Week 6

After last week’s blocking of our two “book ends” for the documentary, the meeting and parting scenes of the fiction film, we seem to have taken a bit of a hiatus in filming. Instead, we have stepped back to set for ourselves a more solid understanding of the structure and goals for the film. In addition, we wanted to help each other develop our ideas for the individual parts. I still have yet to define a central focus for my part, though would like to convey an aspect to the city’s culture and diversity during the off-hours. Through this, I hope to demonstrate that even though the city may seem to still be divided in appearance, there is that which transcends the now arbitrary borders that divide city sections and unify the people as Berliners (local people, not donuts).
My thoughts immediately gravitated towards cuisines and restaurant atmospheres, as always. Restaurants, cafés, food stands, eateries, pubs etc., are everyday locations to enjoy the company of friends and family, satisfy your hunger cravings, and take in the atmosphere that surrounds these settings.
I would structure this part into two major sections: 1) a montage that displays a day’s general structure and routine in regards to visiting locations listed above, and 2) clips of selected locations that I find represent and interesting and diverse variety of cuisines and atmospheres. The brief clips of the montage would progress as a function of appropriateness to the time of day, that is morning to night. Throughout the montage, I would imbed brief clips that kept a sense of time throughout the sequence, such as people rushing to trains and buses with coffee in hand during the morning, bell towers that showed the time, city lights in the evening, etc. In addition, sections of the montage would provide frame of reference as I jumped around the city. This in particular would allow me to demonstrate the cultural diversity within and across sections of the city. Cross dissolves of clips of similar venues in different sections of the city would be effective in showing the culture that transcends the sections.
The longer clips involved in studying the locations of deeper interest would strive to portray that location’s particular cuisine, atmosphere, and the diversity of people it caters.
These two sequences combined will serve the purpose of portraying how cultured a local of Berlin can be, which would shape our Berlin girl. It would potentially create ideas for scene settings for the fiction film as well.
A large aspect of our film is essentially creating parallels between two different time scales, that of Berlin’s history and that of this brief relationship. The film screened this week, “Wings of Desire,” has the same aspect as Harvey discusses in “Time and Space in the Postmodern Cinema.” An angel, who lives an eternal life, becomes fascinated with a human woman’s life, each of which see and experience the world differently. He desires to experience “how good it is to live in the flow of human time” and to show her how to be and live in the moment rather that always longing to become. As Damiel transforms into human, their experiences together accomplish these desires.
Many say that Berlin is a city that is always “striving to become,” whereas Seattle is fairly established. As we discuss the development of our film, it would be interesting to find an aspect that would allow us to draw parallels between the Berlin’s history and the relationship to give reasoning behind some of the occurrences.
Harvey also discusses the use of place in “Wings of Desire,” in which Damiel as an angel can seamlessly jump from one spot of the city to another, as well as across the Berlin Wall. With regards to our film, this technique can be used to allow the camera to jump around the city in order to make more obvious that of which transcends any perceived divisions, as discussed earlier.
Another aspect we must consider, as brought up by Hooks in her article “Representing Whiteness,” is how we represent a city, its people, its culture, and its history. What are the implications of feminizing Berlin with a female character, who may happen to be white? How can we degenderize, deracify, decreedify, etc., the character that is meant to embody Berlin?