Hello, so for my project, I decided to create a video diary of very important snippets of Berlin and of things that have had an impact on me in the past few weeks; I wanted to share the fact that I didn’t feel like a stranger in Berlin despite it being my first time here.
I walk around, stop, take a 5-second shot, make sure it’s stable, and keep walking; and “Khalas” stop asking myself why this shot, why this angle, just felt right and resonated with me in the moment. This is how I usually stop multiple times throughout the day to shoot this movie. Sometimes the place/scene would make sense, and sometimes I would have to use lateral thinking to make sense of it and tie it to the rest of the movie.
To me, the shots I was taking initially weren’t supposed to be for a movie or a film, they were supposed to be for my gallery because I felt like the photos weren’t doing justice to a lot of things, next thing you know, I have over 15 minutes of footage available for me to play with. So, I thought to myself, why not make a movie and try editing and filmmaking?
This movie is for all J-term students who end up getting so connected and can’t stop talking about their J-term for a while (which is going to be me, which is fine) because of all the growth and self-care they have felt on this trip.
As always, in my eyes, Berlin is a Hub for Creativity, and the city itself looks like someone kept asking why? And adding up to what the city looks like. You can tell that everyone leaves a little bit of them in Berlin, and people build on it and create this bigger picture.
My challenge here was the medium, as I have never worked with film before but wanted to challenge myself out of my comfort zone, which is what happened, and to be honest, I am proud of my work and this experimentation that Berlin and many other factors have given me to pursue it.
I hope you enjoy this movie, as I worked hard on it and could barely sleep 🙂