Jorge's blog#1- My first ever blog
UNIT 1- Production to Performance IDENTITY
I can't say how excited I am to create this blog and I'm glad to be able to show my experiences and what I've been going through, with this blog. ☺☺☺
Context
This is my first unit for my Performance Arts Course and this Unit is perfect as a starter because in this Unit we will be learning to gel in with each other.
We started our first week by entering Rob's class where we didn't know what to expect.
When we came into Rob's class we started by doing exercises through the mouth this included.
Here they are below!
The other uses of characters that was used were vampires and fairies despite the fact as i mentioned before we didn't mention them. But it was enjoyable as I got to be the rat and I had the chance to express myself like a child would express themselves. Later on in the act I get murdered and so do many of the characters in the sketch.
Improvisation- Setting in the moon
Out of all the games I think this is the game in which I did most in.
There was a certain rule that we had to pay attention and that was only two participants on the stage only.
The first two participants was me and Altin and we had to pretend that we were in the moon.
This was the last game of all our games during the session that the Level 2 class were having.
My character had been in the moon for 14 days and the scene started by me jumping around the moon just like a spaceman would jump since there is no gravity.
We were also exercising our vocabulary and brain, especially when we had to say things straight away on point to speed up the games we were playing.
Altin's character came on his rocket and had asked me to get on his ship, therefore I'd went on the ship. Moments later after a large amount of dialogue, Rob had came to the scene as a character who came to fix the ship, since there was only two characters allowed then I was asked by Rob's character to see if the systems was in check.
My guess that the reason that Rob did that was because me and Altin were taking too long and other people weren't being given a chance, which is fair however my intention wasn't to have the stage to myself and although I agreed with sitting out, I wanted to be on stage again.
It took many participants until I ended up having my turn and although it was short I still enjoyed playing the game.
Evaluation
The conclusion-
Overall Everything we do in Rob's session is to edify and to nurture us in our drama skills in areas such as how we stand, the skills we need to develop (listening and sound) and fluency in our mouth as in being able to certain mouth and tongue exercises like tongue twisters to help us improve in our accents.
The games that we were doing was done so that we can improve on our confidence and overcome our shyness to speaking loud.
The games where we were involving these skills was in "Yes and then" and "One Word Story". While in the Act where we had to pretend we were in the moon we were improving our improvisation skills.
Planning
17/09/2018
During one of Rob's session we were given feedback for the day that we perform.
The feedback that we were given by Rob was.
28/09/2018
Here are a few points that I wrote down in my notes such as;
"We are in this together, We are stronger together.
I even wrote down reminders to myself so that I can remember what to do on the day of the performance.
"Bailey comes in late, The teacher has a go at him in maths with anger".
Problem Solving
05/10/2018
We were now being given feedback from Rob as a class. He let us acknowledge that we are good enough, so that when we do got out there in the stage on the day we should go for what we need to do and not let anyone from the audience sense any blood from our mistakes This was done so that we can motivated for the day.
There were even a few improvements that had to be made for my groups piece for e.g. Me and Ahmed were asked to do part where we meet each other much more earlier, at the point where Altin sits down on his chair where he's about to begin his rap piece. This was so that we don't distract the audience from Altin's rap piece.
Many of my peers were laughing when I was rehearsing my lines, I don't know whether it was the sound of my voice or the words I was using.
Just like most people I also played with my lines, especially during rehearsal where I made sure that the dialogue that I used wasn't the same as my last rehearsal.
We were told during our feedback that if someone from the audience does end up laughing, that we should let it die rather that we make up or carry on with remarks trying to make the crowds laugh.
I was also told personally that I should be careful about how I word my lines, the reason why I was told this was because I ended up saying something that didn't end up making sense and I was warned that I had to be careful on how I used dialogue since it can end up backfiring on me.
Research During Mandy's lesson
There weren't many people in Mandy's lesson so a majority of the class including me had to be versatile by portraying the characters of our peers who went in for rehearsal.
I had to replace Karla who's character is an immigrant who gets bullied and it felt good to know that I was flexible enough to play any sort of character and it was a good experience to be another character rather than my own.
I was pleased with the feedback that Mandy gave me when I made my scene and Karla's scene. She praised me for my voice projection and my use of voice, it surely increased my confidence.
However there was something I found quite odd that Mandy told me to do in one of my scenes and that was to face the audience when I mention my name to the class because it wouldn't be good to have my back to the audience.
Because Mandy is our movement teacher, she asked us to make gestures when we say our lines during our scenes so that it can seem more obvious to the audience what is going on and what is our reactions.
The day of our performance- 10th of October- Context
Finally after all rehearsal's and the changes that were made to the sketch, The day of our performance was finally here.
We prepared for this day by doing rehearsals over and over again, getting the guidance of Rob to see if there was improvements to be made.
Everyone all checked their monologues and their scenes carefully and went through everything slowly to perfect what looked average.
We were told specifically that we had to wear black clothes as it would suit the dark setting.
We were now just minutes away from performing and I was feeling nervous.
After watching a dance performance, we were now on stage and all eyes were on us.
Evaluation
I was so glad that I was able to remember the times I was supposed to be on stage and If I had to evaluate myself from my perspective I think that I did well and I managed to be quick and creative when it came to my dialogue, although I didn't have to memorize any lines from a script, I did however had to be quick on my feet and make sure that It was my turn to get up on stage.
11/10/2018- Evaluation and feedback for the performance/Skills
The day after we all came into the same room, we all split into pairs and faced each other. Later on we were given a paper that a had a list of the skills that we went through weeks before. From there we had to tick the areas where we think that we've improved.
I ticked most of the boxes because I feel that since moving to the college and choosing this course I feel like that I'm regaining the confidence that I've lost in recent years.
Later on I had to move around the room and ask what they think I've improved on. The most reactions I got was that I was confident, Eye contact, Positivity, voice projection, body language, imagination and pacing (When you speak at the right speed).
These were the skills that people said that I developed.
Quotes: "You managed to stay in character/role".
The criticism that I got was that I had to improve on my use of space and I agree with that since I wouldn't know where or how to stand.
I even took the time in my break to watch our performance that was filmed and uploaded online.
After watching it I could say that I can take a few positives from the performance and It left me wanting me to do more. This performance was a definite preparation to future events and a way to gain confidence when being on stage. This was our first performance and this was to help us to get used to being in large crowds of audiences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-afUrE8bFQ#act on=share
Introduction to production Arts- Unit 2
Context
For Unit 2 We ended up having to write about any sort of roles in the Production Arts Area, therefore I ended up picking the job as script writer to write about.
In our essay we had to include different topics that could be involved in the job of a script writer. At that point I also learnt what other name you could give to a script writer and that is screen writer.
The following topics that I wrote about was:
My reason for choosing the task of writing about being a script writer was because when I've done projects where doing scripted work or writing work has been enjoyable for me.
It's an area that I wouldn't mind going to when I'm older if acting isn't working out.
One of the reasons that I ended choosing this course was because of the enjoyment and confidence that I would get from being acting or being heavily involved in a production project, whether it's filming or just role play without being filmed.
Just because I'm on this course it doesn't mean that I necessarily want to become an actor.
Because there is many roads that I could go to from performing arts that don't specifically lead to acting.
Research
I would say that I ended up learning a lot of from doing research for this essay. These new things could include:
That most scriptwriters tend to be freelancers, another thing that I learnt was that a scriptwriter could be paid a certain amount depending on where they are set.
For e.g. A scriptwriter set in Hollywood could earn a much more higher salary than their counterparts in Britain and any other place.
The last thing that I ended up learning was that when it comes to sitcoms e.g.Big Bang Theory, HIMYM, Melissa and Joey, etc.
There is at least more than five scriptwriters that come up with the content and work for a script for a sitcom.
This could end up preparing me in the near future when I end up going to the production or media industry in places like the BBC.
It could give me an insight how a scriptwriter would work and what is required for them to do so that they can be successful in their field of work.
Overall what I like about being a script writer is that it's a job that requires creativity and it also allows you to look for the fun side of you.
Problem solving
But if I want to earn the amount that lives up to the hours that I may work for then I would have to get recognised by a respectable company such as Hollywood, Pineapple studios, etc. Because a scriptwriter earning money depends on wether a company accepts
Greetings to those people who will read this blog in the near future,
I can't say how excited I am to create this blog and I'm glad to be able to show my experiences and what I've been going through, with this blog. ☺☺☺
We started our first week by entering Rob's class where we didn't know what to expect.
When we came into Rob's class we started by doing exercises through the mouth this included.
- Humming through our mouths
- Saying gibberish e.g. mama-papa-baba-ba
Research10/09/2018
At one point we went through all the skills that actors need to succeed in the industry. Here is the list of them.
At one point we went through all the skills that actors need to succeed in the industry. Here is the list of them.
Here is a list of qualities and skills that Actors need that the whole class came up with.
- Confidence
- Voice Projection
- Eye Contact
- Memory
- Practice
- Creativity
- Use of Space
- Respect
- Thick skin
- Range
- Flexibility
- Imagination
- Face
- Communication
- Witty
- Body Language
- Positivity
- Integrity
- Pacing
- Maturity
- Child-Like
- Control
- Good agent
- Gestures
- Time management
- Honesty
- Trust
Here they are below!
- How we should change roles.
- Profiling Cheating- When you move around the way to the audience.
- Careful with the dialogue.
- Whenever a student from the audience e.g. music production say's something "Like I can't hear you" to get a laugh from their friends.
- You will get that but you just need to speak up.
- Try to stay serious as much as you can.
- FEC: focus, Energy and concentration.
- Thinking ahead
- Listening Disciplined
- Focused on
- We need to be focused and we need to speak more louder.
- We need to to get more into character.
- We need to be more diagonal and I can't have my back to the audience.
10th-14th of September -
With the identity project we started by having to write down what identity means to us and how we would define it.
Just like most people, I included topics in my piece such as heritage, background, tastes and many other forms that would make our identity.
During Rob's session we also learnt about form and content. The form is the way the story is told, the way the actors play their roles and the way the subjects/themes are tackled.
While the content is what happens in the theme that is being acted out by the characters; another way you could put this is how the theme or the issue is impacting the performance e.g. bullying, bravery and family problems.
13/09/2018
In this acting session we ended up practising games in the classroom which were designed to help us in our speech and improve our storytelling. These games included:
Yes and then:
This game is limitless, you can go on forever with this game if you have that quickness and that know-how to come up with as many ideas as you can.
The game starts off by two people pairing up with each other and start a sentence that begins with "We should do this." E.g. We should go cinema. The next person should then continues the game by making a sentence that say's "Yes and then we should" and that's how the rest of the sentences should start with.
Here is an example of the game
1st person: We should go to McDonald's.
2nd Person: Yes and then we should go bowling.
1st person: Yes and then we should go to Thorpe park
and so on...
This game was made to help us gain more confidence with every one of us and to help the class to gel with one-another.
This game was quite hard because you had to think of places to go on the spot and there were times when people were stuck and didn't know what to say.
But the game was really fun since we could be as creative as we wanted to be.
One word story
For this game we had to go around a circle and in turns we had to say any random word and a few of the words that was being said was rat, cheese, man, kill, etc.
Later on when we had came up with a decent amount of words,
Rob had split us in groups and with the words that we collected, we had to act out a sketch where the words that we were given had to be physical alterations, This could include with the word of rat we would have someone act as a rat.
So after when every group had rehearsed their sketch, each group in turn performed their act in front of the class.
If I'm to be honest our act involved different things that was irrelevant to any of the words that were being mentioned during the game or didn't even relate to any of the words at all. The other uses of characters that was used were vampires and fairies despite the fact as i mentioned before we didn't mention them. But it was enjoyable as I got to be the rat and I had the chance to express myself like a child would express themselves. Later on in the act I get murdered and so do many of the characters in the sketch.
Improvisation- Setting in the moon
Out of all the games I think this is the game in which I did most in.
There was a certain rule that we had to pay attention and that was only two participants on the stage only.
The first two participants was me and Altin and we had to pretend that we were in the moon.
This was the last game of all our games during the session that the Level 2 class were having.
My character had been in the moon for 14 days and the scene started by me jumping around the moon just like a spaceman would jump since there is no gravity.
We were also exercising our vocabulary and brain, especially when we had to say things straight away on point to speed up the games we were playing.
Altin's character came on his rocket and had asked me to get on his ship, therefore I'd went on the ship. Moments later after a large amount of dialogue, Rob had came to the scene as a character who came to fix the ship, since there was only two characters allowed then I was asked by Rob's character to see if the systems was in check.
My guess that the reason that Rob did that was because me and Altin were taking too long and other people weren't being given a chance, which is fair however my intention wasn't to have the stage to myself and although I agreed with sitting out, I wanted to be on stage again.
It took many participants until I ended up having my turn and although it was short I still enjoyed playing the game.
Evaluation
The conclusion-
Overall Everything we do in Rob's session is to edify and to nurture us in our drama skills in areas such as how we stand, the skills we need to develop (listening and sound) and fluency in our mouth as in being able to certain mouth and tongue exercises like tongue twisters to help us improve in our accents.
The games that we were doing was done so that we can improve on our confidence and overcome our shyness to speaking loud.
The games where we were involving these skills was in "Yes and then" and "One Word Story". While in the Act where we had to pretend we were in the moon we were improving our improvisation skills.
Planning
17/09/2018
During one of Rob's session we were given feedback for the day that we perform.
The feedback that we were given by Rob was.
28/09/2018
Here are a few points that I wrote down in my notes such as;
"We are in this together, We are stronger together.
I even wrote down reminders to myself so that I can remember what to do on the day of the performance.
"Bailey comes in late, The teacher has a go at him in maths with anger".
Problem Solving
05/10/2018
We were now being given feedback from Rob as a class. He let us acknowledge that we are good enough, so that when we do got out there in the stage on the day we should go for what we need to do and not let anyone from the audience sense any blood from our mistakes This was done so that we can motivated for the day.
There were even a few improvements that had to be made for my groups piece for e.g. Me and Ahmed were asked to do part where we meet each other much more earlier, at the point where Altin sits down on his chair where he's about to begin his rap piece. This was so that we don't distract the audience from Altin's rap piece.
Many of my peers were laughing when I was rehearsing my lines, I don't know whether it was the sound of my voice or the words I was using.
Just like most people I also played with my lines, especially during rehearsal where I made sure that the dialogue that I used wasn't the same as my last rehearsal.
We were told during our feedback that if someone from the audience does end up laughing, that we should let it die rather that we make up or carry on with remarks trying to make the crowds laugh.
I was also told personally that I should be careful about how I word my lines, the reason why I was told this was because I ended up saying something that didn't end up making sense and I was warned that I had to be careful on how I used dialogue since it can end up backfiring on me.
Research During Mandy's lesson
There weren't many people in Mandy's lesson so a majority of the class including me had to be versatile by portraying the characters of our peers who went in for rehearsal.
I had to replace Karla who's character is an immigrant who gets bullied and it felt good to know that I was flexible enough to play any sort of character and it was a good experience to be another character rather than my own.
I was pleased with the feedback that Mandy gave me when I made my scene and Karla's scene. She praised me for my voice projection and my use of voice, it surely increased my confidence.
However there was something I found quite odd that Mandy told me to do in one of my scenes and that was to face the audience when I mention my name to the class because it wouldn't be good to have my back to the audience.
Because Mandy is our movement teacher, she asked us to make gestures when we say our lines during our scenes so that it can seem more obvious to the audience what is going on and what is our reactions.
The day of our performance- 10th of October- Context
Finally after all rehearsal's and the changes that were made to the sketch, The day of our performance was finally here.
We prepared for this day by doing rehearsals over and over again, getting the guidance of Rob to see if there was improvements to be made.
Everyone all checked their monologues and their scenes carefully and went through everything slowly to perfect what looked average.
We were told specifically that we had to wear black clothes as it would suit the dark setting.
We were now just minutes away from performing and I was feeling nervous.
After watching a dance performance, we were now on stage and all eyes were on us.
Evaluation
I was so glad that I was able to remember the times I was supposed to be on stage and If I had to evaluate myself from my perspective I think that I did well and I managed to be quick and creative when it came to my dialogue, although I didn't have to memorize any lines from a script, I did however had to be quick on my feet and make sure that It was my turn to get up on stage.
11/10/2018- Evaluation and feedback for the performance/Skills
The day after we all came into the same room, we all split into pairs and faced each other. Later on we were given a paper that a had a list of the skills that we went through weeks before. From there we had to tick the areas where we think that we've improved.
I ticked most of the boxes because I feel that since moving to the college and choosing this course I feel like that I'm regaining the confidence that I've lost in recent years.
Later on I had to move around the room and ask what they think I've improved on. The most reactions I got was that I was confident, Eye contact, Positivity, voice projection, body language, imagination and pacing (When you speak at the right speed).
These were the skills that people said that I developed.
Quotes: "You managed to stay in character/role".
The criticism that I got was that I had to improve on my use of space and I agree with that since I wouldn't know where or how to stand.
I even took the time in my break to watch our performance that was filmed and uploaded online.
After watching it I could say that I can take a few positives from the performance and It left me wanting me to do more. This performance was a definite preparation to future events and a way to gain confidence when being on stage. This was our first performance and this was to help us to get used to being in large crowds of audiences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-afUrE8bFQ#act on=share
Introduction to production Arts- Unit 2
Context
For Unit 2 We ended up having to write about any sort of roles in the Production Arts Area, therefore I ended up picking the job as script writer to write about.
In our essay we had to include different topics that could be involved in the job of a script writer. At that point I also learnt what other name you could give to a script writer and that is screen writer.
The following topics that I wrote about was:
- What the job consists of?
- How much they earn?
- Where they work/ what is their role?
- Skills required
My reason for choosing the task of writing about being a script writer was because when I've done projects where doing scripted work or writing work has been enjoyable for me.
It's an area that I wouldn't mind going to when I'm older if acting isn't working out.
One of the reasons that I ended choosing this course was because of the enjoyment and confidence that I would get from being acting or being heavily involved in a production project, whether it's filming or just role play without being filmed.
Just because I'm on this course it doesn't mean that I necessarily want to become an actor.
Because there is many roads that I could go to from performing arts that don't specifically lead to acting.
Research
I would say that I ended up learning a lot of from doing research for this essay. These new things could include:
That most scriptwriters tend to be freelancers, another thing that I learnt was that a scriptwriter could be paid a certain amount depending on where they are set.
For e.g. A scriptwriter set in Hollywood could earn a much more higher salary than their counterparts in Britain and any other place.
The last thing that I ended up learning was that when it comes to sitcoms e.g.Big Bang Theory, HIMYM, Melissa and Joey, etc.
There is at least more than five scriptwriters that come up with the content and work for a script for a sitcom.
This could end up preparing me in the near future when I end up going to the production or media industry in places like the BBC.
It could give me an insight how a scriptwriter would work and what is required for them to do so that they can be successful in their field of work.
Overall what I like about being a script writer is that it's a job that requires creativity and it also allows you to look for the fun side of you.
Problem solving
But if I want to earn the amount that lives up to the hours that I may work for then I would have to get recognised by a respectable company such as Hollywood, Pineapple studios, etc. Because a scriptwriter earning money depends on wether a company accepts
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