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UNIT 3-TRAINERS

Today we performed our final piece!!! It went so well and I was very pleased with it. Even though we did slip up a couple of times, I still stayed in character and carried on. I do believe that everybody in the group tried their absolute best as the performance made people laugh, it shocked people and after the performance I heard many people saying how they didn’t realise how bad the reality of making trainers is.

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UNIT 3-

So here is a snippet of the ‘battle scene’ from our final piece. I am playing Cornpone, the business man who steals Mr Lee’s company from him. This fight scene was devised by us to show how my character is crafty and sneaky. We made this up ourselves as it wasn’t scripted, and I think it worked very very well as it made the audience laugh quite a lot.

This scene was inspired by the game ‘mortal combat’ where I end up defeating David’s character ‘Mr lee’ l, and this battle symbolises my takeover of the company ‘flash trainers.’

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UNIT 3 -TRAINERS

Today was the last lesson before we perform and my group has made amazing progress! We managed to run through the entire performance three times without stopping and without any mistakes. I’m very proud of myself for learning all of my lines, and I’ve secured a very interesting personality for each of my characters.

We have to perform next lesson, on Wednesday and I’m very excited for it. My group are very confident in what we have produced, and we really believe as if we have got our message across to the audience!

I’m also very very happy with my characterisation, as I worked very hard to give each character defining characteristics to seperate each of them. At the start of the project I made role on the walls for each of my characters, and now I decided to do an update for each character to show how I have developed them. They are on separate pieces of paper so you can see those in my folder :)

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UNIT 3 UPDATE

So we’re quite far into the project now, and our practice is going really well! We know almost all of our lines, I still have a few of the bigger paragraphs to learn fully but I feel very confident that my group will learn them in time for the exam day.

We’ve added in a few thought tracks, and I’m really happy with the way that they help the performance to flow. The thought track enables us to include some more emotional scenes into our performance, to kind of steer away from the constant humour running through the play. Our play is very humorous but also very sad so I wanted to include those moments of raw emotion.

I do believe that it’s going really well, and even though I don’t know all of my lines I’m very confident that I will learn them in time for the performance.

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UNIT 3 TRAINERS

In the lesson the new scripts were given out, each group handed a different one. I was given the script ‘Trainers’, which is a very political play.

As I first read the play, I notice that there are some quite hard hitting moments that I could really play around with. I then realised that throughout the play, there was a running theme of adverts. There is a repetitive scene where the characters become quite cheesy and over the top, which made me think about the juxtaposition in this play. All of these scary and emotional things are happening that actually happen in real life, yet everybody in the play seems so happy and excited; they seemed quite sadistic and ‘plastic’ in a way.

My initial thoughts on the play was that I absolutely detested it, as I had seen what scripts the other groups had been given and I was quite jealous. The other plays were very realistic, yet ours seemed very childish and somewhat boring. However, after taking the script home that night and annotating almost every line of the whole script, I i came up with some amazing ideas and now I believe that the script I was given is most definitely the best one. The emotion in the words is raw and not fake, we are talking about real things that are happening at this very moment and I really loved that. I broke the script up and worked out the really important/key moments for where the emotion needs to be highlighted the most, and these scenes would contradict to the emotion shown in the rest of the play.

As I mentioned before, there is a moment in the play where an advert scene is repeated. I sat down and tried to work out how we would execute this scene well. We still wanted to get our message across whilst staying in those same characters. (At the end of the blog I will post a picture of this scene in the script and my ‘role on the wall’ for the character I’m playing in this scene) I came up with the idea of basing our character off of a tv host/ presenter, one that goes really over the top with their movements and gestures. I chose the ‘voice’ from the X factor, as he ranges in tone and pitch when speaking, which is what I have really struggled with in the past. So after choosing an influence for my character, I needed to put my own twist on it to make it original and unique, which is where costumes come in. I wanted my character to stand out and for all eyes to be on them, so I designed the character to wear an extremely bright coloured tshirt and to have a very forced, cheesy smile. I then thought of what movements I could do to make sure our performance was animated, and I decided to come up with an action to react to each line, whether I was saying it or if it was someone else. I also thought of adapting some of the body language from the tv show ���Friends’ as that show is comedic and the characters have a scene in the intro with some dance movements that we could incorporate into our piece . So far, this cheesy, over the top character has fitted in really well with the piece and makes it comedic.

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UNIT 3 VOCAL WORK

After we worked on a little bit of movement work, we proceeded to focus more on our vocal work and how to express our emotions through our pitch and through the use of pauses.

To do this, we started off by warming up our voices with a few exercises, for example repeating a sequence of letters to enable us to remember to pronounce ever letter in whatever word we are saying. Here are some examples of the sequences:

K-k-k-b-b-b-g-g-g

T-t-t-s-s-s-c-c-c

After doing these exercises, I realised that I could improve on my articulation. A main improvement that would also help my articulation would be my pace, as sometimes I speed up when I get nervous, and this means that I sometimes rush through sentences and forget to pronounce all of the letters in words. Even though this exercise was very simple, it opened many other doors for improvement for me. After this lesson, I decided to go home and research some other exercises to help with nerves, articulation and with pace when performing. Below are some of the photos I took of my favourite exercises:

So above are some of the warm ups I use before I perform or present anything, whether it's in drama or even if I'm doing a presentation somewhere else. I'm really happy about how this started out to be just a 10-15 minute exercise in class, and now it's something that I've incorporated into my daily routine. Furthermore, these warm ups have also massively increased my articulation and also my confidence before performing. I will continue to use these warm ups as they have worked effectively for me.

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UNIT 3 ACTING SKILLS

In today's lesson, we were introduced to certain acting skills. We looked at movement, and how certain actions can influence your performance. We first showed how we could portray someone who is extremely hot and sweaty, and what sort of body language they would showcase. When I acted this out, I became very fidgety and restless, and I pretended to remove jackets and coats. This showed how I was trying I hard to get the heat off of myself, and how I became helpless in a way. Furthermore, we then had to change temperatures and become freezing. I began to rush to put my imaginary coats back on as I couldn't stand the cold; I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. This exercise made me think about my body language during performances, and I began to reflect back on past performances. I realised that I could've used better body language and gestures to boost my grade up. During the second part of the lesson, we focused on a stimuli called 'Goo and Gum.' This told the story of Goo and Gun and their friend M all playing add, when suddenly a ball rolls in. They all stop to look at it. This is when they grab the ball to start a game of Piggy in the Middle. They game is fair at first, but starts to become unfair as Goo and Gum push M into the middle and make her stay there. They single her out and make sure that she is constantly in the middle. After a while they decide to tease her, so they 'play dead.' This is when the mood of the scene becomes more sinister and cruel, as M is left sucking her thumb on the stage, sitting down. Our first thoughts when looking at this scene was that the characters were young children, and that these were the acts of silly children. However, I wanted to change the stereotypes and cliches of this piece to make our performance stand out, so I suggested that we alter the age of our characters. We started off as children, running around lively and happy. As soon as the ball rolls in, the mood drops, and we become more fragile. As Melissa bends down to pick up the ball she gasps in pain as she grabs her back. She has hurt her back and is in pain. Katie and I go to comfort her but we are also hit with pain, and this symbolises our deterioration in age and our well being. This contrast of ideas and setting explores different opportunities and themes that could potentially be brought up. The mood then changed again as we started to play with the ball, as we became very stereotypical 'old people.' Our movements were restricted and controlled well, as old people can't really move about that much. We would add grunting sound effects, showing that we were struggling to catch the ball. As Melissa became singled out, she gave more and more disapproving groans and moans. When it was time for Katie and I to play dead, we came up with the idea that we should make it seem like we actually died. Melissa realised that I had caught the ball and had had enough of our antics, so she struck me with her walking stick. This is when I died, and was left laying on the floor. As she turned around, she accidentally hits Katie with the ball and Katie falls to the ground out of shock. The realisation of this incident leaves Melissa tapping us, trying to wake us up. She is left sitting on the floor, sucking her thumb. This idea relives her youth and how vulnerable she felt in this moment.

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The first photo was a plan for Lucy to follow incase she forgot anything. We also wanted Lucy to direct the board at the class so it would seem like she is including the audience in our classroom. The second photograph is our set up for one of the shooting scenes. In this part, Katie and I make everyone confess to the horrible things that they have done, and then we included a thought track. In the thought track, each person takes it in turn to tell the audience what job they would've had if they weren't killed. We didn't use this in the final piece, but I liked the idea of foreshadowing to the audience, so I'll use this idea for another project.

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This is a PowerPoint created by Melissa and also edited by me, as we emailed it back and forth to each other. We wanted elements of production in our piece, so we used PowerPoint to create this for the audience to read. I then added in some sound effects that play as soon as the slide appears on the screen. We also recorded a video of Dean and Bradley reading a news report about children and gun crime. I thought this was very effective as it gave our piece more of a realistic atmosphere. And, from receiving the feedback from our class, we achieved this!

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These were placards that we planned to use in our piece, revealing information and constantly being on stage for the audience I read whenever they want. However, we didn't use these cards as I wanted to think of a clearer way for the audience to gain facts and figures on shootings and gun crime.

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This is my peer assessment for another group who performed in front of us, and I actually really liked their piece! When we first saw this group perform, they struggled to transition between scenes, they forgot quite a lot of their lines and there wasn't much of a connection between the characters being played. However, in their final piece, they showcased their skills incredibly and they proved to everyone that they could all work together. The group as a whole progressed so much and it was lovely to watch.

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These are our peer evaluation sheets from my classmates. These were based off of my groups FINAL PIECES and I was really happy about it!!! Most of the comments made were positive, but the improvements made were what we expected. I am really happy with the results from this project, and I loved working with this group!

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(I can't add all of the photos at once, so I'll post as many as I can and write my analysis on the last post )

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UNIT 2 LUCY

A few weeks into the project, I noticed that two girls in another group were struggling to work, as the rest of their group either stopped doing drama or just didn’t want to perform. Because of this, I invited the two girls, Melisha and Lucy to come and join our group. I did this because I knew that the girls were excellent at drama, and didn’t want them to miss out on having a good grade because of the rest of their group.

 However, Melisha didn’t want to perform, but wanted to work with the technical sides, makeup and costumes, and props. Therefore, she started to plan certain things like what each character would be wearing, and what the stage could look like. 

In past projects/performances, I have noticed that Lucy is really good at acting, so we swapped Melissa’s role of being the teacher to being another student in the class, and Lucy stepped in to play the new teacher. As Melissa previously played the teacher, she offered to train Lucy in a way to be the best teacher possible. 

Meanwhile, I helped Melisha with lighting, as I had already sorted out the lighting for our group. I was quite nervous as i wasn’t sure if the new members would help our group advance, but I think I was more worried if the two girls would actually work and not mess around. This is due to the fact that in other projects I have seen that the two girls haven't really worked well within their group, but I wanted to give them a chance. Overall, Lucy worked exceptionally well and developed her character within the short amount of time we had left. However, I would like for her to take on a leading role in the next project to boost her confidence and to improve her skills even more. I was very proud of her, and would be happy to work with her in further projects.

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UNIT 2

These are the screenshots of some of the feedback we received from our class when we performed our piece to them on two separate occaisons. The performance that received this feedback was not our final piece, but it was small sections  of our old piece. The parts we performed included: 

1) The flashing lights scene

2) Our old classroom scene when Lucy joined our group. (this will be explained in my next post.) 

3) Our throwing rocks scene before we added in the thought tracking. 

We then improved using this feedback, and i do believe that we improved on each and every point. This led up to our final piece, which i thought was very successful. For the next project, i would aim to add even more emotion, as at certain parts we may have lacked confidence, and that also affected the amount of emotion put into said parts. 

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UNIT 2

THROWING ROCKS SCENE - ORIGINAL WORK

This scene shows Me and Katie as the sub conscience of Dylan and Eric (DEAN AND BRADLEY) when they were teenagers. They are hanging out with their childhood friend, Melissa. Before performing this scene, we all sat down and discussed what our aims were.  We wanted to build suspense to the murder scene, which comes straight after this scene. After discussing, we decided to create a relationship that would soon be destroyed. 

After discussing, we came up with the idea of having Katie and I watching the whole situation, acting as the conscience of the two boys. This created the opportunity for more thought tracking. So we started with the Bradley meeting Melisa, and having the conversation shown in the video above. However towards the end of the project, we added in the very first part, where we explore the relationship between Bradley, Dean and Melissa. This was added after showing our performance to the class, and when we accepted the feedback we were told it would be more effective if we revealed the relationships between the characters more.  Firstly, we included a duelogue between Bradley and Dean, discussing how they should always protect Melissa. This shows how much they both love her, and how they are always going to be there for her. This establishes the close bond they all have with each other, and also highlights  this to the audience. The next relationship is shown through the characters played by Melissa and Bradley, where we are shown through thought tracks that they are actually in love with each other. We wanted this essence of a somewhat forbidden romance.  This idea worked very well, so we stuck with it. 

However, i do think that there were some things we could improve on. I think that we could have:

1) Created even more of a romance between the characters, filling in silences and making the love more believable. This would enable us to create more of an emotional atmosphere between everyone, and to create more suspense for the audience. 

2) Enter and exit through the sides instead of the back, and to make sure we can not be seen through the curtains. This would make the setting look more realistic in a way, and to save us making noise during the scene. It could also allow us to have smoother transitions between scenes. 

3) I wanted Dean to be more involved with Melissa, and for those two to have some sort of relationship behind Bradley’s back. This would’ve created more tension and would’ve had a bigger build up to the Murder Scene, and also would have possibly resulted into more of an argument.

To improve, I aim to think over possible outcomes in future projects, so i am able to chose the one that will best fit the situation and will also result in the most intriguing performance.