Week 4

We need to begin filming, for an epiphany is so hard to reenact. We missed the footage of this very thing this week. This week, Josh decided to “quit” Pepsi. Naturally, wagers arise and punishments for failure are devised. The final verdict was that Josh must approach a cute girl of our choosing if he were to fail. If you know Josh, this is quite a fitting “punishment.” While fine-tuning the details of the wager it came to mind that this would be a great means for our male character to meet the Berlin girl. That is, he loses the wager. This works into the film concept since it would bring about humorous memories for those involved. Of course, we would want to force Josh to meet a variety of Berlin girls in order to study the interactions. This would allow us to properly script a symbolic introduction of Josh to an all-encompassing Berlin. It then occurred that this is a group memory and that we should all force ourselves to meet Berliners and attempt to create an introductive interaction that embodies all of our experiences. In fact, we should scratch the entire fiction idea and create a documentary of us forcing eachother to go out of our shells/comfort zones and meet Germans and experience the city. This would truly bring out the full potential of our goal to understand that of which is [pause] Berlin.
The honeymoon phase of this idea passed very quickly though. We soon realized that such a documentary would not have much of a body or course that would captivate an audience, or for that matter, serve much purpose at all other than something to laugh at. It would also potentially cross into voyeurism, which would be improper filming. And we’re professionals here. We do, however, enjoy the concept of creating goals for ourselves to achieve in order to experience the city in ways that we may not have without the group “pact” to do so. How to shape this into a film will be our homework for the week (along with developing some goals).
Many aspects of Rossellini’s “Germania Anno Zero,” which we viewed this week, have brought about things to consider for our very own films. He too was an outsider looking in on a foreign city, coincidentally that city being Berlin. Though I doubt it was coincidentally chosen for our viewing. So clever. Rossellini created a film that was an objective assessment of a society in rough times. He documented memories of a city in ruins, both physically and mentally. Unlike Brecht, he did not cross the “fourth wall” of theatre in order to draw in the audience. He allowed the audience to take in his film as they may and experience it for themselves. This film portrays his own observations of Berlin, and that alone. There wasn’t necessarily any objective behind the film as was apparent in Brecht’s “Khule Wampe.”
Rossellini also effectively used the physical ruins of the city as a backdrop to demonstrate the psychological ruins of the city. He truly did achieve creating a film about Berlin as opposed to a film that happened to be in Berlin. This was enhanced by his use of non-professional, “authentic” actors, which allowed natural and real expressions and reactions to events that occur in the movie. Many of these characters were used to embody a group, which was an interesting technique used by Rossellini to demonstrate a certain demographic. This allowed him to bring a social dimension down to a much more personable and simple level of understanding.
Considering these aspects could be very influential in the development of our film. Our film should be objective, since it is our memories. No two of us will experience Berlin the same, thus we cannot really draw anyone but ourselves into the film. Our film should utilize authenticity in order to properly depict the real-life characters of Berlin. Our film should strive for simplified characters that embody an aspect of Berlin we want to portray. And finally, our film should properly use the external world to bring about recollection of the emotions, timing, and setting of our memories.