Week 10

Our movie now has a base, and we stated and now are finishing up the intro to our movie. Every time we all get together we think of ideas of new ways to go about the movie. This week we went out and filmed the scene to introduce us into the movie. I mentioned the idea… “hey, why don’t we do a shot where one person is doing something, then turns, sees the camera, and nods and smiles.” The idea is based off of something like Full House, where they do the intro. We revised that idea to make it a serious face at the end, and then superimpose text over the scene, giving our information. Once we all agreed with this we hit the streets of Berlin. Specifically Eberswalder Strasse and the surrounding area.

We decided to shoot 4 different scenes with us each doing something different. We are definitely going for a comedy feel here with the movie, and I believe the shots we got are ridiculous, but still serious, which will make for a funny laugh. In class we talked about the effects of humor in portraying a touchy subject that could be borderline offensive, and how humor can make people come together over an issue and laugh. By no means is our movie even possibly offensive, but we are still going for the humorous touch because I feel specifically that comedy is the best environment to work in. As some people are doing their movie on more serious issues, they need to have straight faces during their film, while we can enjoy every moment of filming. I have also noticed, as well as the rest of my group, that when we finally get out there all together and film some of these ridiculous scenes, it actually brings us closer together. We realize that this filming is fun, and we generally have a good time. In the movie “Ich Chef, Du Turnschuhe” we saw how in this comedy movie, which took place 3 block from our apartment, even when Kutlucan has lost everything in the movie he still wound up with a positive playful attitude when he acquired Leo the boy. It demonstrates how laughing makes people happy, under all circumstances.

The thing we are having problems with as a group is still finding the ping pong clubs where the very skilled people practice and play. Nathan called a ping pong club and asked if we can go there, and the guy on the other end of the phone just laughed and said “go to this place…I think it’s called Mr. Pong,” of course referring to Dr. Pong. So we are still having a little trouble in that realm of acquiring footage. On the bright note, I thought of an excellent idea which will tie the segments of our movie together without any hassle. I thought, instead of trying to do voiceovers or anything like that, why don’t we do tiny segments where one person is sitting in the frame in a chair, and says a little monologue about that they are thinking during this time. It is very clique, but it works perfectly in our movie. So I proposed the idea, and it went over very well. This movie is coming together very well.