World Premiere of "Where the Sidewalk Ends..."

It is Thursday here in Germany. That means only one thing. Today I screen my documentary that I have been working on this entire time I've been abroad. How do I feel about this? Well, to be honest I'm not that excited at all. I can't really comment on how I feel about my documentary either. I don't think I will be able to though, until a few months or even years later. Regardless, it was a roller-coaster in every sense of the word.

Moreover, after today when the credits roll and the lights come up, it will symbolize the completion of my Junior Thesis and the end of my time here. This last week is going to be very tough on me. I've gotten very close to my host family, so much so, that it will be difficult to say goodbye.

Anyways, on this Thursday morning I decided to awake early and watch possibly one of my last German sunrises. I'm glad I did. I awoke to find a light snow falling as the sun began to peek out. I just sat there looking out my window glad I finally got to see it snow. I then proceeded to open my door and found a note from one of my little host sisters. Basically she said she was excited to see the next best film out of all the 18 films. The first being TK's, my new host brother (which truly was amazing by the way, and in my opinion the best in the program), and the second being mine. Followed by her signature and 'I love you'.

I sat back down, note in hand, watched the sun grow in intensity as the snowflakes lightly fell upon our pond. For once in a long time, I felt completely at peace. I felt happy. I honestly don't care what else awaits me today. In this moment I know I was meant to be here. In this moment I'm happy.

Sursum Lovin' in London

Lifting hearts...all over the world!

This past weekend I decided I needed to travel one last time, and I needed to get away from my film for a bit. So TK and I decided to do a blind booking through GermanWings. It's this promotion they offer where you get to choose a theme i.e. party, shopping, culture, etc. and then they give you about 14 possible destinations. We picked the one that had the least places we had already been. We were in fact hoping to get Barcelona of this list, but ended up with London. I was pretty stoked. I had only wanted Barcelona for warmer weather and it's a place I've never been, but currently I have a bunch of friends studying in London. With that in mind I was really happy to be going to the England.

We called them up, and they had a place for us to crash, which meant LESS MONEY to be spent in such an expensive city. London was a lot of fun. On the way over TK and I made friends with a German girl sitting next to us on the plane. We later met up with her and did a bunch of touristy stuff.

What was really great, was being in an English speaking country again. Although, I kept finding myself saying things in German out of habit, especially 'danke' or 'bitte' or 'genau'. It was also really great seeing all my friends there. They were studying for finals, so we couldn't really all go out, but it was nice to be with friends. We all went to a little pub, ate fish and chips, had a pint and watched the Arsenal vs Liverpool game (Arsenal won). It was such a great experience being in a British pub watching football with Brits.

It was good seeing friends again. Made me realize I do miss a lot of people back home, but I still love being here so much. I kinda just wish they all could come over here and we all could just go play in Europe!

Anyways, London was a nice break from all the editing and looking at my film over and over again...

Editing Editing Editing

Well, well, well...I have been busy. I managed to make it up to Berlin again and do some more filming. It was a good time in Berlin. I got a lot of good footage and met some more cool people. I managed to meet up with two friends I had made on my last trip and found a really awesome hole in the wall bar. Literally this place was the sketchiest most awesome place I've been to. You had to knock on this door that was under a bridge. It had no sign or anything that identified it. You only knew it was there if , well if you knew it was there. Then this guy slides open a little slate on the door and eyeballs you. Finally he opened the door, looked at my friend and I and asked "Just you two?" We looked around. "Yea" "Just you two?" again we look around. "Ummm...yea" "Ok! Come on in!" We enter, it turns into this really awesome pub. Low lights mirrored roof. Jazz band playing in the corner. Sehr schon!

As I left my artist to head back to Bonn, she also gave me a parting gift. A Minolta XG9! I was so stoked. I've always wanted a Minolta and I've really been wanting to shoot black and white again. An amazing gift, that was completely unexpected, but extremely appreciated.

So these past few weeks have been pretty much something like this: wake up, edit, remember to eat, edit, edit, edit, sleep, and repeat. Also the occasional helping someone out on their film. This film has been a pain. My hard drive has crashed twice. I lost everything I had been working on (luckily not any raw footage) and had to restart my entire project and re-edit in less then a week. Fun stuff.

Besides that I've been trying to hang out with my host family. Most of the other students edit at the AIB, but since I have a Mac and FCP I can just do it at home. So I haven't really seen most of them in weeks, which is really weird. However, I have gotten close to my host family. We also have a new member of the family! TK, one of the other film students, had difficulties with his original host family and moved into ours. It's been a lot of fun having him here, and we have become brother too.

We all have been going on small excursions together. We went ice skating and to a medieval theme Christmas Market. We've played board games, and just had a lot of fun together. By far the best part of this trip is my host family. They are amazing.

I did put together a short timelapse clip for my film. It actually didn't make it in the film, but hey you can look at it if you want:

Where the Sidewalk Ends... (Clip) from Vincent Patin on Vimeo.

Oh right...I'm Not on Vacation

Today began the first of our shooting weeks. We all came in and read our Director's Concept on what we would try to achieve with our film. Our professors gave us some legal documents to have signed and other forms that proved we were student filmmakers, and gave us some parting wisdom.

I myself still need to arrange when I will return to Berlin to shoot. However, I have the bulk of my footage already. So I opted to keep this weekend as the first weekend to relax and stay in Bonn, especially due to the fact that my body decided it couldn't keep up with me any more and I have developed tonsillitis or strept throat, not quite sure which. All I know is my tonsils look beautiful, and I can barely breathe or swallow. Yay!!

Regardless, tomorrow I'm off to Duessledorf to help Irene, one of the students with her project. She is shooting cage fighters, so I get to have a lot of fun filming people beating the crap out of each other, and the audience bathing in the glory of sweat and blood. Monday it looks like I'll be helping James on his project as well, which is about a comparison of US and German healthcare, as well as doing some work for my internship. On top of all of this, will be relaxing, and cutting together a teaser of my footage. (I'm currently logging....joy)

Well, that's that. Everyone is off all over Europe making some movie magic. So it begins...

This is Halloween!

For Halloween a few friends I decided that we wanted to go to the Birthplace of this fine now American commercial holiday. So we headed for Dublin, Ireland. Now Ireland was great, the people were amazing, Halloween was epic, but the traveling to and fro...not so much.

Our flight is to leave at 10:50am on October 30. We are flying out of Dusseldorf airport which takes about an hour to get to from Bonn. We decided that we want to get there a hour early to the airport, so we naturally decided to take the 8am train and catch a connecting train from the main station to the airport. BOTH of these trains are LATE. Additively we end up getting to the train station 40 minutes behind schedule. We start rushing around trying to get on our flight, since we have about 10 minutes now (we had to take a 5 minute sky cab to the terminal). We run to the check in line which closes 40 minutes before the flight is to board. Lameskis. We then run to security check in and explain the situation. They send us to someone who sends us somewhere else, who again sends us to another part of the airport. Finally one person says we just need to go to Swissport. We look around, and nowhere is there to be a Swissport sign anywhere. I'm franticly looking for red and white or some cross, or even like a dog with a barrel around his neck, just anything Swiss-ish I can think of, but alas to no avail. Miraculously, Ben finds the right place, which I'm still dumbfounded on for we both looked around once we were there and saw nothing that denoted Swissport.

The nice lady calls the terminal, and then tells us its to late....We are pissed. So we mull over the options and decided to take the next flight which leaves the following morning the same time. We get there two hours early that time.

Dublin itself was amazing. We stayed at the Barnacle, which apparently at one time U2 actually recorded a Joshua Tree Demo there. Moreover, it was in the middle of Temple Bar. We spend the day checking out some sites and of course make a visit to the Guinness Factory, which I'm not sure why, but tastes so much better at its source. I mean literally at the factory it tasted better then at a pub a few feet away. I don't understand how, but it's true. I think I may be ruined on the joy of Guinness now. We also check out the Jameson Distillery and some cathedrals, as well as Trinity College.

The night finally begins and we go out for Halloween festivities (randomly we bump into our friend Sam walking on the streets as we head out). Which of course was mainly tourists, a lot of them American, and a lot of Irish guys looking to take advantage of this situation. In fact they even told me so. One thing that surprised me was how many older people were out. It was as if I strolled into cougar central, which was quite humorous because for some reason Bobcatt always seems to have cougars after him. We keep hoping from place to place when finally we start making our way to The Turk's Head. Well actually we had no idea where we were going, we just saw a lot of people and decided to go in, but right before I enter I randomly run into a friend outside. It truly is a small world. We go in and start walking around. I start exploring looking for a water closet when I randomly fine myself in a club. Apparently the downstairs area of this place led to the bathroom and club....weird. As I'm exploring I again run into a few friends. I really freak out and run over and give my friend a hug. Apparently, they were in Dublin for the weekend for a debate tourney. What a ridiculous night...

The next day Ben and I just explore the city some more, walking aimlessly seeing what we stumble upon, and just enjoying Ireland. Later that night we decide to go out and get away from the tourist areas. We wind up at this little pub that was only locals. We make friends with the older bartender, and he educates us on whiskey and tells us some of his life stories. We then head out to another little pub and meet a local Irish woman and her friend from the South of England (that accent kills). They point us to another pub to check out and tell us to tall to the barkeep about music. We abide and find ourselves in this tiny little pub.

We make friends with the barkeep and when the other costumers leave he closes down the bar and invites his Swedish friends over. We end up just talking and hanging out, talking about photography, music, books, whatever. They take us to one last place where some crazy Irish guy wouldn't leave us alone due to our Swedish friends. Yet, our barkeep friend Conall, starts talking to him about how they our both his wives and he got "250 cattle for them". All this goes over the guys head, but the rest of us our dying laughing. Ben and I end up leaving since we have a flight in the morning at 6:50am, which leads me to my next story...

I'm lying in my bed when suddenly I jump up look at my clock and realize what time it is: 6:50. Our plane is currently taking off. How this happened I know not. I look at my alarm, it's set ready to go. The time on it is correct, the alarm is set for the am not the pm, but for whatever reason it didn't go off, or we slept through it, or I somehow turned it off in my sleep (which doesn't make sense to me because it was my iPhone, so you have to do that whole slidy thing and what not) Ben for some reason forgot to set his. The thing is, we got back at our hostel at 12am so we could get a little sleep and be ready. I know you're thinking well you went to a bunch of pubs, but the the thing is we only had half pints and we only had four of those and two glasses of whiskey. This was over the course of 5pm to 12am. Furthermore, Ben and I are now acquainted with German beer. Irish beer in comparison is nowhere near as potent. In short Ben and I were completely fine when we got to the hostel, just tired. Nonetheless it happened and it blew. We had to get the next flight which was pricey and for some reason Ben's card wasn't working nor his phone. Had I not been there, Ben would still be in Ireland.

So yea, Ireland itself was an amazing trip. Just the traveling thing wasn't that great. Whatever, supposedly everything happens for a reason....

Making Mooooovies!

So I'm going to back track a little bit and recount status update on my film...

I had just gotten back from an epic 21st Birthday Celebration Galore in Munich, Germany when I finally got a solid response from one of my contacts. I was finally going to make a movie. One problem. She calls me on Monday the 28th telling me that that upcoming weekend may in fact be the only week she will be painting till Spring. Luckily I have no plans so I agree, realizing this may in fact be my only chance to get footage. However, this week was one of the longest weeks we had at the AIB. I was getting up at 7am and not getting home till about 11pm. Incredibly long school days, mixed with a trip to Aachen and Masstricht. On top of that we had an editing project to do for school.

Basically, that entire week I was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off trying to prepare for the weekend ahead. Come Friday, the day I leave for Berlin, I'm completely exhausted, unprepared, and unorganized for this trip. Yet, somehow I had unbelievable luck. One of the student workers agreed to come along with me, because she wanted the experience and liked my project. If it wasn't for her, I don't know what I would of done. She was able to keep the project running smoothly.

At any rate we make it to East Berlin where the artist lives. It was pretty sweet being in East Berlin because it just so happened to be the 20th anniversary of the signing of the reunification Germany. The city felt so incredibly alive. I was in awe of the surroundings for everywhere I looked was covered in some form of street art. We finally manage to get to the artists house, a bit behind schedule. The second we walked in the door she asks us "Where's the beer?" So we drop off our stuff go grab a few pints come back and stay up talking, watching movies, and enjoying a few pints.

I managed to grab some solid interviews the next day and some pretty sweet shots of her painting.

The next few shooting days were insanely hectic, however I was able to get some really good footage. Although, I'm not entirely satisfied with what I currently have.

At any rate the last day I went to this really sweet bar and made friends with the bartender as the place was closing. Turns out this guy is a graffiti artist and would be doing a joint piece with his friends the next week our group went there. Also, he may be doing it on a piece of the Berlin wall. I was freaking excited. So all in all hectic, but fairly good week.

The Pitch!

On the 26th of October we all had to pitch our ideas to a bunch of composers from Musicube. Hopefully by the end of the day we were all to have a composer or at least a step closer to having composer to truly get our film in the works. Sadly, we arrived at AIB early in the morning only to hear about the passing of a good friend back home. Needless to say it was a long and hard day. However, we all did manage to give our pitches, and in my opinion every single one of us did a damn good job. Everyone has really good and really interesting ideas, I'm looking forward to every single one of their films.

My pitch was interesting, I had no idea what I was going to say save "I'm going to keep this short..." It ended up being pretty decent although, my story became a lot more philosophical (for obvious reasons) Luckily after my pitch I had a few composers interested in my idea, and am now working with Sebastian Werrmeyer who is just as passionate as I am about my project.

Anyways, my heart goes out to all of you back at LMU, especially those men of principle who lost a great brother...