Week 5

Week 5 and we finally started filming. This is in part due to the fact that we have at last grasped a solid idea for our film. Week 5. Do I feel yet that I am beginning to understand the interweavings of Berlin yet? Definitely not enough to create the fictional movie we originally set out to film. Nor do I envision the ability to do so by the time I leave. The city is too complex. Our idea now does not require us to achieve such a understanding fortunately, but it does require that we make an attempt. We have decided to combine the ideas of creating a documentary of the creation of the fiction film and of creating a documentary of us carrying out our goals in the city. As Rossellini did so well, we want to develop characters that embody a group.
From our standpoint, the American boy character is more important to embody properly. This character embodies us. He will develop as a character throughout the film (the film that we will never actually make) based on how he is shaped by his experiences with Berlin. In the movie, the Berlin girl would embody Berlin. Berlin is obviously too big for a small group of Americans to change though, so naturally there is no development in this character throughout the film. We simply learn more and more about her. Obviously in cinema though, in order for the audience to learn about a character, someone (the writer) had to know her in the first place. Our documentary of creating a fictional romance film will focus on us striving to “meet and know” this character. The filming of our attempts to achieve our own personal goals will allow us to create our own memories of Berlin in film, and through this each one of us will resemble the development of the American boy character that is designed to embody all of us. In effect, a positive feedback loop is created.
This method will ultimately achieve two major goals for our film (once again, our film that we will never actually create). One, it will be effective for using the external world as a backdrop for the internal world. We will be able to decide the Berlin settings that represent our memories for the film. Two, we will be able to formulate a conclusion in which we build a real relationship between two characters that embody two different groups, a relationship of actual events, actual settings, actual progression, and actual memories.
The relationship written by Wolfgang Kohlhaase in “A Berlin Romance” does the very thing we are attempting. He creates a relationship between a West Berlin boy and an East Berlin girl, though in this relationship the characters embody equally sized groups thus both characters develop. This relationship may have been easier for Kohlhaase, being an East Berliner, considering his proximity to West Berlin. Still, he must have had more troubles creating Hans than Uschi. I would be interested in asking Herr Kohlhaase:

“In A Berlin Romance you create a symbolic relationship resembling a divided city by embodying the two divisions in the two characters of the relationship. And through their interactions, the two develop together toward a temporary common fate, in which this development resembles that of the divisions. What process do you use, if any, to develop characters for this purpose? How familiar were you with West Berlin at the time? How did you familiarize yourself in order to create Hans so effectively?”