We have to represent Berlin in our film, but are space is not through characters, or not through iconic images, it is through the overall lifestyle and culture and the underground sport of ping pong. Our mission is to express Berlin, through a movie, not through slides. With that, I have a feeling it will turn out very well, with or without the slides, and when we start getting into it, it will inspire us all to take up a small ball sport.

Production Week 4

Alas!!! We finally take out our camera and try to capture scenes of the pong in action. It started with Koldenhof. When we got there the first thing we did was set foot for a ping pong table, and sure enough, definitely not to our surprise out in the middle of nowhere was a ping pong table. A little battered, but it would do. There wasn’t just a table; this thing came equipped with some 10 year old local boys to test our hand eye coordination with. As inspiring as the shot was, we picked up our camera and let it roll. I thought: ”aww man, local pong, with local kids, in the countryside. This game really has swept the nation.” It was Nathan and I vs. the trash talking 10 year olds. It was definitely camera worthy. I think it will do in our training section. This was the beginning of our lengthily hours of film production. Though the place is not exactly Berlin…by any means, it still shows the effect of how this little niche of a game has become a wide recreational past time.

To the books! Now comes the time where we look for the places in Berlin to film. We have a general idea. When Thortsten mentioned that we could go on to the 20^th floor of the Technical University, we didn’t hesitate to capture our high rise panning shot. The only problem here is that I think we are going to want to get a night shot, which I think describes Berlin a little more since it’s known for its night life. With the city lights, and the proper music, we have a perfect opening. We just need to go back when it gets dark enough to film the night wile the café is open. Our next goal is to get the parks. We wish to capture most parks with random tables. Then do a collage of some sort with the pictures, to show how far spread ping pong is in German culture. We have not done this yet, but we are going to take film of some Pong clubs and some people who are intensely into the sport. We plan to film in sort of a documentary style, which means that we don’t need characters or anybody to put on a role. This is unfortunate in the aspect that role characterization allows you to portray a message. Whether it’s clear or a little subliminal, using a script and characters allows you to have full control of what you want to portray. Like the film by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. He mainly uses characterization to portray his message to the audience. Our film will be just asking people about their contribution to the culture of table tennis and getting their response. Though this is just straight forward and clear cut, I know I can be creative with basic interviews. Ping pong will never again be this interesting!!!

Week 3

Through weeks of brainstorming, my group and I have finally thought about what are movie topic is going to be and we have thought about some filming techniques for some pretty entertaining scenes. The initial idea was sparked on by a life changing event I attended. It took place in the legendary Dr. Pong’s. I was informed of this place by an Australian named Steve, who, in fact was pretty good at Pong. When I arrived I noticed how this sport has turned into a subculture of Berlin. Ping pong is much larger than I thought. This bar had a rotating ping pong elimination rule, which was a great opportunity to see how many people got “into” the game. Some people would go up, and miss the ball (Me), and some people would take it so seriously as to spike the ball so that the unskilled would be eliminated. There was even a regular, who wore a glove on his paddle hand. I realized that we could go somewhere with this and I proposed the Idea to my group. After we all agreed that it was going to be a solid choice, we started thinking about how we should capture Berlin in our movie, how we are going to relate Tish tennis to Berlin, and how we are going to include some local players.

The first thing that came to mind was some panning shots of the Berlin city, then to some views of tables around the park areas. Mainly so that everybody can get an idea of what Berlin looks like in the perspective of a ping pong player. We kind of got the panning idea from the ruble film we watched by Roberto Russolini. At the beginning of his film, he showed a portion of disaster stricken Berlin through a panning shot. So you get kind of a sense of the area around you. I think that concept of place works well. We are planning on going to a high place to capture Berlin with a pan shot. I don’t think we are going to use repetition in our film though. We’ll start with the big shot, and then go into the specific topic of table tennis.

One of are hardest challenges that lie ahead of us is the structure for the beginning of the movie. We are going to do a documentary type movie, but show the struggle and hardship in getting into the niche. What’s going to be interesting is finding the history in what makes Ping Pong so big, why they have entire bars dedicated to it, and why these people would rather play it on a Saturday night rather than go to a lounge, a bar, or a club.

The most interesting thing, and hardest concept to try to grasp through a camera is really exploring space in Berlin. Anybody can take film of one thing, but what will make it obvious that it’s Berlin. Everybody plays ping pong, but how are we going to capture Berlin, and make it noticeable that it’s Berlin throughout the film. We talk about Berlin though different levels, about how the city’s developed through oppression, disaster, and whatever else that clouded this city from the beginning of the century. It will also be interesting to see how Berlin has evolved from the beginning of the century thought small things like ping pong, which I imagine just kind of let the youth forget about the problems around them, hang out in a basement, and have something exciting to do.

Our film should open up the world of table tennis for our class. This should be explore how something so small has made an impact in a culture that is so diverse and so much its own.

Production Log Week 2

As the flashing police lights caught my attention, made my way to approached the scene. Cop cars were blocking off the one way traffic at Unter den Linden. For 3 or 4 intersections, there was a bare street. No cars, no people, and it happened right in the middle of the busiest area of Berlin, Friedrichstrasse. As I stood reflecting and appreciating this beauty of a random pace at a random time in the city center, I thought to myself, how can this empty road convey such a euphoric setting? There is something lethargic about watching time slow down, metaphorically speaking in a sense because of how the hustle of the city no longer took place on that road, instead, it surrounded it. There lies a deserted road, nobodies crossing it, it’s just empty. Still… everything outside of the boundaries of the road filled the air with the theatric chaos of hundreds of individual minds doing their own thing, with an array of sounds accompanying them.

This could relate to Walter Ruttmann’s short audio film that we saw in class, where he describes the city, through the sounds that are produced in the city. All the sounds compose a kind of rhythmic piece. This movie is important because as our group is going to be doing our mini presentation on the city through audio capture, this film directly connects to our prospective work. We all hear Ruttmann blend sounds, sometimes in an un-syncopated way, and sometimes in a matter that creates a musical rhythm. It appeared that he captured the general elements of the city that take place on an everyday basis. What I think I want to incorporate into my movie is the capture sounds at a specific point of time in Berlin.

This idea of course was inspired from the empty stretch of Unter den Linden. We all know the city elements, cars, traffic, airplanes, horns, and general chatter of a large mass of people. I want to portray the city in a little more specific approach. Perhaps pick out sounds that you know you would only see in Berlin. For instance: the sounds of scrapping the meat off of the brick in a Donor Kabap stand, or the sounds of the loud foreigners in the very quiet bus atmosphere. Perhaps the noise of a dog being walked on Sunday, since Sunday if generally the day everybody walks there dog, or…even the Hungarian women with their “speak English?”

As for the street on Unter den Linden. I feel it would very appropriate to have the general city sounds in the area (keep in mind it is the busiest area for foot traffic) build up to become loud and aggressive, and then just go into silence for a couple seconds. I believe that would do justice in replicating the emotions I felt as I stood on the corner. These are all just ideas, but it’s another approach of just capturing the noise of the car driving past. I feel that this idea will expose a little more of some of Berlin’s character. And at the same time, do it in a way that is similar to Walter Ruttmann and his short audio fil, but takes at a more creative stance with the sounds. What’s going to be hard is acquiring the sounds, through timing, positioning, etc, so it suits our needs. Another difficulty that lies ahead will also be arranging the noise in a rhythmic way, so the final product sounds almost musical.

Production Log Week 1

My first impression of Berlin was very powerful. I noticed very quickly, that it was a mix between modern architectural innovation, old historic buildings, and industrial buildings and housing. During my first week here, I was walking around the city at night with my roommate Joel. We were just looking at the cityscapes and exploring the surrounding neighborhood. I was walking down the sidewalk of an area in Prinzlauerberg, which was illuminated by a strand of red lights on the awning of a bar patio. A man was pacing in our direction from the other side of the sidewalk. He was walking his dog late at night, along the lights that were the only illumination. It reminded me of the cliché` walk of loneliness that is portrayed in many movies. I thought that even though you are so far away in another country, in a city known for its active night life, there will always be somebody traveling by themselves, somebody who acts as they are the outcast, perhaps preferring to be alone. This is a prime example of a night walker, description as a flaeur in Schlör’s article “Night-Walking”.

He mentions that the night walker takes part in his stroll, without any certainty of what is going to happen. It is somebody who goes out and has absolutely no plan, just enjoying watching the people and the surroundings. It’s these people that know the city and how it changes, people who like to be independent and not share their time with others. It’s completely observable that there are people out in the night, who just like to stroll in the brisk cold. Though I was not looking for anything specific, I was still exploring with a friend, which causes attentive observation skills to be hindered by a distraction. The man alone could have been depressed, could have been encased in his our sorrow, or perhaps he was just satisfying the urge to observe the surrounding. The beauty about walking alone is that one person can not tell what the singe flaneur’s intentions and emotions are. I figured that that could run a good scene in the movie, since our movie topic is based on outcasts. I think the lonely walk amongst the city lights would be a great description of the isolation of social inequality, and could be a very good introduction to our movie. Maybe use it as the opening scene.

As we sat around the table for the first time, my group and I threw around the various ideas about what topic to do our movie on. We thought about some of the major topics, such as the holocaust, and the current segregation of Turks in Berlin. But recalling on the time that I have spent in the past 5 days viewing the current German culture, I came to a realization. My thought started as this simple question, what makes some of the women here in Germany want to take part in a style of fashion where they shave their head, or at least one side of their head? As we thought about it, we started kicking around the idea about German conformity, and how Berlin has always been the forefront of nonconformity. We decided on our topic, history of nonconformity within German youth. The next question is where to start. Referring back to the walk in the night scene, since the night walkers are alone, we could film a part where a nonconformist such as a punk rocker or somebody else is walking alone in the dark. This can metaphorically show that the nonconformist community is alone, and thy take pride in being different from the rest.