Halloween in Prague!
Created by Brendan Gates (Washington University-St. Louis)
CET Film Production in Prague, Fall 2012
Check out this latest installment in the video blog from current CET Film Production in Prague student Brendan Gates! In this video students take part in some Halloween festivities and get hit by some early snow flurries.
Students Take On The FAMU Lighting Challenge
Created by Brendan Gates (Washington University-St. Louis)
CET Film Production in Prague, Fall 2012
Check out the latest addition to the video blog from current CET Film Production in Prague student Brendan Gates! In this video students pick up some useful skills as they participate in a lighting exercise at FAMU.
Why Not to Practice your Czech Language Skills Pre-fluency
Written by Rebecca Kulik (Grinnell College)
Central European Studies in Prague, Student Correspondent, Fall 2012
I have learned a new phrase, all by myself! I was taught the word for “English” in Czech class, and the fact that the word “knihy” is on every bookshop I pass has finally tipped me off as to its meaning.
As a reading fiend, I have already begun to worry about the stock of books I brought along with me. Thus I am immensely proud that I have learned to ask bookstore clerks for “Anglizky knihy.”
I walk into a used bookstore, an “Antikknihy,” and use my new phrase.
What follows is an utterly incomprehensible string of Czech, along with a vague gesture in the direction of all the books.
Sometimes, I admit, I have a certain amount of difficulty learning from experience. Thus, it takes two or three more attempts to use my new phrase before I realize that no one is going to speak to me in English if I speak to them in Czech, whether I’ve asked for English books or not.
This same principle I have found, through painful trial and error, applies to requests for directions, for change, for the location of food in a grocery, and even when I need to be buzzed in to a building.
These utterly humiliating experiences have, however, led me to an interesting revelation about perception.
I walk into a store with olive skin and brown hair, and if I speak Czech I am assumed to be Czech. I have to make clear by my confusion that the clerk’s perception of me is wrong. If I walk into a store and speak English, I am caught in the permanent perception of being an American tourist.
I’m lucky in that I get to choose which of these perceptions I want for myself, in full knowledge of the attendant consequences.
Secondly, I have discovered a flaw in my own perceptions of myself and the world around me. It’s all well and good to learn a language before going to a country, to study the culture and society, but in the real world there are no points for effort.
There is no one to impress with my burgeoning Czech language skills except myself. Most people do not care if I am learning Czech, and do not care how much Czech I have proudly learned. They care about whether I understand what they are trying to tell me. And if I have a first grader’s vocabulary and cannot understand a word they say, they are not going to like me anymore than if I had opened the conversation in English.
Thus, I have concluded that there is only one, all-important phrase to learn before departure to any destination: “I Don’t Understand ? English?”
Ajoy Praha!
Written by Sam Bender (Brandeis University)
CET Film Production in Prague, Fall 2012.
I’ve got some initial observations about my trip. First, nobody uses leashes for their dogs. They run around the street, parks, and anywhere you could imagine and their owners are always chatting or reading as their dog runs amok. In bars, they wander around the seats looking for attention from anyone who will give it to them. Second, Czechs say Ahoj (pronounced ahoy) as an informal greeting, so when you run across people meeting up it sounds like a gathering of old-timey sailors. Third, people smoke cigarettes like it’s going out of style. They smoke in parks, restaurants, movie theaters, and just about anywhere that people gather. I’m not sure how to feel about it, I don’t smoke but all my clothes are starting to smell like cigarettes. And yet stumbling into a café where the patrons are masked in fog has a certain appeal to me. We’ll see how I feel about it after a few months.
The city itself is incredible, full of nooks and back alleys full of stores and interesting sights. All the film students took a trip to a park on top of a hill near our place and you could see a panoramic view of the entire city, we watched as the sun set and might as well have been a painting. Walking along the streets feels like looking back at what people have seen in the same city for hundreds of years, since so much architecture has been preserved.
So far the school sounds incredibly intense , which makes me even more excited to start going to class. We talked a little about the process, which involves numerous pitches and workshops designed around how to use actual film and general high level production equipment. I can’t wait.
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