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.