Week 7

We finally get out and try to get some filming accomplished. The bar we read about and choose is called Serene. Its interior paint is read, but it’s some kind of tiny dance club/lounge. The walls have naked women posted on them and there is no ping pong table in site. In fact, we were the only ones there with an exception of 4 women sitting together at the bar. Once again we have been had by the blasted internet. Nathan does a little bit of chit chatting with the bar tender and we find out some crucial information. The club opens up on Wednesday and there is a ping pong match. This actually does a decent job of bringing in the locals for some ping pong. There is supposed to be between 10 to 30 people to arrive and smash some balls Wednesday night. The bar tender also said that he will round up his cronies to come Next Wednesday and make a big scene. Then, we decide to roll on over to a little more Dr. Pong’s (where the pong meets the P.H.D). We play around a little bit but it’s kind of a dead night so we don’t even pull out the camera. It’s another week of crushed hopes, but…at least we have next Wednesday to look forward to.

I actually just came back from Holland. There I was inspired by a new idea. Wile I was in Amsterdam for the first night, my Dutch friend and his friends came over from den Haag to hang out with me and show me around. As I was following them, they were giving me kind of a tour of Amsterdam, wile we were looking for our first stop. That night, I followed my friends around all threw the city as we went to many different areas, partying at all the best spots. As I follow them around, I observe what they do through the process of before party, party, and post party, and thought to myself…we need to do that with the movie. For example, as the night went on you could notice some habits they demonstrated. To relate it to my movie, I’m thinking the process of pre competition, and post competition attitudes and habits. We could follow one man around right before a competition, of course shoot the highlights of it, then, do a segment of attitudes after the game. The only downfall to this would be to try and follow one person around for a couple minutes without turning the attention to him instead of Ping pong. But if we did manage to get a shot like that, it would show how Germans play their sports, and the preparation needed for a sport as small as Tisch Tennis.

The movie that we watched in class this week, “die Mauer”, was a documentary about happy people who was celebrating the deconstruction of the Berlin wall. When Jürgen Böttcher filmed the movie, he showed the excitement in everybody’s face. He showed how people were trying profiting off of the wall, how everybody was trying to get their own piece of the wall, and how everybody was celebrating on top of the wall. One thing about that movie that I think stands out is that it is generally a very quiet movie. He never played music or adds his own editing material. All of the shots usually just emphasize one sound at a time. For example, he would show a person or two chipping at the wall for about 5 minutes. The only thing that was producing noise was the chisel. When the people were acknowledged, they generally only spoke when they were asked something and only responded with short answers (sometimes even just a word). I wonder if that is a Berlin type of attitude, or if it was intended.

I am curious to see how people will respond with our movie when we interview them. I believe it will be kind of small answers and most people will be kind of shy, so I’m excited to get to interview some people and check out their response. Unlike “die Mauer” we are going to put some music in our movie to try to create an emphasis of our scenes. For example, on fast paced ping pong scenes, we will obviously have some faced paced music to build some suspense. Music will be a key element to this movie because there are some ping pong environments that are super laid back and are there just to have a good time. There are other bars were people will go to train and build their skill, which obviously means the games are a little more intense. Music will dramatically separate that type of environment for the observers.