Timisoara~~ <3
I must admit that when Agata, a friend from univercity, told me about a new-media course somwhere in Romania, I wasn't very enthusiastic about it. My first thoughts were „New-media? Learning to operate a camera? Geez, I'm not a bloody journalist, why do I need that?” and „Romania? This third world place with dark skin Gypsies just waiting around every corner to steal your wallet? No thank you”, „People from other coutries? I haven't spoken a singular word in English for ages! I'll just make a fool of myself!” and last but not least „In a week time?? How do they imagine that? Where am I supposed to get money for that course, that sounds like a drugery at the beginning of holiday??” and such. Fortunately Agata didn't give up on me and few days later my sister, us and a newly met friend Radek went for a short meeting before journey, and we were told and shown what it was all about. Few hours later we were holding tickets for 4 (yup, four) trains, our route leading from Lublin through Warsaw, Budapest and Arad to Timisoara, lasting overall 24 hours. It was just too late to book plane tickets. Despite heat, double reservations on the same seats with some girls and one train going so slow that we were late and had to wait for 2 hours for a next one, it was a very quiet journey. ;P In Timisoara's railway station there was a taxi driver waiting for us with a Y4M sign, so we knew where to head to, and got to our destination point.
We were warmly welcomed by Radu, our host and organizer, and lead to our rooms. At the beginning the were little problems with accomodation and broken air condition (I bet you could have made scrambled eggs on a pillow!) but they were solved right away. Then a short meeting was hold so that everybody could say a few words about oneself and then we went out to have a beer (or gin with tonic. Remember to never order anything of unknown price :P) and get to know each other better. Everyday we started with breakfast, worked from 10a.m. to 4p.m. with a short break for lunch and after that we had some free time. It was rather organized one, but still spent with pleasure. :) As begginers our Polish team was split and attached to In my group there was already Paulina from Germany, Adriana from Romania, Sinan from Turkey, and our tutor was Korby from Germany. After a short reviosion of how to work with camera to not break it we were given a task to make a short clip containing some of Timisoara's famous places. The brainstorm started and after few hours we had more or less clear image of our movie telling a story of a student (played by Sinan) kicked out of uni and planting a bomb in revenge and a clumsy but still brave Timisoara hero - T-Girl (Adriana! So cute! :D) - trying to defeat him. Getting all ideas together and removing some of them from screenplay took us 2 days (sometimes it was hard for me to remain calm where some highly illogical things occured in script, even though it was all 'for fun' xP) and we were ready to shoot. Obviously meanwhile many things changed, some new scenes were added and some were cut, we visited at least half of Timisoara, Squares, Rose Garden, University (or two due to our taxi's driver mistake), campus, and so on. We had lots of fun watching Adriana and Sinan making angry faces and trying so hard to not let themselves laugh while fnal battle. Everyone had to take part in it, so everyone became actors (even if only for a few seconds), directed and bossed around. :) As I had something to do with cameras and editing at school already, I'd prefered to leave acting to others, I feel more comfortable at the other side of a camera. Editing itself turned out to not be that easy as I had thought it would be. Being used to Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effect I just couldn't learn Avid program and had the sames problems, over and over, with just two keys on a keyboard. Clicking them in different order was givin different results all the time and it was driving me crazy. I still think Avid is less intuitive from Premiere and doesn't have many usefull tools but I didn't really have much choice. In the meantime I recorded voice over with some help from Adriana, Sinan played music from famous movies so we could add it later, then we wrote some short desritpions and end credits, at that was it! Our move was ready! But it was just too painfull watching Korby cut some really cool and funny scenes, that were explaining the whole situation, or the final battle, it's just too short now and doesn't give the full comedy effect I wanted. *sigh* If I had the raw material I could make the 'directors verioson' ;P but it was over 8 giga of material.
The second group made a vampire (Romania! Rawrr!) movie, and by a total accident their main character is named Bella. XD Starring Agnieszka as Bella, Anand (the tutor from Germany) as her brother, Agata as their mother, and the rest behind camera: Oana (Romania, voice over), Ellie and Jeremy (England).
Module B group was more about engaging more media than just one, creating a movie or making an interview and writing an article/blog. At least that's how I understood it. First it was angel-faced Helena to help them and then Casy to teach secon part of Module B. This was the biggest group, containing of Tom, Josh (England), Emrah, Kaan (Turkey), Larisa and Madalina (Romania). Phew!
Everyone did great job, even though at the very end Helena told us it hadn't exactly turned out as it was supposed to, but still, we had tons of fun doing it. ;)
Talking about fun, every evening was a different event. One day eating at a restaurant and toasting with Romanian palinka all the evening, to go later for a 4 days ongoing Beer Festival with a concert of a heavy metal band Cargo and trying to convince the taxi driver to take 5 ppl inside instead of regular 4, oh, and listening to Korby's story of Tom smashing his camera was just epic (who? how? whaaaat?), next day watching first game: Germany-Argentina and eating at Iulius Mall, huuuuge shopping centre (it's like a labirynth and really easy to get lost inside) and staying out drinking and talking till almost morning hours (what was actually repeating every nigh). On Sunday there was president election in Poland and at first we'd been thinking about getting to Budapest or Bukarest to vote, but in the end we stayed with the rest. Somehow another 5h of traveling one way wasn't that tempting, when you think about the Hell that I'm sure is located just beneath first layer of Romania's ground giving all the heat out. So we did some sightseeing around Timisoara, treated ourselves with icecreams and had pizza later. Ever tried pizza with lemon? I didn't dare to touch it. xP Oh, and that day I got a super nice compliment from Radu's friend who said that hadn't he known I'm Polish he'd think I'm from England, what boosted my morale hii~~gh. :B There was another famous musicians playing on Timisoara's Union Square, but we visited again London Bridge pub, a small place that was emplty almost all the time. I'm surprised that the guy working there didn't show us the door the second and third time we were there. Huh. But maybe he just needed to make any money, considering his very low salary for 16h shift. That was a very nice evening, just as next ones. Gonna keep 'em in mind. :) We also had one a really free evening, that was full of hazard games and that night Sinan and Emrah decided to give us a concert on their traditional instruments they brought from Turkey. It was something amazing and unforgettable, you could just feel the emotions coming from the music and showing on our musicians faces. I foresee a great future for those two. :) Nexd day, I guess it was Tuesday already, we went to Camelot. But no, not the castle, but a stylized restaurant, where they were to give us some traditional Romanian food. I don't know how bananas are traditional, but we had to eat with our bare hands with a little helpf of knives. Even though I liked the idea the food didn't meet my taste, too much meat and lard, but again, I had great company to chat with. :)) Later that evening we decided to find some place to have a drink but as everything on campus was full we ended up in London Bridge again. :) Oh, and that was the-police-day! First we had no tickets for bus to get to Camelot (and police helps to catch all folks as us) and then we were stopped for devastating some small architecture pieces, which we were not and eventually we were free to go. The last day was a presentation day, all the movies and articles were shown and discussed and in the evening we went to see semifinals between Germany and Spain. We had some wine, little bit of gambling, I decided to get familiar with a pro photo camera :P and even the loss of German team didn't spoil our good mood. It was the last night and we decided to paint the city red! We made a round through local clubs and pubs (visit in that salsa club was traumatic, hahah, three dancing pairs per meter squared, elbows and feet everywhere, but somehow I got out of there without having a black eye).. We got back from a rock pub early in the morning and decided to stay awake to say goodbye to those,who had to leave for airport at 4a.m. And it was almost over, I had a short nap and got up 3 hours later, packed my stuff and hugged for goodbye those who managed to wake up and that was it. We were driven back to railway station and got on a train to Arad. Now the drama starts. We were waiting for the train to Budapest, it was almost the time of departure but still the train was somewhere in Romania. We were told that our train is an hour late, what gave us only few minutes in Budapest to get all the luggage, find the right platform and get to train to Poland. If it didn't work out our second option was visiting local pubs till 5a.m., when a new train would have come. But we had no reseravtions for any other train, so we just prayed the train hurried up. And now imagine our surprise an hour before getting to Budapest when I started to flick through the tickets to be prepared (only few minutes to find the right platform and wagon-lit, remember!) and have the reservation on top, and finding out we don't have the reservation anymore. It took us 20 minutes to figure it out, how was that actually possible. The Polish conductor from the previous wagon-lit must have taken it with him (all reservation to and from for 4 people were on one blank) and didn't give it back. The tension was getting bigger, everybody calling parents and friends to find someone helpful in such situation, but in the end we just decided to prove that we are us. Luckily we noticed the right train when we were stopping, we had only 3 minutes left so we hurried out, got to the conductor panting and trying to get breath and explain the whole situation. We were fortunate enough that the guy was really really nice, said his company would be of any help, and he would try to take care of everything with conductors of other countries. We lost the money but at least had a peaceful night. Getting back from Warsaw to Lublin was just a formality. ;P
My stay in Romania definitely rearranged my thinking about this country, sometimes it seems more European than Poland. Maybe except for inner pirate drivers hidden in everyone who has a car there. Strating and stoping with screech of tires as well as overtaking especially in dangerous situations is a must. The prices are more or less the same as in Poland, their currency is LEI, which is like 1PLN=almost 1LEI. What is cheap? Beer (3, 4 Lei per can!) and taxis! That was the biggest surprise, sometimes it's just cheaper to get a cab instead of crowding together in a bus. A ride from centre to our hostel (40 min of foot) was like 6-7Lei! It's like almost for free! Oh, I've also mentioned the policeman in a bus. On first bust stop there is a policeman coming on, then on a next bust stop someone who checkes the tickets. The police guy is supposed to help him with fare-dodgers, but I've no idea how is it supposed to work, if everyone can just get out on the stop where the police guy steps in, just like we did. The controller on a next stop won't have anyone to controll, so what's the point of 'warning' the passengers? Well, curiosity.
Ehh.. I made some good friends out there, and parting was a very sad moment. Thank gods someone created facebook. :P But still, the guys I already miss the most are Tom and Anand, these two were just born to be loved. <3 ;) Then it's Korby, Emrah, Paula, Kaan, Sinan, Adriana... ehh.. and all the rest... and my fan from Barcelona, that didn't survive... xD;;
Since I liked it so much I decided to try and get on another course, that will take place somewhen between October and November, Helsinki or Sheffield. We made some promise with Anand and have to keep it. :B But it'll be harder this time, as the course will be some kind of a 'prize' for 4 most comitted to fundation's project people. Knowing my next years' tight schedule for school I'm a bit afraid of that, but we will see what happens. As for now I'm still waiting for our posters to be shown in Lublin, it was supposed to be done at the begining of June, but till now - nothing has been done. And I need it for Marschall scholarship from Lublin city. >.<
And for those patient ones, who got to the end, the final movies! Enjoy :P All the photos are on facebook, there are too many post them here as well. 01 , 02.
T-Girl by Module A 1st group
Click to viewNext Victim by Module A 2nd group
Lovin Timisoara by Tom from Module B
Interview with Radu by Emrah from Module B
And some short interviews with some people bout the course, and you can see and hear some music played by Sinan and Emrah. :)
AND the module B short articles about Timisoara :) click Y4M!