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.

A few quick shots...

Just to let folks know...

My project, A Dinner Party, is almost complete. Here are a few images for you.

More to follow soon...

Friends in Europe... Part One

I've been back for well over a month, but I'm just now getting around to posting a bit here. My next few posts will be about the people I've met while being over in Europe.

Riccardo, Vefik, Eirik, and myself

At the Film Academy of Miroslav Ondricek in Pisek, I was enrolled in an International Film Studies program. I was the only student from the United States. There was supposed to be another from West Virginia State University, but circumstances changed shortly after I got there. My roommate, Vefik, was from Turkey. Above us was Eirik, originally from Norway but living in Denmark. Also in the program was Riccardo, born in Italy but spent most of his life in Germany. To top things off, we had George, from the country of Georgia.

It was an eclectic group, but we all generally got along. Also, of course, there was Iain and Anna.

On the tour I did with Dad, I met several people. Most were from New Zealand, but there were a few from Australia as well. Lots of fantastic accents. Dad practically adopted some of them. A group of Kiwis (people from New Zealand) bought him a Swiss Army Knife on his birthday. Several of us went to the top of Europe together.

I can't even tell you how many people I met in hostels. There are too many stories to list from that kind of a place. I didn't run into too many Americans, but several Canadians.

Also, I really can't write about this without mentioning some of my instructors over there. Namely, Jeremy Willis (and his wife, Dale, and their nephew Daniel) and Antonio Riestra. They were great.

Family Visits in Europe

I'll eventually have an entry about friends visiting me, and an entry about A Dinner Party, my project (I'll wait until we're closer to finished), but first I figured I should write about my family coming to visit me out here.

My uncle Craig Underwood, whose blog you should definitely check out (www.collaborationevangelist.com), brought his wife Patty and kids, Jordan and Myles, out here for a week. I had some things I had to take care of during the week, but I did get to see them quite a bit while they were here.

The first place I showed them was Old Town Square, which is absolutely overwhelming for your mind if you've never been. I've been there a thousand times at this point, but I think they were taking it all in pretty well. The old buildings are beautiful and spectacular, and it sometimes feel like you've been transported back in time, unless there's a big modern fair going on in the middle of it with obnoxiously loud music. The prices are as high there as anywhere else, but it's one of my favorite places to take a stroll, depending on the crowds. I'll never forget the first time Vefik and I stepped in there.

They seemed to be enjoying themselves.

We did the usual stuff. I showed them as much as I could. We went to the castle. I showed them Mala Strana, the most beautiful part of the city. We went to the John Lennon Wall. I went back to Pisek. They went to the Jewish quarter, and a few other places. They visited me, and then I went with them later on in the week to the zoo, which is incredible.

That's right, they let you hang out with the lemurs.

I thoroughly enjoyed Zoo Praha. I have to go back at some point. I haven't been to a zoo since Meredith and I went to Cincinatti a few years back. This is a huge place, with a random but good selection of animals.

I took Craig around the city a bit in the evenings. We hunted for statues by David Cerny (look him up if you haven't heard of him... he's absolutely insane) one night. We went to several shops around the city. Unfortunately, I couldn't talk him out of this:

But yeah, the Underwood visit was a good lesson in time management. And it was the first time in months that I was talking to someone I knew before I got here. AND it was my first opportunity to show off a city. Twas wondrous.

A week or so after that, my father and brother arrived. I was busy shooting during the first weekend, but they took on Prague without me. They stopped in Pisek and saw me, hopped down to Bratislava, then Vienna, and finally returned to Prague, where I met up with them again. I took them to the castle, Kutna Hora, Vysehrad, and Zizkov. They really loved it, from what I can tell.

Can't you see the excitement?

They got a pretty good sense of what a strange place the Czech Republic can be. Prague has such a macabre history of martyrs, wars, and the plague, but it's somehow an insanely charming city.

Kutna Hora's especially memorable for these guys. It's an hour away from Prague, so it's more of a genuine Czech town. And surrounding yourself with bones and not being terrified is an indescribable feeling.

See? No terror here.

It's weird to spend so much time in the company of strangers and then suddenly end up knowing a city well enough to navigate it, and then showing people you've known your whole life what it's like. It's like when you have different groups of friends that you hang out with but not all at once. When they converge it feels like worlds are colliding. That's kind of what it felt like. Not bad, just surreal.

When Dad and Chris left, I walked back to the bus station from Vysehrad. A lot of the Prague public transportation was down for a few hours because of the Prague marathon, which I walked right into several times.

Twas interesting.

Why do I never update this anymore?

I've been as busy as ever lately, trying to sort out school stuff, shoot my project, and greet visitors with a smile. My father and brother are in the region right now (in Vienna at this very moment), and my uncle Craig and his family were here a few weeks back. My project, A Dinner Party, is now in postproduction, and I've got a horde of visitors in the coming weeks.

Regardless, I did do a bit of travel in the last few months within the Czech Republic, and I haven't posted anything about these places. Some of the stuff's been in and around Prague, and other stuff's been a bit further.

Around Prague, a few weeks back, I was able to go to a party for the Czech TV station called Nova. It had students from schools all around the Czech Republic. Free food and drinks, plenty of people, and a spectacular location for a party: right on the Charles Bridge.

I had some time that weekend, so I decided to go to a place I'd heard about for months, but never dared to go before: Kutna Hora.

This is the legendary bone ossuary where they turned a pile of plague and war bones into art. There's nothing like it anywhere else, and it's a little bit creepy and a little bit funny. If you're ever in the area, it's one of those things you mostly have to see to believe.

They say that the chandelier holds every bone in the human body. I'm willing to take their word for it.

Best. Signature. Ever.

I was able to befriend two nice Australians who were doing their own tour of Europe before entering the real world while I was there. By the time we were out of the ossuary, we had all decided that the only word for that place is "bizarre."

The following week, the Czech film Normal premiered in Prague at the Lucerna theater. My Cinematography instructor, Antonio Riestra, was the Director of Photography for the film, and he got Eirik and me into the premiere. It's a pretty disturbing storyline about a serial killer in Dusseldorf, but it's a pretty solid film. And the premiere was quite spectacular.

Shortly after that excursion, I went off to Moravia with Iain and Anna, two friends I have from Pisek, who live there. Iain's from Canada and Anna's Czech. They showed me the glorious eastern side of this place. It's beautiful. There's a different feel to Moravia than Bohemia... it's just a more relaxed area.

While we were there, we went to Olomouc.

Olomouc is a very old city, famous for its bizarre statues involving dolphin love:

Couldn't explain this if I tried.

It also has an astronomical clock, sort of like Prague. This one's a bit different:

I prefer Prague's, but this one doesn't have thousands of people gawking in front of it while ignoring the pickpockets in the crowd, so I guess they're even.

Olomouc is quite beautiful, but this was right before Spring really hit us, so it was raining like crazy for a while that day. Iain and Anna suggested that we go to the local mall, which provided hours of entertainment with bizarre Czech advertisements, ice cream, and a giant chocolate egg that we adopted.

I was kind of taken with this egg. It was 60 Kc, which is about $3. We split it between the three of us, and took care of it like it was our own. On the train back to the area where Anna's from, we took several photos of myself and the egg, which disturbed the other passengers on the train. We recently started eating it, but it didn't endure the heat of the last few weeks very well.

Graffiti in Europe

I've been telling myself that I'd write this blog entry for months, but I've finally started. My apologies for the delay... I've had the idea in mind for quite some time. This isn't so much about a specific trip in my adventure as much as it is about observations about graffiti.

In the US, graffiti is usually considered a bad thing. It's vandalism, it's rebellion, and it's completely inappropriate in most settings. There are places where it's expected (skate parks), but for the most part it's pretty offensive. When I cross a state line and see graffiti (I'm looking at you, New Jersey), I can't say I feel very welcome.

While the attitude here isn't exactly pro-graffiti, it's more common and acceptable. I've seen all sorts of graffiti, no matter what city. Sometimes it's playful, and sometimes it's serious. We'll start with the playful.

These are both in Pisek, the city I spend most of my time in. The monster eye is on a walkway. It's not really graffiti, but I love it. The other one is definitely graffiti, but I couldn't tell you what it means. It really enhances the location, though.

In Vienna, I saw this. It was next to a children's playground. No thoughts on this either.

While I was doing my travel throughout this continent (late December, early January), Israel had launched a military campaign on the Gaza strip. Over 1,000 people died, mostly Palestinians. Several nonmilitary targets were destroyed. While I understand the need for self-defense, I don't think it's offensive to say it's a bit extreme. It was met with a great amount of protest on this side of the world.

This was in Barcelona, slightly more than a week into the conflict. A few weeks later, in Venice, I saw this:

Free Palestine, Free Israel.

I think that sums up the problem of conflicts like this. Both sides are stuck in this conflict and it's oppressing them both.

But it's not just international situations that had topical graffiti. Shortly before I went to Athens, the police had shot a fifteen year old boy. The reaction was extreme, resulting in violent protests and the destruction of numerous structures. It went beyond Athens, and affected the entirety of Greece. When I arrived, most of it had ceased but unrest was really strong. I got to see the aftermath.

This is in downtown Athens, Greece.

I think this piece of graffiti summed up what people felt like in late December:

I think nonviolence is an admiral protest quality. If you want something changed, it should be done passively. Anger and violence tend to be the reason people want things to be different anyways.

One of the best examples of nonviolent protest was in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. The fall of communism here resulted from the Velvet Revolution, a series of protests that essentially reformed the oppressive system without any need for violence. It's one of the most civil government reforms I've ever heard of, and it shows the potential for progress without bloodshed.

A great symbol of the nonviolent protest was the John Lennon wall of Prague, which started in 1988. It was painted over, but it just kept getting more graffiti anyways. It's very ideological, and it's been commercialized a bit these days (there's a John & George restaurant nearby with ridiculously high prices for Prague), but you have to admire the beauty of the place.

When Obama was here (yes, I went), he spoke about nuclear disarmament. If it can be done, it would be awesome. That doesn't mean it's easy. Philosophically speaking, I try to define myself as a pacifist, or at least someone who tries to pursue pacifism. While I know most people would say it's a dream, I'll justify it with a quote from the president in that speech: "When we fail to pursue peace, then it stays forever beyond our grasp." If we're not looking to stop war, how will it ever end?