Entschuldigung

Apologies again for the lateness of this entry... there have been some technical difficulties. I wroted this blog on Friday but my less than reliable stick of internet decided to lose service right as the post was being published. So here is take two for blog # 11.
I have been conducting a couple of interviews this week for my project, so this section's material was especially helpful. It is really hard trying to come up with a narrow approach of questions because there are just so many different directions I could go in. I really found the article on ethnographic interviews helpful. I used its advice on picking a specific event/ day and asking questions about that, rather than the predictable why Bamberg... what do you like about it. I asked questions like what is your favorite thing to do on a Saturday here in Bamberg (although because our classes have not begun, everyday is a bit like Saturday). Also since coming to Bamberg, the one thing that I do almost everyday is go and sit with friends at a cafe to talk and whatnot. So basically cafes are playing a consistent role in my experience so I am asking questions about what cafe's other people like to go to and what they like to order. Or if anything fun happened once while they were in one (A major fight went down in one of the cafes I was sitting in... it involved a man literally kicking another grown man in the butt... It was magnificent).
It is those types of colorful stories that I am trying to find that will hopefully add color to my project.

Action!

My decisions for how to shoot my video content for my movie has been to primarily capture the spirit of what I am watching. For instance, I literally just returned home to Germany from visiting Ireland for St. Patrick's Day. I recorded some footage from the parade and sightseeing. I really wanted to show the excitement that was literally pulsing through the air. There were SO many people from all over the world visiting, but it was like one giant party so language and cultural barriers were completely bulldozed over. Everybody was simply "solid green." I tried my best to capture that spirit in my video because the many pictures that I took cannot and will not do it justice.

In order to actually capture that spirit, I tried to really just include and focus on people as my primary subject in each frame. My video's tone is about not only the actual experiences but the people that I am sharing them with. So hopefully my video's inclusion of people and just humanity in general will communicate that sentiment to its viewers.

Plan of Attack!

Since I have only been in Deutschland for about 1 week, I have not really accumulated too many photos or videos for my final project. Aside from the shots of me looking a tad rough in the airport with my ridiculous amount of luggage. So needless to say, I am having to get a little creative on my video's content. I think I have decided to go with the angle of "what is to come" rather than "what has already come and past." I will talk about what I have already learned and experienced, but also focus on what I am excited about doing while in Germany. I will also try and use multiple interviews of local and exchange students explaining what I should expect from Bamberg, and why they love it so much.

I think that I am going to be fine on video content, but it is just going to be slightly different from most of the other final projects submitted. And different is usually a good thing in my book. (hopefully it's also a good thing in the grader's book too- just kidding).

Internet at Last!

I must apologize for the tardiness of this blog entry. I have FINALLY arrived in Bamberg this past Tuesday and have been frantically trying to get everything organized and settled. Apparently however, Germans don't really seem too concerned with something as trivial as internet connection. Eventually though my tenacious (or annoying) persistency came out victorious and landed me with the overwhelmingly slow "internet stick" (yes that's what they call it). In other words, while waiting for this blog page to load, I have written a short novel- just kidding. Needless to say however, my internet is super slow. So please bare with me.

Anyway, this week's blog topic, tropos, I found very interesting. When I took the pictures for the earlier blog entries I did not really think about why I chose this angle, or to exclude/ include this or that. I just instinctually snapped the shot. So I guess aesthetics is what drove all of my decisions behind the photos I took. Since, I was still in Charleston, the photos I took are of flower boxes on a side street in the downtown area. I chose to photograph flowers because to me they represent a large part of Charleston. The city, resting on the coast of South Carolina, is extremely natural, filled with beautiful flowers and greenery. For me, the bright colors of the flowers give off a whimsical feel, and I tried to capture that in my photographs.

In the close-up photo, I wanted the pink flower to be the sole focal point of the photograph, in order to show how important the flora is to the region. That is why I chose to exclude the actual flower box and window. It is interesting that by just zooming in, you can change the entire perspective of the photograph. The close up shot presents an entirely different image compared to the one of all the different flower boxes. The shot with the multiple boxes, to me represents the charm of the houses in Charleston, rather than the importance of the flora.

These principles of Tropos are really useful because they make you stop and think okay why am I taking this shot? What do I want inside the frame and why? And now that I am finally in Germany I can start applying them to my sight seeing as well. When I look at the different monuments and castles I can question what internal visualization is the artist or architect trying to externally communicate?