Transformers Evaluation

Transformers evaluation

 

Transformers: when we started this project we were pitched three ideas I was instantly interested in the shadow play not only because it was something I hadn’t really worked on before and felt that there was also endless possibilities story wise but also because of Cliffs enthusiasm about the project and his willingness to let us as actors play around with different ideas. The group we formed consisted of Me, Jakko, Charlotte and Cliff we instantly started suggesting different techniques we could use effectively with the shadows for example we mentioned voice overs the ability to change the colors of the lights to create different atmospheres with the shadows and so on. We ended up looking into the short story ‘Diary of a Madman’ by  Nikolai Gogol the story had so many great possibility’s to use the shadow play in creative ways that we straight away decided that we would base our performance on this short story. I think it was very important that we made this decision early on in the creative process as it allowed us to straight away focus our ideas and start generating material we could then use in the performance.

The first exercise we decided to do was to each write a diary entry written from the point of view of the madman using a segment of the story as a stimulus we decided to do this so we could try and establish the downward spiral of the main characters mental state. This was a great exercise that allowed us all to bring our own individual view of the main character and explore different written techniques to show glimpses of madness getting more and more common as the entries go on. By doing this exercise we discovered several elements we wanted to keep into the performance one was the character repeating certain lines and the other was the main character talking to the diary as if it was a person. We decided to then do this exercise again but where we all adopted the writing techniques we enjoyed in the last attempt making the different entries feel more like they were written by the same person  this then became the basis of our script and also let us all add in our own personal elements to the script. I feel this exercise was pivotal to our performance as it helped us get all our own ideas into the mix but also gave us the starting base for our script.

We decided to meet up as a group and bounce different ideas of each other to develop a basic structure of the performance this is how we developed our main ideas we decided to do voice overs and incorporate elements of Spanish as it linked in with the original story and our idea of showing the downward spiral into madness the main character takes via conversations with a doctor linked in with his diary entries. In this meet up we finished our script based heavily of our diary entries we had already created and discussed different ideas of how we could creatively form character and objects as shadows with only two of us utilizing the shadows. Looking back at this meeting it really helped us to get ahead of schedule as we managed to have a complete script and have all our key ideas already down through this process I learnt how important it can be to discuss ideas with different members of the performance so we can help improve our own ideas and other peoples. What was really useful was having Cliff at this meeting so we could find out what ideas were possible and what guidelines we could work inside.

One of the most enjoyable parts about this unit was recording our script as we got to experiment with synchronizing our voices at different pitches to create different effects in our overall quality of sound I had never done recording for a performance before so I found the whole thing a very interesting part of the unit. Trying the same lines but with the recording equipment in different positions or trying different recording in different rooms for different sound quality’s was something I had never before thought about and I feel through this process I would now really like to go down this route of trying recording in different ways in different units.

For the physical side of the performance we mainly decided to improvise to the recordings using different props to help create the scenes this was a relatively easy part of the process once we got going and was really fun as we managed to work well with Cliff who was trying out different ways of lighting and different ways in which we could portray our shadows effectively whilst we managed to make the main structure to the scenes. I feel this part of the process shows how sometimes it’s just best to get up and try out different ideas as we didn’t think too much about it instead we just improvised and I feel we managed to come up with some nice visuals with help of the shadows.

Overall through the process of this unit I found out the importance of sometimes sitting down and discussing ideas and also the importance of getting up and performing without thinking too much. I got to try out lots of different acting techniques that I hadn’t been able to tryout before such as voice recordings and working with the shadows. I also learnt that it’s easy to collaborate with other groups of people if both sets of people are enthusiastic about their project and allow everyone to have their own creative input.