...go on, ask me what I did today.
Jun. 11th, 2005 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoy"What did you do today, Harry?"
Today I threw three people out a window while shouting in mangled German.
I should probably explain that, but I think I'll let you people just wonder for now, and give the explanation tomorrow.
...nah, I'll tell you now.
"What did you do today, Harry?"
I helped Mickey with his history project - namely, a video reenactment of the Second Defenestration of Prague.
So yes, Kevin, DK, and I actually did throw Pavel, John Deyrup, and Mickey out the window of Mickey's kitchen. (It's not really right before where I said I threw three people out a window - clearly I'm nowhere near strong enough to do so myself. I just helped a bit.)
Why the shouting? Mickey's script called for the mob[0] to chant "Defenestrate, defenestrate!" as they did so.
Why in German? Well, somewhere along the way it was decided that, since these people actually spoke German, not English, why not actually do it in German? And so (this was all several days before) Mickey got his friend Erica to translate[3] it into German. Of course, none of us, the actors, knew any German, but that doesn't really matter, does it? (As for the audience not speaking German, Mickey's going to subtitle it.)
Why mangled? That should be obvious. (And that line would be especially mangled. Erica hadn't translated it, possibly because she expected us to do it in English, possibly because it was in the stage directions rather than in the ordinary text. Regardless, according to Babelfish, German doesn't have any single word for "defenestrate" (I should think most languages don't!), so, for the chant, we simply fed "Throw him out the window!" through Babelfish. Although such a simple sentence, I suppose it probably got it right. The result was "Werfen Sie ihn aus dem Fenster!"; can anyone who knows German tell us?)
So yes, I was acting in German. And really, it wasn't that bad - it's easy enough if you just look at the English translation. Well, if you can pronounce it all. Which I think most of the time we couldn't. But we kind of just ignored that. (Well, and none of us could remember any but the shortest lines; we had cue cards all over the place. We had to redo one shot due to having forgotten to take one down.)
When we were doing the second half, though, John simply refused to wear any pants, so we had to make sure the camera was always positioned so as not to reveal this.
But, generally things went pretty well, and hey, we got it done in a day. And it's going to be about 5 minutes long. :P
And no, nobody got hurt going out the window.
-Sniffnoy
[0]The mob consisted of me (the mob leader), Kevin, DK, and AJ, although not all at the same time. Mickey had hoped to get a lot of people for it, but, well, he didn't. Originally Ben was also there, but he left before we even started filming. Kevin had to leave after a while, too, and we took a break then, but luckily when we regrouped, AJ arrived, so we had AJ just replace Kevin. Yes, yes, horrible continuity error, especially considering we didn't shoot it in order, so you're going to have Kevin suddenly be replaced by AJ, then replaced by Kevin again, and then by AJ again, but on the other hand, it was already riddled with continuity errors by the time Kevin left.
[3]Well, she took a few, ah, liberties with it. I think she didn't expect Mickey to actually check her translation, which he did simply by feeding it back through Babelfish. Obviously this turned it into an incoherent mess, but the right words were coming up, with two notable exceptions. The first was that the mob leader (me) was supposed to threaten the Imperial governors with "the usual". Our translated script, however, according to Babelfish, had me threatening them with "mouth sex". The other was that what Slavata said as he went out the window was distinctly longer in the German than in the English... upon Babelfish inspection, it was found that Slavata now additionally said that he would accept anal sex in place of defenestration. There was some thought of actually adopting these changes, but... no. Just no. Although when we were throwing Fabricius (Pavel) out the window, along with our ordinary chant, DK additionally shouted "Mundgeschlecht!". We didn't reshoot that, and it's not in a place where Mickey can just edit it out... so we'll see what happens. (Good thing most of the audience doesn't speak German, I suppose...)
Today I threw three people out a window while shouting in mangled German.
I should probably explain that, but I think I'll let you people just wonder for now, and give the explanation tomorrow.
...nah, I'll tell you now.
"What did you do today, Harry?"
I helped Mickey with his history project - namely, a video reenactment of the Second Defenestration of Prague.
So yes, Kevin, DK, and I actually did throw Pavel, John Deyrup, and Mickey out the window of Mickey's kitchen. (It's not really right before where I said I threw three people out a window - clearly I'm nowhere near strong enough to do so myself. I just helped a bit.)
Why the shouting? Mickey's script called for the mob[0] to chant "Defenestrate, defenestrate!" as they did so.
Why in German? Well, somewhere along the way it was decided that, since these people actually spoke German, not English, why not actually do it in German? And so (this was all several days before) Mickey got his friend Erica to translate[3] it into German. Of course, none of us, the actors, knew any German, but that doesn't really matter, does it? (As for the audience not speaking German, Mickey's going to subtitle it.)
Why mangled? That should be obvious. (And that line would be especially mangled. Erica hadn't translated it, possibly because she expected us to do it in English, possibly because it was in the stage directions rather than in the ordinary text. Regardless, according to Babelfish, German doesn't have any single word for "defenestrate" (I should think most languages don't!), so, for the chant, we simply fed "Throw him out the window!" through Babelfish. Although such a simple sentence, I suppose it probably got it right. The result was "Werfen Sie ihn aus dem Fenster!"; can anyone who knows German tell us?)
So yes, I was acting in German. And really, it wasn't that bad - it's easy enough if you just look at the English translation. Well, if you can pronounce it all. Which I think most of the time we couldn't. But we kind of just ignored that. (Well, and none of us could remember any but the shortest lines; we had cue cards all over the place. We had to redo one shot due to having forgotten to take one down.)
When we were doing the second half, though, John simply refused to wear any pants, so we had to make sure the camera was always positioned so as not to reveal this.
But, generally things went pretty well, and hey, we got it done in a day. And it's going to be about 5 minutes long. :P
And no, nobody got hurt going out the window.
-Sniffnoy
[0]The mob consisted of me (the mob leader), Kevin, DK, and AJ, although not all at the same time. Mickey had hoped to get a lot of people for it, but, well, he didn't. Originally Ben was also there, but he left before we even started filming. Kevin had to leave after a while, too, and we took a break then, but luckily when we regrouped, AJ arrived, so we had AJ just replace Kevin. Yes, yes, horrible continuity error, especially considering we didn't shoot it in order, so you're going to have Kevin suddenly be replaced by AJ, then replaced by Kevin again, and then by AJ again, but on the other hand, it was already riddled with continuity errors by the time Kevin left.
[3]Well, she took a few, ah, liberties with it. I think she didn't expect Mickey to actually check her translation, which he did simply by feeding it back through Babelfish. Obviously this turned it into an incoherent mess, but the right words were coming up, with two notable exceptions. The first was that the mob leader (me) was supposed to threaten the Imperial governors with "the usual". Our translated script, however, according to Babelfish, had me threatening them with "mouth sex". The other was that what Slavata said as he went out the window was distinctly longer in the German than in the English... upon Babelfish inspection, it was found that Slavata now additionally said that he would accept anal sex in place of defenestration. There was some thought of actually adopting these changes, but... no. Just no. Although when we were throwing Fabricius (Pavel) out the window, along with our ordinary chant, DK additionally shouted "Mundgeschlecht!". We didn't reshoot that, and it's not in a place where Mickey can just edit it out... so we'll see what happens. (Good thing most of the audience doesn't speak German, I suppose...)
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