Meredith and I, together again, in the Czech Republic

Before leaving Europe, I had to see my girlfriend again. I had to show her Prague. I had to take her around the continent that had more or less defined me for almost a year. She was, after all, the one who talked me into going abroad in the first place.

I've already gone over her arrival, with Chandler, Bex, and Jessie in Prague. After they all left, Meredith and I had a few adventures on our own. Given her Jewish ancestry, she was about as interested as a person could be in Prague's famous Jewish quarter, Josefov. It dates back to the 1200s, with the oldest still-used synagogue in Europe. We went through a few of the synagogues (I believe there are seven) in the area, which has been set up as a museum of Jewish history. The most incredible thing in there is either the Terezin Holocaust memorial in the Pinkas synagogue, or the Jewish cemetery outside, seven layers deep.


Another spot we went to was the town of Česky Krumlov, in South Bohemia. Not far from my adopted home of Pisek, this enchanting little place is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage sites. The downtown area is like being transported into a fairy tale, with the beautiful castle towering over the city.


Krumlov has a personality on its own, and while it's been used in films before, it hasn't really been portrayed or promoted as the hideaway it really felt like. The castle, guarded by its bears, has a nice tower, plenty of galleries (we saw some interesting artwork in that place), an old restored Baroque theater (complete with original-era sound effects machines and sets, and a prima donna tour guide speaking brilliantly broken English... highly recommended), a revolving outdoor theater, a huge garden, and a lake.

Do not feed the bears.

The food there was delicious and varied. Meredith's a vegetarian, which isn't exactly in a normal Czech diet. But they had a vegetarian restaurant there!

One night we went pub crawling. This place has some fantastic places to drink. Whether it's the creepily-styled Horor Bar (not anything particularly amazing other than the design), the absinthe-themed Van Gogh Cafe (stylistically, my favorite), the ancient U Baby (truly Czech), or the glorious Gorila Bar, where we played Foosball with a guy who barely spoke any English at all. He won.


Before leaving Krumlov, we decided that we had to take a canoe down the Vltava (aka Moldau) river, which also flows through Prague. Despite being an eagle scout, I have never been on a canoe before in my life. Meredith seemed to recall quite a bit from her youth, and thus we set out down the river one morning.

It's a lovely river, out in the middle of the Czech countryside. The woods and hills are great, and there are a few stops you can make to get refreshments if you wish. There are a few rocks, but no serious rapids on the route that we went on. I think our ride was supposed to last 3 hours, and it more or less did. About 2 hours and 15 minutes in, we turned the canoe to avoid a rapid, not noticing the rock. It hit the broad side of the boat, which led to it turning and filling up.

This was not the type of canoe most people use, where you can just pick it up and the water flows out. This was one that fills up and starts to sink, because it's built so strong that it won't normally tip. Thus I entered a state of inexplicable panic, freaking out over sinking in probably 3 feet of water. That said, I looked like a cat taking a bath. I hated it and wanted out.

Unfortunately, there was nothing around that area that we could simply drag the boat over and try to empty it properly. Meredith ended up getting nettled like crazy. A few kids from Arizona who were also canoeing pulled over to help us, and if they hadn't done it I never would have left my state of panic.

Fifteen minutes down the river, we reached the end of our path and the agency picked us up and took us back downtown.

Shortly after, I left Pisek for good. I miss it like crazy.

In the next blog, I'll tell about my adventures with Meredith before we left the continent. We ended up two countries away.

If you haven't yet, watch my movie.

Work from Film School

While in the Czech Republic, I did plenty of work on a couple of projects. We made a music video, which I haven't posted online yet, several photography exercises, and in the second semester, I wrote, cast, and shot a short film.

One of my instructors, Antonio Riestra, did several photography exercises dealing with objects in light. I compiled one of our studio exercises into a video, with some music. I really like the way the photos look this way, semi-animated.

Studio Lighting Exercise - FAMO IFS 2008 from Coleman Richardson on Vimeo.

The main undertaking I had at FAMO was my main film project, A Dinner Party. This took quite a while, and with the way it ended up coming together, it conflicted with a lot of my end-of-school visits.

I wrote a short treatment in December, outlining my basic plot and premise. While I traveled around, I made a few notes. When I returned in early February, I wrote the first version of the script. After showing it to Otakar Fuka, one of the main instructors, I revised it. I showed it to Jeremy Willis, the scriptwriting instructor, and revised it again based on his notes.

After a bit of revisions, I got a production manager, Martin "Saphyr" Rubin, and a cinematographer, Klara Fantova. Klara and I especially discussed how the project would be shot.

Finding English speaking actors in a very non-English oriented country is not easy, to say the least. I interviewed a few candidates (mostly for the female role, Victoria), and found a few people interested. Iain, a good friend from the school and a technical advisor for the project, volunteered his help to play the role of Martin. Daniel Munter, Jeremy's nephew and a good friend, played the role of Tom.

Finding a location was the biggest challenge. Saphyr and I went all over Pisek and Prague looking for possible spots. We eventually found one in Pisek, a bit on the outskirts of town. It was small but easy to shape to our needs. We rented a dolly, which was amazing.

We shot it all in one weekend. We had originally planned for two days, and ended up shooting for three. Other than that, things went fairly smooth. The postproduction process took longer than usual, but now, it's done.

So, without further ado, A Dinner Party:

A Dinner Party from Coleman Richardson on Vimeo.

Friends in Europe, Part 2...

I still can't tell you how many friends I made while I was in Europe from various countries, including the United States. I made a ton.

But it's always nice to see old friends, especially when you've been cut off from them for almost a year.

I was lucky enough to see my father, brother, uncle, aunt, and cousins while I was over there. It meant the world to me then. But it was as amazing to see a couple of my old Charleston friends in Prague as well.

West Virginia State University, my alma mater, does a trip every year through the Communications Department to Prague. They do the usual stuff in Prague, but they were able to explore a good bit on their own. One of my best friends, Devon, came on that trip this year. I showed him what I knew of Prague, which (at this point) is a lot.

I took him to the usual spots: Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, Charles Square, and Kutna Hora. He saw the castle and the Jewish section on his own. I tried to take him to other places beyond the usual stuff. We went out to Holosevice, Vinohrady/Žižkov, and even Andĕl. I must have cut his food budget in half. Prague has plenty of good and affordable food, but you have to get out of the main crowds to find it.

During the time Devon was in Prague, a guy named Steve from Southern California made friends with us at the place I was staying. He ended up being a pretty good part of the group, just a random traveler making his way around the continent. I took them to Žižkov and Vyšehrad, which is the other (older) castle area in Prague. It's essentially a really beautiful park nowadays.

We walked back to town from Vyšehrad after seeing a topless woman eating a banana (I couldn't make that up if I tried, it's Europe) and while we were walking along the river, a Czech man got our attention and somehow got Steve to pick up his net. We watched Steve and this random guy catch a huge fish out of the Vltava (aka Moldau) River. It was borderline magical.

After that weekend, I stayed in Prague through Monday and picked up two other great friends from the airport. Devon joined me, since he was leaving a few days later and knew these two quite well. The ride to the airport through public transportation is not too difficult, but it's kind of out there. But it was totally worth it to see Meredith again.

I've been dating Meredith since New Years of 2002. It's been a fairly defining relationship, and we've been able to maintain it by having fully independent lives of one another while still being a close couple. My time in Europe was the biggest burden for our relationship, and it was anything but easy for both of us. Seeing her again after missing so much (anniversary, graduation, etc) was amazing.

To top this off, my good friend Chandler arrived after a week in Dublin. He's a really close friend, and we've been around a bit of the Eastern US together, as well as Costa Rica. It just isn't travel without Chandler. He was around for a little over a week, and she came home with me.

Chandler and Devon hung out with Steve in Prague, and Meredith and I headed back to Pisek (that was, in and of itself, an adventure worth writing about, but I don't feel like divulging in that right now). Chandler met us in Pisek the next day.

One of the nice things about Pisek was being able to walk across the street to get food or drink usually. The grocery store and the bus station were bigger excursions than anything else. Meredith and Chandler hung out at the apartment a good portion of the daytime while I was working on what I could work on with my film, and we were able to head out in the evening. There are several really good places to eat there, so I tried to give them a taste of Pisek. They seemed to really enjoy it.

Two of the Kiwi girls that hung out with Dad and me on our tour in January, Bex and Jessie, had made arrangements to come to Prague for a weekend. It just so happened to be the weekend when Chandler and Meredith were in. It also happened to be when Don Giovanni was playing at the Estates Theater, which is where Mozart himself debuted it. Things worked out quite well for that weekend.

I got opera tickets and an apartment in Mala Strana for all of us for the weekend. The opera tickets were about 250 Kc each, I believe, which is about $12.50. Splitting the apartment between the five of us made it out to about $20 or $30 a night, which was wonderful. The Kiwis live in London, so I think they were pretty surprised at how cost-effective Prague was.

We stopped by the John Lennon wall on our way out on Friday. I took them to a good diner near Narodni for dinner, and we had dessert at the Cafe Louvre, an old hangout of Kafka and Einstein. It has the best hot chocolate in the universe. We went over to the Chapeau Rouge, a three-floored bar and club with a strange but cool local band playing. The evening as a whole was pretty epic.

On Saturday, we went through Wenceslas Square, where they did a bit of shopping. We went to a matinee of the opera, which was quite spectacular. If the place looks familiar, it's probably because of the movie Amadeus, which was shot in Prague.

I took them to the Žižkov area that night. Fun was had by all.

On Sunday, we hit up the castle. Meredith decided to scare the crap out of me and re-enact the St. George slaying the dragon statue nearby.

Meredith and I went to the toy museum there, while the others explored the main grounds a good bit. We met up a few minutes later, and found a birds of prey exhibition going on. For a 100 Kc donation (about $5), you could hold a bird.

Chandler and the owl got along quite well.

The one who really liked it was Meredith. She held an owl and a falcon hybrid. I tried my luck with the falcon, which scared me to death.

I shouldn't go into falconry, that's for sure.

I took them to the singing fountain, where we got this amazing picture:

This was one of the best weekends I had over there. After the castle, we went around a few different places separately. Prague's such a fun place, it's hard to fit it all into one weekend. But we crammed into it what we could.

A few more blog entries left here before I'm done exploring the Czech Republic. And in what I'm hoping to be the next two weeks, the online premiere of A Dinner Party.