Entry Six: Week V, VI, VII, VIII, XI? & X? (really?)

so i might be really behind on my blog entires. but there was that holiday in between...? i am so confused.

either way, the lag in blogging is in no way indicative of how hard my brain is working because the creative juices are a-flowin'! and the film screenings are getting better and better and even more inspirational. so, about that...

with all horn tooting aside, it strikes as very odd that our group began working on a film strikingly similar to Tyxwer's Lola rennt even before the in-class screening and class discussion. we had all seen the film prior to the screening, but i am not sure it donned on us to talk about our film as a Lola rennt-alike in its visual similarities and related topics. which, coincidentally, brings up a rather peculiar association which i will delve into later about what sort of attnetion berlin might demand of filmmakers.

similarities and associations: both our film project and Tykwer's Lola Rennt follow a young, female protagonist (with pink hair, no less) on a disorienting, high energy race around Berlin. where Lola Rennt is driven by a more narrative structure -- Lola's pursuit to drum up the cash needed to save her boyfriend -- our film attempts to capture the often fleeting idea of stability and the predominance of temporality within an uban space, relying on Berlin itself as a storyteller. like Lola, our protagonist drives the action forward while the city makes meaning of movement/motion, displacement, and change. Tykwer presents a "hybrid" Berlin by mixing and matching locale in order to get closer to a new, unifed image of Berlin. our film focuses strongly on the assumption that Berlin's image in 2007 is alrady a unified one and our protagonist's touristc relationship to the landscape connotes different meaning from cerain locationsby dissecting them as historical sites; afterall, each location we have filmed at was chosen for a specific reason.

i feel that once i began drawing these connection to Tykwer's film, they provided a much clearer vision of how i wanted our film to look and what sort of tecnical means might make that vision a reality. for example, Tykwer's soundtrack is unbelievably pivotal to the film's success in its ability to prescribe pace and mood (while also making reference to Berlin as house techno capital). realizing the impact the soundtrack can have on a film, our group has definitely taken an unexpected, possibly risky approach to the use of music in hope of exploring and fleshing out the feeling of "foreigness." i suppose the technique we have adopted to do this is using stark juxtapositions both in our music styling and cinematographic sequences.

other inspirations drawn from Lola rennt are more generally filming locations (e.g.,the oberbaumbrucke bridge), the youthfulness and brevity employed in cuts and transitions, and the celebrated exploration of Berlin as a living metropolis.

the attention berlin demands: it would seem silly not to inveatigate furhter into our Berlin film as so closely related to Tykwer's. what is it about Berlin that is so alluring? for starters, it is such a provocative place to be filming. with the city still under construction and rapidly changing, anything captured seems precious. in the same way someone might film their child growing up, berlin is also maturing and becoming something new. and now that we have been submersed in this sort of "urban adolesence," it makes sense that our way of capturing that on film would be rambunctious, wily, young, fun, and a little reckless. did Tykwer have these feelings? did he see this city as growing up and so too, wanted to remember that through Lola? Sinka argues that Lola protrays something called Generation Berlin whoa are "above all, self-reliant individualists unbound by convention. While not shunning confrontations with Germany's fractured, tortured past, this past no longer has hold on them."

i think it is also interesting that as foreigners or tourists we have been so quick to pick up on this energy that moves Tykwer's film, that moves Lola, and moves present day Berlin. my aspirations for this film from day one have been to give some inkling of what Berlin is like now and maybe where it is going, given its past that is no longer binding, but possibly means for more rampant regenration.

as far as my individual contribution to group work i have been behind the camera at the greater majority of (maybe 6 out of 8) film dates), some scheduled and some spur of the moment. so far, i have personally spent close to six hours editing footage and putting together rough sequences of shots. the majority of that time, i was accompanied by other group members as we usually make editing a cooperative event. i also began assembling a storyboard, but have ceased my efforts as we started to feel more comfortable with what we had on film.