Week 3

This week we viewed the movie Kuhle Wampe. This movie had a great impact on my views of post war Berlin. The movie used the city of Berlin and especially one family to depict the struggles of a post war Germany. When the young man committed suicide towards the beginning of the movie, I could feel the hopeless struggle of a young German working class that were without jobs. When the father yelled at his daughter, I could feel the clash between the past and present generations. This movie made me realize that post war Germany was anything but stable and that there are signs in the film that point to a rocky recovery for the new German nation and its people.

My film group decided to cook together and then discuss how and what we were going to film for the point of view project. The dinner really helped break the ice for discussion so that after we ate we immediately jumped into some really great dialog of what we wanted in our film. Ever since we concluded on the idea to do the point of view on a beer bottle, I have been fascinated on the idea of ending the movie through breaking the object that is being viewed. The movie ends through the demise of the object itself. The group all agreed upon this ending. We also discussed how we were going to shoot the party scene but decided to wait until the next day so that we could tell more people about our project and have them participate. Instead of calling the meeting over, we decided to get the final scene on film.

Using the group's creativity to act out a drunken stumble and crash of the beer bottle was a lot of fun. I feel that my role in the group has changed since the first week because during the first week I felt that I had to be very outgoing and aggressive to gather other people's ideas and thoughts on some aspects of our film projects. This last week I have been able to sit back and let other members in the group become more active in bringing up discussions and ideas for our films. This more active group that I have witnessed this week shows very promising characteristics of a team with great chemistry and a group that can easily form thoughts from discussions. I feel very confident that our team will produce a great movie for class.

Our group changed due dates to Friday the 19th, because we finished filming the majority of our work and felt confident that we could finish in time. The big party scene was filmed earlier in the week and due to choreographed rehearsals and the great participation of our fellow CHID students we shot a great segment that holds the majority of the material for our film. All we need to do now is shoot an intro and then edit the movie. I am very excited to show the class our film and to accomplish this group project to the best of my abilities.