Epsom Downs Rehearsal: Blog 5

4/4/17:

Today was a session where we continued to block both physical theatre sequences. We had Adam in to help with process and it went quite well. I was helped with the quick developed of my character in this scene, who is now refereed to as "Smoking man ". I was asked to try out making my body more tight and to wrap my arm and leg around myself. I was also told how to hold the cigarette I'm using, now i'm holding it with my index finger and my thumb rather than my index finger and middle finger. These few small additions have actually changed this lineless side character quite drastically and now he seems to stand out more and probably even more when we pick a costume for him.

A great piece of advise was to treat the rehearsal period as a time for experimentation. As mentioned in my feedback from the group I'm often too critical of my own ideas. This fits in with what I was told about myself last week. Thankfully I seem to be taking this on board already to some capacity so it's pretty good so far.

A key point for today was working on the transitions of the racing sequence. I have to hold the pole and move with it, keeping it at my waist while everyone else moves differently. This took many tries to get right and looked a tad messy at the beginning.

This was a pretty relaxed yet still productive session. I feel that i was very focused throughout and was able to quickly understand and pull of most tasks required such as the shuffling with Georgia or moving through most transitions. I was pretty quick at doing what I was asked and me and everyone else were fairly professional with having to do certain moments many times. The only real issue with today was that at a few points I forgot my lines in the racing sequence and this affected the pace which was a shame since it would go from a really nice transition to absolute silence. So even though it's only three lines I have to refresh myself on the cues.



5/4/17:


Today was quite a productive day. We have more or less finished the physical theatre racing scenes but incorporated Becky into them properly now. They went very well when running through them and I didn't forget any of my lines at all, they just came naturally which is a very good thing. Also the transitions seem very smooth now, the one with me and Georgia shuffling across the stage with Logan to get a sense of speed being my personal favorite. You can see the amount of time we've poured into these scenes because we've ran through them a lot of times and I'm glad it's showing.

Me and Chloe got to rehearse our final scene. The part of that we rehearsed thoroughly was the moments where she hits me with the sign and the moments where we slap each other. It was decided that we would use no stage trickery or stage combat, we'd actually just hit each other. The part where I get hit with the sign was pretty difficult to do because I was anticipating the hit, meaning you could see me getting ready to get hit by her. This took a few tries but I got there and feel it looks pretty good since the hit wasn't as hard as I was expecting. It's just the first one we had to improve since the rest of the hits my character is obviously aware and I'm allowed to see coming when she goes to swing it.

Something I need to bring across in this scene is that regret I've done before. The point where he tells her that he's sold his train ticket is the moment where he confesses that he lost to his urges. This would be a great place to use a dramatic pause and let the moment just play out. If hesitation is shown then it'll be all the more impactful.

The moment after that where I stop her slapping me again we had to do a fair bit. Now I have to catch the hand and comfort her when she calms downs. There is an aspect of this moment I have to keep in mind, the fact that she's still angry and could hit me at any moment because I just stopped her from relapsing. I think I'm going to have a look of anticipation on my face and the trust in her to not hit me comes back gradually over the course over about 20 seconds. This whole scene is brilliant in the sense that she's been the one keeping me on track so now he has to help her in return. It's a nice way narratively to end their story arc. and keeping all this in mid should make for a really nice moment.

I'd say I was very well focused especially during the rehearsal of the last scene, both me and Chloe had to reset very quickly several times in order to get hit even more times and I think we both took it very well. We didn't mind being hit over and over again and I even got cut by the sign but wee both just kept going. I did help Chloe with figuring out how she should stop hitting me and throw the sign to the floor. I basically said and showed her that it needs to be a bit slower and to throw the sign as if she's just given up and that whatever they were trying to do is over.




Conclusion:

Today we had our first real run in the theatre and I'm playing up Mr Tillotson overall. Other than seeming a tad too quiet at points I feel that the tragedy of this man is coming through fairly well. Doing all the research I did on how his mind would work gave me several moments throughout the process where I just knew exactly how he would react to a situation. I feel the backstory I gave him really fleshed him out and gave me far more perspective on him as a person that it would have otherwise.

I feel the same way with Hugh and the Jockey as well. I'm glad I looked the union/labour related information to give Hugh a rather complex and understandable motivation. If I had not looked into the dispute I would've been very bland and nothing in terms of a aggression or frustration would've come across.

In terms of the performance style which is naturalism, epic theatre and physical theatre (well, this version anyway) and I think we've incorporated all these elements fairly well and they flow pretty smoothly. I think that during moments of naturalism (such as Mr Tillotson) and moments of epic theatre (Jockey) I made an effort to make them different from one-another, they both had different energy levels an different reactions from the audience. As I said, I may be a bit quieter when being naturalistic but that's something I can fix with in the next run.

So overall, there has been quite a few very useful developments throughout this rehearsal and I feel my time spent practicing and research has gone to good use, this is looking to be a great show and I can't wait to show off what we've all worked hard to achieve.

Epsom Downs Rehearsal: Blog 4

22/3/17:

Today there were two interesting developments for me, one being in the rehearsal itself and one in the session afterwards where we had to critique each other on how we are in rehearsals.

During the rehearsal, we were working on a scene we're devising which incorporates some light physical theatre and we had to think of some idiosyncrasies and I couldn't really think of any in the short time we were given, I was making some up as we went along and I came up with 2 movements. The first being movement where I point at the ground when we stop walking as if I'm saying "Shall we preach here?". The second is where I rub my hand across my head as if I'm releasing a little bit of tension. I felt this was fitting since he's in an environment that he knows he's weak to, he's only not betting at that moment because Miss Motrom is with him and he has to resist the urge to gamble so showing that aspect of him through gestures seemed ideal.

After doing this I felt that I really that the character needs to be given a nervous energy. As I said he is on edge a fair bit and is resisting a big urge and may have an element of withdrawal or a visual indicator that he's trying to repress it all. This is quite important to his character especially with the backstory I've created for him. An idea I have is that he may look around a lot and almost be shifty or that he's trying not to notice certain things that he loved before. He could be looking away from the bookies and the track itself. This all applies to the everything before he loses Miss Motrom.


The other part of today was having a session in which we gave construction feedback on each others rehearsal attitudes. Overall my feedback was fairly positive saying that I'm never late, I'm generally enthusiastic, I show a lot of research and analysis of both my character and background of the play. I'm generally quite committed, I have a confident presence on stage, I'm pretty good at applying my findings to my characters and I show some good variation with those characters. Those notes made me quite happy but there were some faults I was given.

- The first and most obvious is that I can lose focus sometimes and talk to people when I could be doing other things such as line running or when a scene is being rehearsed by others.

- One is that I tend to either over think or over work myself. I do agree with this to an extent, meaning that when I have to make up an aspect of my character, I often find it difficult to improvise and have to think about it instead of just going with the flow. I'm definitely more of a planner rather than an improviser. Such as when I thought of how to act aggressive as Hugh a couple of week ago, I had the idea but held back anyway and didn't try it out properly since I subconsciously thought I would go too far.

- One note I had for myself was that I don't contribute enough. I often have ideas but just don't want to say them for various reason. I had an idea for a scene transition with Miss Mortrom involving when we go off and come back on for our preaching scene but I didn't want to suggest it just in case it was rubbish.


Looking back at myself over the rehearsal period, I would say that I agrre with most of these claims, both good and bad. There are a few things for me to do to improve in the future when it comes to rehearsing:

- Try not talking to people unless it is to do with the work.If someone tries to start a conversation with me about anything other than the work, try to wrap it up quickly.

- Try to improvise more and suggest any ideas that come to mind. Any idea is worth hearing just in case it can affect the production positively

- Try not to worry about anything to do with my character and only focus on the things that can help me with the performance such as the research I've done and anything to develop my character.

Those are some simple goals I want to try out. As for the session before, I think I was OK but with the idea example I mentioned, I definitely need to improve a tad.



23/3/17:

Today we ran act one from start to finish and it went pretty well in a few ways:

When rehearsing I didn't go on stage with my script at all and required almost no prompting, that was only for one or two sentences that I needed the beginning of, I knew my lines very well and feel I have reached my target for learning act one, however something that I'm not all there with yet is my cues, there's still a couple that I get mixed up but that just means I need to go over it more.

I felt that I was a little more focused today as well, there were quite few point where I had to stop myself saying something and generally listened a little more. I'm not saying I was terrible before but today I was definitely better today

I wanted to do some additional research into compulsive gambling so I read an article which contained a story about a woman who had a compulsive gambling addiction and it had very similar qualities to my backstory for Mr Tillotson, especially in regards to the escalation the addiction, requiring more and more money to get full satisfaction out of it. reading the research into how these people act has really made me want to portray him as sympathetic. I've said before there is tragedy to him but the fall from grace needs to be more apparent although I do not want to take away the light hearted moments from him.

A note I was given was to think about what is at stake for any character I have, particularly Hugh. The thing that Immediately came to mind was his job. He mentions, "If we don't fight, we'll get kicked out of the yard" implying he's scared of losing his job if it isn't settled. This also fits with what I thought before about him not wanting Jocks around in case a strike was called on. He disagrees with Jocks so he has to fight him other wise he loses his job and can't find work anywhere else because of Pearce's influence but if a strike is called on and he doesn't participate, he'll lose it anyway so he's in a difficult situation but all he wants is for Jocks to be gone. Trying this out seems to give him more of a sense of urgency and like what he's talking about actually matters. Trying it out the second time did improve it quite a bit.



24/317:


Something I'm happy I got to try out was my nervous energy for Mr Tillotson. I put it in the scene where I frantically ask Katrina "Have you seen a religious lady go in that toilet?". That really influenced the rest of the scene, I paced up and down holding and nervously tapping my scene thinking that I could relapse at any moment since she's not her to help me. It really added to the moment for me and when I actually asked her it was kind of funny, it showed a real moment of desperation and the beginning of his weak side.

I did use my script a few times today for some act 2 scenes, it's not very well memorised yet although I'm getting there. I've still got a couple days to go to reach my target date to memorise it, so this will be my focus for the next couple of days. I am happy to say though I'm making progress with the fast list reading, I managed to do the first two thirds of it just from memory. The recording idea really is helping to get it done faster.

I did notice I need to mark my script a little more thoroughly since I forgot some of my exits or I had to keep checking to see where they were. Other than that though I feel today I was very well focused and am showing some progress with my characters in a good way.



27/3/17:

I had a small idea I really want to try out. When I've finished doing my round off of the horses names, I could do an action to show I'm enjoying it like some kind of high. A comparison I can think of is a scene from "Breaking Bad" where Walter has just confronted some drug dealers, goes back to his car and releases his high by hitting his steering wheel. I could do a similar action like punching the air and saying "YES!" something to show for a brief moment that I've relapsed and I love it. I could also act as though it's a moment where I've shown what I feel but then I have to hide it, I've noticed how I'm, acting so I stop although probably still have a little smirk on my face.



29/3/17:

Today was an attempt to run through the first act although we kept stopping to try and improve certain aspects of it. Today I did have quite a few ideas for small moments in my scenes and today I actually suggest them:

The first was to tap Jocks on the head in an aggressive manner when calling him Kemosabe. Since he feels he may lose his job he wants to get across the seriousness of the situation and also fulfill his urge to hit jocks to some capacity. It also makes him seem more imposing and serious than he did before. The idea worked when we tried it out and now there's more tension and aggression in the scene than there was before.

I suggested that Max doesn't hit my head when he does, every time he does it, he does it so hard I forget my next line. I suggested that he do it after I say "Can't have reds in the yard" and then as he says shut up, he can hit me. It doesn't say he slaps me in the script so changing it to this seems more fitting and actually gives him more reason to slap me since I keep talking. Before the slap seemed a bit more random.

Also we had to block a moment Chloe and I forgot about, where I go to grab her hand after hearing about what happened to her. I have to grab her hand but it's meant to be very awkward. I thought we were doing it too fast and that it should linger a bit however it seems as though it should be a very natural grab of the hand followed by a quick rejection from her. After the session I thought that I could be just trying to comfort her and maybe gesture towards her suggesting that it's OK and I'll help her. I do have to rehearse with Chloe some more since its awkward and doesn't feel right. It feels pretty forced if anything.

Sally said we have to go through the scenes (especially monologues) and visualise the things we're describing. It may help to externalise it. Also i'm thinking of setting a goal to go through my script and consider my goal and motivation for almost everything I do, I already have my detailed back story so it might not be difficult. I thought about doing this after the next thing i'll talk about. It again, might help to externalise.

Today I feel I was actually pretty productive since, I didn't really speak to anyone outside of the scene, I was overall pretty focused, displayed patience and I suggested my ideas and they did benefit the flow of the scene and helped to bring out the intended emotions a little better. There were a couple issues though, I did forget a couple of my cues despite knowing the lines themselves so I need to practice them a little more. The other was that the scene was very slow paced although this may have been due to the aforementioned cue forgetting. This scene is supposed to have a slightly tense feel to it since it's about and argument and it feels too slow to represent that.

31/3/17:


We also ran through the most of act 2 and I thought about how the Jockey and how he should act. His dialogue is just him explaining the feeling he gets when he walks out to start the day. I feel that the way he's explaining this may sound like he wants to impress them.

The way I've decided to play him for now is a little like Jim Carrey from "Ace Ventura". Someone who's very full of themselves and wants to be better off than he is. I get the feeling he really doesn't like his horse since he calls it a bastard when it interrupts his short speech about the joys of going over the downs. The fact he says "You wade through the bullshit" implies he really doesn't like where he is. When I talk about my diaphragm, I'm going to hit it to show how hard it is, or at least what he thinks it is. Doing this is really a way to differentiate him from the other two as well as give him a more comedic personality which is what his dialogue seems to be implying. It also adds a sense of energy to my performance. Trying it out went pretty well and I intend to keep him like this.

Today's run of act 1 (Which was a speed run for blocking and line learning) went very well, I didn't forget any lines although there were one or two moments I stuttered for a second due to that we were going quite fast. Other than that I was pretty focused and we all got the act done fairly quickly and efficiently.




2/4/17:

While rehearsing the script today, I wondered if, during their last scene, Mr Tillotson and Miss Motrom actually give up their faith or if they've given up staying away from their addictions. I say "That's no good, religion" and "I tried to get it in me, the manger and the tomb. I've just ended up punctured all over" This seems to heavily imply that he never really believed it at all and that he just uses it as a means to help himself. Initially the wording of everything in this scene felt like there was some ambiguity to it, however trying it again it seems pretty clear that they (or at the very least Mr Tillotson) have given up with believing in god or just stopped pretending. They both seemed to clearly renounce their faith. This fits in with what I had speculated before about him really only using it for help and needing the assistance of someone who would be strict enough to keep him on the right path. He even tries to keep her from giving in, which when you add that bit of information onto everything, gives him more motivation for wanting her to stop and stay on the right path. If she gives up then he has no one to help him.

The other angle is if they still give into their addictions. This is something that is never answered, so my guess is that they did give in eventually. Mr Tillotson gave in as soon as he was alone and Miss Motrom gave into her urge to drink although she did get to because I knock the drink out of her hand. The ending as a whole seems a tad lighthearted and suggests that they may be OK but since they gave in so easily I feel they would go through cycles of giving in and relapse at least a few times. They may have hope when they leave Epsom but I feel they may have given in and maybe tried stopping again at some point down the line.

I wanted to see if this was actually plausible so I looked up what can cause a relapse from addiction and it confirmed that people who are in environments that remind them of using or the reasons why they got addicted are likely to be tempted. The two of them openly admit that they will be tempted when they try and get back home. For example Mr Tillotson says "I don't know if I'll make it, they'll be crap games spilling out from the fair all over there." This is in reference to the ways he would be able to gamble with the people that hang out around the area. The fact he admits he's doubtful, he just had a relapse as well the fact he has and will be surrounded by opportunities to gamble doesn't imply that he would be able to resist for very long. So going by some psychological evidence, he is likely to give up.

Thinking about this has made the character a little more fleshed out and gives more purpose to the moment in question. When he says to Miss Motrom "Let's have a prayer", I'm going to play it as though it's a desperate attempt to help himself by helping her. I do still believe that he cares for her as a person and as someone who has gone through bad times, he does sympathise with her a lot and wants her to get better. Doing this is his best chance to keep himself away from it all and he's messed it up by giving in and potentially ruining it forever. He certainly regrets doing it and tries to make it right for that brief moment.



Links:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-brain-gets-addicted-to-gambling/

https://www.promises.com/articles/addiction/common-relapse-triggers/

https://counsellorsam1.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/632/

https://www.theguardian.com/observer/osm/story/0,,482474,00.html

Epsom Downs Rehearsal: Blog 3

14/3/17:

Today I thought it would be a good time to get started on creating the background for Mr Tilliotson. I will be working with the information given in the text and form my backstory around that in order to make him more three dimensional and make his motivations in scenes clearer to me. Something we were meant to make up was an object that our character holds dear. An idea I had was that of a letter. The letter is from Jim's wife explaining the reasons why she has left. There were a few reasons something like this came to mind as an idea:

- Mr Tillotson sells anything he can that's worth any money so it only made sense to give him an item that is worth nothing except in sentimental value. I was thinking of giving him an item worth something but it's so dear he can't sell it such as a necklace belonging to his wife or something along those lines, but that didn't really make much sense to me since he has sold everything else, including things that aren't his.

- He comments to Miss Motrom that he sold his children. I initially didn't know if he was speaking literally or if he meant something else by it. After a while and when I thought up the letter, I decided that he didn't and that he lost them by some other means. My idea is that his addiction got so bad to the point where he was selling his children's possessions or vital items in the house just to get a bit of money to gamble with. He was caught and then his wife left soon after but left him a letter explaining why. He uses the term "sold/sell" since it was his greed and lust for money that led to him losing them.

After thinking that up I thought it may not make sense since he says the incident with the rolls Royce is where he decided to stop gambling and seek help with religion. However there was a simple solution tot that after thinking about it for a minutes. I can just place that after his wife leaving him and make the incident at Roberto's derby the final straw which pushes him to stop and seek help. If anything that fits and just confirms how severe his addiction is, it solidifies everything he says in his monologue near the beginning.

I still haven't decided what kind of background he's come from yet, whether he was well off financially or not. My thoughts are that either way,m the tragedy of the situation is still there although if he was on the slightly more wealthy side of the spectrum then it may create a bigger contrast for him and a greater motivation for wanting to change.



15/3/17:

Today I continued trying to develop Mr. Tillotson and decided on a few specific elements of his background.

Firstly, how old he is? His age is never stated in the play but I feel he has to be old enough to have this addiction slowly escalate over a long time but young enough to believably still be learning how to cope with that, so it can give him a slight degree of inexperience and as if he's still weak and isn't making much progress. If he was older it may seem as though he would've have already gone through this which I wouldn't really believe and I just find the idea of a younger, slightly more naive man going through this to be more interesting and possibly relatable. So I've come to the conclusion that he is 34 and was born on the 26th of may 1943, 34 years before the date of this play which is June 3rd, 1977.

I decided on where he grew up. He lived with his family at 2 Orchard drive, Ashtead in surrey and went to the primary school there. The main reason I chose this kind of area is because it seems as though it's an area where he'd be financially well off and it's not that far from Epsom downs so it's a place he would realistically go to at some point to spark the initial craving for gambling. Also the fact he goes from growing up financially secure to what he ends up as would create more tragedy for me to portray in that first speech.

He first went to Epsom downs when he was 18 for a friends birthday and he put a small bet on even though it didn't thrill him all that much, it was only when he went back a couple more times it started to feel exciting to him.

He moved to a cheap flat in Lensbury way after losing his house to pay off the incident at Roberto's derby and that flat is only a couple miles from St Augustine's church of England church so it would be very likely that he'd be aware of and could have easy access to. The fact he could walk to it quite easily provides some convenience to help him get on the right track. These addresses/places are real and geographically correlate with the location of Epsom. The area is also close to where Miss Motrom Lives so they could easily see each-other if they wished.



16/3/17:

Today I developed my character's back story a little more adding by a few more specifics to him but also researched the psychology of compulsive gambling. I feel that may help me get into his head a little more, see if it backs up any assumptions I've made or can give me new ideas for how he should act.


I made up a few additional details such as:

- He was close to his parents and older sister, his dad was around since he was never drafted into world war II since he was considered too old and out of shape to be even considered. This meant he had a full family growing up and had a relativly good life. His father was an accountant so they were reasonably wealthy

- He has two favorite songs, one quality and the other he remembers fondly. The former is "I'm into Something Good" by Herman's hermits. This is a song that he just finds very catchy and memorable. it came out when he was about 21 and he's loved it ever since they heard it. The other song is "Roses are Red" by Bobby Vinton. This is a song that they both loved when they were dating and I even thought of them having a rendition of it playing at their wedding.


I was thinking if whether or not I could incorporate the letter into a scene such as when I scramble to get some money or betting slips out, I could find it and look at it briefly to give him a moment of conflict. I'm not overall familiar with those later scenes yet but I want to see if I can or just think if it would even work because while it would be very good for me, it may be too ambiguous and out of place for the audience.



Research:

Today I also did some research into the psychology of compulsive gambling or addiction in general. I had made assumptions about gambling addiction before because of the way it's depicted in media. What I found seems to back up my claims. I found an article from Psychology Today detailing the condition.

The basic psychology of the the addiction (as well as others such as drugs and alcohol of which the effects are very similar) is as follows. A chemical called dopamine is the chemical released whenever you do anything pleasurable or exciting, that could mean anything such as eating, sex or even gambling and drugs. It is released and if enough of it is released it can create a craving for more of it. However if you do something that releases a lot of dopamine, you have to wait a a long time for it to replenish, otherwise the next high time you do that activity, it won't be as satisfying or fulfilling. It may even just intentionally give out less since you've experienced it so much. This explains why so many gamblers make bigger and bigger bets as time goes on. They want to recapture the first time they did it. This makes perfect sense for Mr Tillotson. My initial thought was that he probably always puts generally the same amount of money on the races and that he only started getting really serious not too long before everything went down. However with this in mind the most logical decision for his addicted mind to make is to to just slowly up his bets every time.


The fact that his wife left him due to the addiction reaching dangerous levels is a very common occurrence, it can also result in people losing their jobs or their homes, which does happen to him in his backstory, both in the script and what I've made up.

The fact he also doesn't stop until it almost kills him is fairly realistic too, the article says "Unfortunately this realization normally only surfaces when a problem gambler hits rock bottom". People like this generally stay in a state of denial before reaching the bottom and finally trying to stop. That's how I feel it went down with Mr Tillotson and it's even confirmed in the script.

The article claims that for most male addicts, the addiction begging in adolescence, so me thinking that he got started around 18 or 19 was a fairly accurate estimate. This again means that by the time he's 30 or so that's when the addiction reaches it's peek and results in something horrible happening, if he were any older it would seem as though his escalation to that point takes too long.

A major symptom is that of becoming irritable when not gambling but thinking about it and I've definitely considered that for when he's with Miss Motrom, he's certainly uncomfortable while at the tracks since he knows he isn't allowed to bet and if he does it could end badly.

it explains why he would steal other peoples things to get more money to bet with. It's a very common thing that quite a few people have ended up in prison for.


17/3/17:

Today I took part in a hot seating exercise in which I had to explain the story of the letter Mr. Tillotson has and answer some questions about my character. I explained my backstory pretty well and it seemed to get a good reaction. I had thought up the backstory thoroughly, or so I thought. There were a couple of questions that hadn't occurred to me before and they were:

- Why did I get into religion? - The answer was simple, religion is often a place to turn to for recovering addicts since it has strict rules to follow for whatever their promised reward by although most people like this seem to follow it for self betterment.

- Why do I preach? - The most natural and logical thing that came to me was the idea of him wanting to help people. He knows how addictive it can be to weak minded people. His preaching scene with Miss Motrom is his attempt to stop other people making the same mistakes he did, whether or not using religion is the right thing is something he, himself is unsure about but it can get the job done.

- What is my relationship with Miss Motrom? - My relationship with her late in the play isn't too hard since we seem to get along and I show that I care for her but I didn't know how they were when initially meeting. I don't get the impression that they ever disliked each-other since they had a similar goal and working together would be ideal for them so I felt they've always had respect for each-other. I don't see anything romantic between them but they certainly are close in some capacity.

We rehearsed the Hugh and Jocks scene again and I still feel he isn't confrontational or angry enough. It's certainly more so than last time but I think while performing it, I was scared of being a tad over the top and unintentionally dialed back on the anger which didn't work that well. It's weird, I feel I'm starting to understand Hugh but I just need to experiment with how he acts a bit more. I have an emotional state for his as I've mentioned before but I just haven't performed it properly yet, it's still fairly downplayed and bland.

I was confused while performing because I had no idea what the line "Say you, bad, little Indian" meant. This made me think that Jocks is supposed to actually be Indian since Hugh also calls him Kemosabe. I looked up what that meant and apparently it's what Tonto calls the ranger in "The Lone Ranger". The only conclusion that I can come to is that he's saying it to assert some dominance in this scene since I believe in "The Lone Ranger" Tonto calls him this when explaining something or talking down to him, so from that perspective it would make sense.

A small development to my first scene with Miss Motrom scene is that I now put the sign down to give my monologue. Trying this out definitely allowed me to be more expressive. I noticed that through my body language I conveyed the sense of frustration and regret I had mentioned before, certainly better than I had previously. I'm able to show the moments where I'm remembering money by acting as if I'm holding it and then other moments where I can show my tragedy and frustration with my situation. So overall the speech went pretty well today with what I could remember and added quite a bit of passion to it.




18/3/17:

Today I  had the idea of recording my Mr tillostson fast speech to memorise it faster. I usually find I learn things faster when listening to them rather than reading them. It certainly took a while to record since I was reading it into the microphone and kept messing up but when it was done, I started listening to it over and over. I'm more or less certain this will help me learn it faster but we'll see.

Also, Chloe and I rang each-other to see if our backstories didn't have any glaring contradictions between them. Thankfully our stories seem to intertwine very well and the only things that really needed to be changed were the addresses of the churches and and make our houses closer together. I was surprised they synced up as well as they did.

Thinking about incorporating the letter again, I've come to the conclusion that to show it to the audience wouldn't make any sense since it's never mentioned and would be too vague for them to piece together what it is. I'm still keeping that back story element since I feel it really does suit him and adds some really relatable motivation to him, that's what's helping me be more expressive with him but showing it in the play wouldn't work unfortunately



Links:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/gambling-disorder-compulsive-gambling-pathological-gambling

https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200411/addiction-pay-attention

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/the-psychology-of-gambling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BTGgCEFuQw

Epsom Downs Rehearsal: Blog 2

I have been given the parts of Mr. Tillotson, Hugh, Jockey, Drunk 2 and a Lester Piggott fan in this play.


1/3/17:

Today I got to do my first scene scene as Hugh. He is a stable lad who is having a big disagreement with Jocks and going by the stables rules they have to have a boxing match to settle the dispute. This was my first day of trying out playing him and when doing it I really didn't know how he should be played, as in if he is aggressive or worried. It became clear very quickly that I am the aggressor.

A note I was given was to make him like a private school boy with a lot of aggression, so very well spoken and sneering or conniving. I tried it out but it honestly didn't feel right to me. I pointed out that the script even suggests he is isn't like that. For example the text says "You really are a little red, in't you" which suggests he's more common. When I tried it, it did add to the contrast but it made it seem as though it was a clash of social classes rather than two people of the same class disagreeing on something which is also just more interesting to me. Also saying "In't you" in a posh voice sounds very off. Trying him out as common seemed a bit more natural, even though I don't exactly understand the character yet. Something I need to do is look into what his motivation is and what the dispute is actually about. The only thing I'm certain of as of now is that their political ideologies are involved in some way since he calls him a "Red" as an insult, which refers to anyone with a labour/socialist view point. After asking. it seems as though Hugh is a blue/conservative which would definitely explain the clash since they're two parties that have generally had heavily contrasting policies.  This will help to make his aggression more understandable and easier to bring out. As of now it's not coming across very well and I seem a tad too calm for the situation so it needs some work. I'm glad I got to try him out.


2/3/17:

I got to try out my first scene as Mr Tillotson. He is a compulsive gambler who has turned to religion in what I assume is an attempt to change his life style. The scene is with Miss Motrom, and I deliver my monologue detailing the tipping point where I went from being a compulsive gambling addict to turning to religion.

My first impression is that he isn't a bad person, he's just a man who got too addicted to something and it back fired on him. He has no intent to hurt anyone, his addiction just gets the better of him. So I feel there's potentially a lot of tragedy to him, With that in mind though I didn't bring it across today, mainly due to the paragraphs being quite long and hard to read at points. Today as a first try was bland as usual so this means I have to try and bring across a man who's got almost nothing left, someone who's not what he used to be. Something else I'm thinking of is giving him a strong tone of regret throughout his speech, as if he's looking back in retrospect and thinking it was incredibly stupid despite the fact he liked doing it and would probably do it again.

We ran through that a couple of times and it was very slow paced when trying it. Something I will have to do is pick up the pace a fair bit to maintain the audiences interest because the events outlined in the speech are quite tragic and the fact that it's seemingly self inflicted makes it all the more worse. I do see a lot of potential in him as a character and from the first read we did, he's definitely the most prominent and developed of the characters I have. He is the character I will look into the most. I want to look into what he may be thinking in these scenes. For example when he's gone through these moments of reckless gambling, what is going through his head? I find the psychology of it quite interesting so I will research what people in his situation often go through in order to understand him a bit more.


Research: 

I looked more into the political dispute between Hugh and jocks to try and contexualise it. Something I found out was that the Labour government were in power from 1974-1979, meaning they were in power for both the stable lads strike mentioned in the play and during the play itself.

Something I found was that there was a dramatic increase in worker's strikes during the 1970's, especially when Labour was in power. Worker's unions were becoming more a common practice and they were given more power than they had before. This lead to the unions sometimes abusing their power and going on strike fairly often. During the time this play takes place, the unions were in negotiations to have more freedom to make demands to their employers rather than the government. This was done so it would put less strain on the Labour party themselves. Things got so bad at points that a period of the 1970's was named the "Winter of Discontent" were strikes were so rampant.

This is a matter that was heavily satirised in the 1971 film "Carry On at Your Convenience", in which the workers of a factory are constantly forced to strike by their union leader who keeps making very petty and unreasonable complaints/demands. The strikes did have some people who didn't want to get involved or thought they were too frequent and petty but were forced to strike or lose there jobs otherwise. This is where I think Hugh fits in, he mentions to Mr Pierce "(Jocks) Thinks all the horses should go on strike" and that "We can't have red's in the yard". This seems to heavily imply that Hugh isn't in favour of going on strike and that having someone who supports the Labour government would be a bad influence to everyone else.  I get the feeling Hugh might not think his job is perfect, but is good enough and he can't give it up and waste time doing something he doesn't agree with. Looking up and clarifying what the dispute could be about was actually quite interesting and gives him a bit more motivation for what he's doing. With this perspective in mind I feel I may add in some moments of him looking fed up since Jocks may have talked about the strike or mentioned his political beliefs and Hugh made an assumption and got annoyed. It something I will try and get in unless it gets overshadowed by the aggression but I'll give it a go.




7/3/17:


We did a basic blocking of the preaching scene for Miss Motrom and I. I have to stand on a box and deliver the speech in a way that sounds off. This is specified in the script. I'm certainly not experienced with preaching so I feel the unnatural delivery was ironically natural. It came across as though I was inexperienced and like I was emulating a typical reverend or religious stereotype. This is a good thing. I feel I could probably go a bit further with it and add little moments and movements to it, since I feel it's fairly dull and doesn't bring across any small comedic potential. I was thinking that during the part where she takes over doing the preaching I can do something other than just stand there. If I did that, it would look flat and it would be a visual bore to the audience. I'm not sure what I'd do because I have the potential to go overboard and take attention away from her, which isn't good since she's the one who's talking.

My first impression of the jockey is that he seems to be a fairly comedic character, especially with how I'm supposed to walk on my knees while playing him. That idea alone is probably enough to get a laugh but since he's got so little time on stage, that I feel he needs to make an impression on the audience with the 5 or 6 lines that he has. In the first scene he just comes out on his knees, tells the audience about his routine in detail and then rides off.

A point of confusion for me today was that when playing the Jockey, I didn't know whether or not he was talking to the audience, himself or the others in the scene. I found it jarring at first that he spoke to the audience since I thought no one else did it. I remembered though that Lord Rack does it and then the derby stakes and the derby course do it later on so I came to the conclusion that when he starts with his "I walk out into the ring speech", he's talking to the audience although there are one or two points where he does address the others in the scene. In retrospect of today, the performance I gave seemed a bit confused since I was going back and forth on whether or not to speak to the audience or to myself/the other characters. I know what I'm doing now but I seemed directionless earlier although I still feel I can play it up more.

Something I have to keep in mind though is the actual style of the play which as far as I was aware was naturalism. I looked up what style the play is to try and figure out it's key elements. The page I found says that it's "an epic version of a naturalistic slice-of-life play" so it seems to imply that it is a mixture of both epic theatre and naturalism. Mainly naturalism because in most dialogue scenes people aren't really doing anything to Brechtian. They often engage in what seems to be a fairly naturalistic conversation, they don't constantly look forward when talking and seem as if it's intention is to show actual emotion. The play certainly has some strange elements such as the horses being played by people and the fact some people do talk to the audience. So the description I found is very fitting. It's a combination of the two styles, the acting in conversations is generally slightly heightened naturalism and there are scenes of epic theatre such as the Jockey's scenes. Since it's a play showing how several different people and social classes interact with the same event, it would probably want to get the differences and contrasts across in a fairly easy manner. Epic theatre is doesn't want people to be immersed in the story or world, it wants the audience to be aware it's watching a play and get it's message across by presenting it and making them think about it. I will admit I'm a tad skeptical at this point about it being this style. It's interesting and certainly possible but I'm just not sure if it's the plays intention. With certain moments such as characters giving tragic monologues, it seems like it could go either way to be honest. My guess as of now is probably more towards that it wants you to sympathise and feel for these characters but as I go along I could discover I was wrong.

There are a few aspects of my performance I feel I need to work on for everyone:

- Pace, since when I rehearse I can slow the pace of a scene down and we can't get a good feel of what it would be like. So try and be faster when possible.
- Delivery - This is basically paying attention to every aspect of how my lines are coming across such as whether or not the emotional intention is there or if I can critique it to make it better.
- Characterization - This is where I make sure all the distinctions between my characters are there and they don't blend together at all.



8/3/17:

For me, today was mainly spent on the blocking of the derby racing sequence. This scene basically involves about 7 of us behind a bar/rail, which moves with us around the stage since we're holding it. This shows a progression of time and how many races have occurred throughout the day. We have a pole that splits into 3 segments to use as the barrier. This was quite an issue since anytime we'd move, the pole would come apart. This is mainly because of the fact that Becky brings the pole out during her speech as the derby course and unfolds. I'm not sure if we're going to keep that or figure out another way to get the pole on but for now it seems a tad inconvenient to properly use although to be fair, it was the first time doing it so we can just try again and see what happens.

Something we were told and I kept in mind throughout the whole session was to keep the rail on us and act as if were leaning over it. A good way to do this is to try and keep it pinned to certain point on your body, for example I kept the pole pinned against my belly button and it remained level throughout the latter half of the day, during the first half it kept dipping and just looked like we were holding it.

I play Mr Tillotson throughout this sequence where as everyone else alternates. For my character, it shows what he's really like, and he's doing it because he's getting a kick out of it and it really gives him a thrill. Even though he's using other peoples money, he's having fun and from what I can tell, he seems genuinely hopeful and optimistic about his chances. It seems as though he's overly optimistic though and my assumption is that's a common trait of compulsive gamblers and their psychology. That is something I will research very soon.



9/3/17:

I read some reviews of the play and it reminded me that the play is trying to get across some social commentary with each of the several story arcs. The play does not stick to showing one type of individual throughout the play, it shows more or less all types of classes to see how they cope and/or are affected by this. It shows the richer more wealthier side and how they're arrogant and happy with how they profit from it and it shows the lower classes and how they can benefit or be at a detriment when gambling is involved, so it shows a wide spectrum of the types of people this affects.

One theme that came up is that of freedom. Quite a few people such as Mr Tillotson, Miss Motrom, Sandy and Margaret are stuck in a life style or situation they don't want to be in so their aspiration is to escape that. This made me think (Despite that the play may have a cynical view on everything) that there may be a theme of hope in there as well whether it be real or false hope. That fits well with the central event of gambling. While I'm not really sure if Mr Tillotson represents a social class in particular, I feel he does represent the dangerous side of all this, how it can be very addicting and how it can potentially ruin peoples lives. He shows the tragedy of something like this where as others show the benefits of being wealthy or being an owner.


I got to perform my Hugh and Jocks scene again with Jack. It had the same issues as last time such as lacking any real anger or aggression. I was told to look at the character Daryl from "The Walking Dead" to get an idea. He's a character I'm familiar with and keeping him in mind, it seems as though he won't be full on shouting or anything. It could be more of a subtle anger like it's being restrained to intimidate, kind of like he can snap at any second. Something I did think was that he might have a slight smirk on his face. He does mention that hitting Jocks would be a "Pleasure drooled over" so my impression is that he is enjoying it.

Something I need to do is make him more confrontation and get more up in Jocks face. As of now I feel I'm playing him in a relaxed yet annoyed manor like I suggested when looking up his possible political belief. Other than the accent, he doesn't feel that different from how I'm playing Mr Tillotson so far. That's not a good thing. I really need to make him seem different so soon I want to try out being more angry and giving off the impression that I want to fight to resolve the issue. Even the intended sense of irritation didn't come across so I'm still underplaying everything really


Links:

http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16703

http://www.historyandpolicy.org/trade-union-forum/meeting/the-labour-party-and-the-trade-unions

https://libcom.org/history/1978-1979-winter-of-discontent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H04y-SKwhBg

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/1960-radicalisation.htm

http://www.whatsonstage.com/bath-theatre/reviews/05-2012/epsom-downs-salisbury_4416.html

http://www.grahamstevenson.me.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=690&Itemid=52

Epsom Downs Rehearsal: Blog 1

Introduction:

This blog will detail my rehearsal process for our production of "Epsom Downs" by Howard Brenton. I have been given a few characters and this will show how I develop and cope with developing them to get the do a performance standard.



Rehearsal Action Plan:

I have a list of goals that I need to achieve throughout this process. This list will prioritise my objectives showing which order I plan to do them in and show the target dates for when I wish to achieve them:

Objectives (Highest priority listed first)


 - Being prepared - This means the basic yet important demands of a being in a rehearsal situation; This includes, being on time so I don't miss anything, remaining focused on my work so I shouldn't talk while I'm not supposed to and have all my equipment such as, my script, pen, pencil. This is so I don't waste any time not rehearsing and everything moves along faster so the final result will be more prepared as a result, it may not sound like much but messing around preparing when you're already supposed to be ready for a scene wastes a lot of time. This also includes any jobs I am given and responsibilities. This will be for the entire rehearsal period.

- Research - Addiction and the extremes people go to - Something I feel I need to look up is the mind set of compulsive gamblers and the psychology of their addiction. My main character, Mr Tilliotson, is a compulsive gambler and he lists some pretty extreme circumstances in the script as to what his addictions has lead him to do, so I'm going to look up any material to do with addiction to try and see if it helps me get in to his mind set. - My goal to achieve this will be at the latest, 25th of March.

- Research - Turning to God - Something my character and the person he's with does is convert to religion after going through horrible things such as traumatic moments in life, bad decisions or just poor life styles. This is a very common occurrence especially with prisoners or drug addicts, so it seems, the worse the crime, the more likely it may happen. I want to look into why this  happens and in some cases why it works and why it doesn't. This will give me a greater idea of where he's coming from and whether or not his faith is genuine. - My goal to achieve this will be at the latest, 26th of March.

- Research - The Era - The play is set in 1977 (The year it was first shown) and I feel that looking into things such as betting culture, peoples views on it and views on gambling back then. I want to research the derby itself and see if I can find out anything about it or any tidbits of the time period that could help me understand the context of my character - My goal to achieve this will be at the latest, 26th of March however with all three of those research points, I mean to have a decent amount of it, if I come across anymore afterwards that can help me develop it further that's fine but by that date I want to have a good enough amount to achieve my goal of getting into his mind set or at least understanding it.

- Understand the performance style - This means looking over the text and researching it to get an idea of how it should be performed just so my interpration meshes well with what's intended.

- Create a detailed backstory - After I have done research of the era and subject matter relating to the character, I'm going to create a backstory for him around the events listed in the play. For example I want to know how he got introduced to gambling or what the line about selling his children actually meant. I want this backstory to a have it's key elements filled in by the 31st of March, after all the research is done and I have had time to think it over.

- Line learning - This one is self explanatory really although I will have to prioritise certain moments in the script. The part where I have to list 22 betting options very fast in one breath will be very difficult to learn although I know I can do it. I will still have to split up the scenes and give them dates to be learnt by at the latest.

    - Mr Tillotson act 1 lines to be learnt by the 21st of March
    - Hugh lines learnt by the 21st of March
    - Mr Tillotson fast betting options list learnt by the 28th of March
    - Mr Tillotson act 2 lines to be learnt by the 28th of March
    - Jockey Lines to be learnt by the 28th of March

Again these dates are at the latest so I will try and get them done beforehand if possible. I am putting these lower than research since I feel that will help provide greater context to my lines and I get a better feel of the characters arc in the scene, it also means that the sooner I start researching, the more fleshed out my characters can be.

- Character distinction - How the characters/performance differ - I need to experiment with how all the characters act and how I can differentiate them, be it with an accent, mannerisms or any other details. This isn't something I have set a target for since it's something I plan to do through the entire process up until it finishes. I could say that I should have clear distinctions and a good idea of how to play them by the end of the month but I still want to experiment after that and constantly develop.

- Blocking - This is so I can remember all my entrances and exits as well as my positioning and actions on stage to make the play (and the rehearsal development of it) smoother and more efficient, so I will be marking everything down when I can and make sure to be in position a few minutes before my scene to practice a transition so everything gets up to a good standard as soon as possible. I hope to have the blocking down by the 31st of March.

- Horse riding - This is where I have to ride on James's shoulders. When Initially trying this out I was surprised that it worked so well and was fairly easy to remain balanced, however I had to change my leg position when on him to more like an actual jockey would have it and not be so obviously trying to balance. Since I'm perfectly comfortable with being on his shoulders and we've rehearsed it a few times this on shouldn't take long at all and I should have this down by the 17th of March.

I will be writing about my progress on these targets throughout my rehearsal blog.

Audio Performance Blog 3: Ensemble Work Rehearsal

This blog will detail the development/research, rehearsal and analysis of my audio performance pieces. We have been tasked with developing and performing a big ensemble radio play and also have 3 individual pieces to do with solo performance. This blog is about the former and the next blog will be about the latter. The play is called "People Snogging in Public Places" by Jack Thorne.


3/1/17:

Initial Thoughts:

So today we found out the casting and surprisingly, I got James. This is quite a daunting task since James is the main character of this play has a lot of dialogue and is definitely the most developed character in the play. On the initial read through I had no idea what to make of the play or how it could be performed. I read for the character for about a third of it and he had so much to say, I won't say that I wasn't intrigued by it and some of the weirder elements of the play I did find very funny which showed some comedic potential for the play. However when reading it there was also a lot of dramatic potential for a lot of these scene especially the ending or at least with the vague idea I had of what was going on. Admittedly I couldn't follow it too well upon first reading it and I would usually put more of a focus on body language if this were a regular play since I usually think of that first and then it influences my vocal delivery. However that's cut out entirely so not having the physical base to work with made my delivery (Mixed with the fact it was my first reading) pretty bland overall. I have a lot responsibility in this piece, if I'm bland then the play overall will not live up to it's full potential at all. So I see potential for this play I just need to look at it more.



4/1/17:

Today we did our first full read through of the play. It went well but there was some definite room for improvement especially on my part. I had only just been cast as James and was obviously not too familiar with the material at this point.

Firstly I found the script very difficult to read as in since there's so much dialogue I found it difficult to keep up although that maybe due to it being the first full read through as the character. Also there was a lot of pauses, transitional moments and a lot of full stops that on the first read, made some of it seem unnatural and hard to read properly. As well as that I was just stuttering an awful lot, so with this focus on just trying to actually read it, I very rarely fully characterised James. This also meant that the pacing was very slow any time I had to read something. There are moments where it will go from me talking and then it transitions into a moment in the past and I didn't how to make them sound good, any time they had to flow it sounded very unnatural since I was always unsure if I should set it up as if the character's voice over is anticipating it or if the voice should cut off abruptly. Either way it didn't sound right.

My main criticism in my feedback was that I lack any real variation in my voice. In some scenes I did well but in others I was very one note. I put this down to not having read it before but I still feel I could've done better. I can tell that the scenes do have very varying emotions, I just haven't worked them out yet or really got a full grasp on everything.

Something I feel I must rehearse, is how to properly act with punctuation marks since with full stops, I often ignored them making the paragraph seem to fast and then other times I'd make the pause beat last for too long so either way it wasn't well executed especially with the previously mentioned transitional moments. So really I had the same issue as I mentioned in "The Christmas Tree" where the punctuation didn't seem to be well timed. The rule seemed to be that when I come to a full stop, stop for about a full second, possibly.

As I said there were no characteristics although when I thought about it afterwards the only quality I thought of that I could bring forth or identify vocally was the fact he's socially awkward. This could be shown by a use of pauses or slowing down his speech and adding an uneasy tone to it when ever he's interacting with anyone. I'll have to read it more to get a good feel on that though.


13/1/17:

After the read today I was thinking about what James is like and how he should sound. I feel I'm giving him a delivery that's very similar to how I actually talk although when reading him, I get reminded of a certain character. He reminds me of Will from "The Inbetweeners" in some regards. Everything about the way he talks, in terms of when he's talking about himself implies that he's fully aware of why he's unpopular but he's just grown to be comfortable and even embrace it in some regards. He doesn't like the fact he's unpopular and genuinely hates some of the reasons why but he also looks at the benefits of it. I get a slight optimistic feeling from him at certain points during the play, especially when he's talking about being a library monitor and how the quiet does him some good. There is a slightly optimistic tone to him at some points. Although at others he's acknowledging how rubbish his life is so he varies a lot in terms of how he feels although it seems as though he really just wants to be normal. Going back to the optimism, he's aware that his uncle has a lot of issues but still looks on the positive side of having him there, how ever that changes when he realises that Patrick may ruin his chances of making a friend.

This is showing that I will have to look even more at this script to pin point the emotional variants from moment. The plays tone as well as James's emotions shift a lot so I will have to do the same and show this other wise the one note performance will seem very out of place, some moments won't flow very well and certain parts will probably be boring.

The idea I had last time of varying his speech when interacting seems to have developed slightly. I will keep the same basic principle but I'll have to take the emotion any other person would feel and change it a little bit. For example when he's talking to Pete and he says "No. No.That'd be great" I could put some pauses in there and increase the volume and excitement as it goes on to audibly hint at his sudden excitement/hope/happiness. It's little thing like that I want to experiment with to create some variation and bring some life into him.

A problem I'm having with reading this script is when I get to longer paragraphs such as my breakdown near the end. I feel I have to read it rather fast to reflect the panicky over thinking nature of it all but when I read it, I do stutter a lot and lose my place. It was an issue I had the last read through and it hasn't gone away. Even though we were told we don't have to memorise it, I really think I should look over the script quite a lot during the lead up other wise the final read will have absolutely no natural flow and seem forced. If it seems forced then all potential of emotional connection will be gone.


20/1/17:

Today we finished our third read through since we had to stop yesterday after 20 pages and this is the day where I got notes as we were reading the script which I found very helpful.

I got only a couple of notes and they were mainly to do with the way I was saying a certain line, usually it would be said with the wrong intention. For example when I say "Because truthfully I haven't got the symptoms of autism. Really." I originally said it like I'd been hiding it and I was ashamed to admit it, which didn't work in the context of the scene. it was meant to be said as if I was letting it out as if it was just a bad excuse I'd been using and I was being very serious about it. I tried that and it was much better.

A note of criticism I gave myself was that I felt my voice was too weak and not properly warmed up. There were points when reading (Especially during longer paragraphs) where my diction was very poor in a lot of places and the words just melded together. My projection wasn't great today either but is improving a bit from the last session.

While I have read them a fair few time I still think I need to get more familiar with the longer paragraphs since there is still a lot of stuttering and the natural tones and inflections go away when I'm noticeably struggling to read the lines

I've noticed despite my words blending together at points, I'm getting a little better with the punctuation and recognising the structure of certain lines. I even read a line wrong and then recognised how I should say it after I finished reading it. I can't remember hat the line was but I picked up on it whilst I was reading it. I even corrected myself before Sally could give me the note about it.

A good thing about this rehearsal was that I noticed an aspect of my performance that I think is key. I noticed I was differentiating my voice between narration and in scene dialogue. My voice when narrating is generally a bit more projected and feels like it has a lower tone, almost like during narration, he's fairly comfortable and has the slightest bit of confidence. Whereas when I'm talking to someone else in the play my voice is usually a tad quieter and awkward since that is how socially awkward people can interact. They could have confident thoughts but in real life they can't handle things as well. This is good since it makes a key distinction between if it's an interaction or exposition and that needs to be clear other wise it can be very confusing. In a film you can see when narration kicks in, but not here, so as of now I think I'm on the right track in that regard.

3/2/17:

Today we had another full read through of the script and it went very well.

My main note was that even though I'm doing very well and showing some good potential, I just need to read the script more. I have been reading it as often as I can but it's just the big paragraphs I struggle with. I think I just have trouble balancing the speed and the emotion of the scene while trying to keep track of where I am. I'll still keep reading it though whenever I can. This does bring up a problem however about the fact that if I still have this problem when actually recording, it may lose something since I'll still be looking at the script (Even though I'll have my head up) it may make me lose focus on the emotional tones in my voice and make me just focus on the script. I'll be honest that is something I really don't want to happen.

There is a part in the script where I start panicking and I'm supposed to start crying. I've never done this before, not even in a regular play so to try and just convey that through my voice could be difficult. I tried it out and found it initially quite hard to do although as I went along it got better. Something I tried doing was like what I mentioned with "Bioshock Infinite", just trying to reach an emotional place. I tried imagining I was in this scenario and and compare it o whenever I've been stressed to make some anger surface. Not much just enough so I could show frustration or fear. It seemed to work OK but is something I really need to practice.

One technique that I have used when rehearing was to make sure anytime I had to take an in-breath, I would move my head away from the microphone, so that the quick although still mostly inaudible breath isn't heard. I have problems with breath control in terms of knowing when/how to take small breaths in a sentence to keep the flow in the way most actors can, so they are less frequent than everyone else's. I often remedy it by carrying on with the sentence and when I get to the end of a sentence or a punctuation mark, I feel the need to do this. It does help with the flow a little bit and still cannot be heard which is a good thing.

During that same scene is a point where I have to shout "Sorry" to someone I run into by accident and to create the illusion that I'm moving and that I turn my head back to say sorry to him, I will actually turn my head backwards. It's like with what I saw in the session for "Family Guy" and acting out what you're actually doing. It really does help if it's planned out well and this when it's properly mixed into the background sound effects as well will suggest what my character is doing.


9/2/17:

With everything I've talked about and researched and rehearsed over this project I think I'm ready as the recording session is almost here. I'll certainly be rehearsing, reading and familiarising as much as I can. I still have a couple problems such as a dry throat occasionally and some horrible stuttering but everything else such as vocal energy, variation and timing I believe is up to a decent standard and I should deliver an effective performance. Two concerns I have are that being in the recording studio for the first time may make me nervous and something may change but that isn't very likely at all. Also I'm wondering how the stand I hold my script on will affect how I perform. I will have to find a place for it to go so it's not blocking me or pushing me too far back from the mic. In terms of page turning, I've done it so that I don't talk while I'm doing it so the slight pause can be cut out if need be. I'm going to hold a page up and have the next page visible just in case any sentences carry over which a couple of them do. I feel prepared so I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do.

Audio Performance Blog 2: Solo Work Rehearsal

For this side of the audio performance tasks we had to with finding a monologue, an advert and a children's story suitable to be told on radio and has to be with in what we consider to be our potential range of vocal performance.



Children's Story:


My original ideas for my story were children's TV shows which had narrators such as "Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids" and "Thomas the Tank Engine". They were stories I was familiar with and they had a large variety of characters and are narrated in a similar manner to how a children's audio book would be read. So it seemed to have the potential to show off quite a few voices and suggest every detail in the text. This turned out not to be the case however. I watched them with the visuals and then without and they seemed to embrace the fact they were working with a visual medium, so some of the adapted text has been lost to add it in with the animation since something can be shown rather than explained through narration. So this means that just as audio it didn't work despite their style of presentation so well and that meant it wouldn't be ideal.

Another reason I decided not to go with them was that since I watched them religiously during my childhood, I realised that when performing, I'm very likely to copy the narrator of the TV shows and not really present my own performance or interpretation, it would just be an impression. So I looked for a story that I was aware of but had never heard anyone read before. I looked for a while and found "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll. This is known for having many varied and strange characters for Alice to interact with. The character who I wanted to portray the most was the Cheshire Cat since he's a character that is so crazy but is also very comfortable with the fact he's crazy to the point where h can be described as mellow. He's just so delightfully weird and any version of him I see he's generally fun. So I want to be=ring across the calm yet crazy demeanour and just have the chapter be fun. So I went with a segment of chapter 6.

Something that I wanted to keep in mind is what I learnt from listening to Stephen Fry and Jim Dale read "Harry potter". I have to keep the tone of the chapter and individual moments in mind and use that for my delivery. The atmosphere of this book is very surreal so I The narration will done with a hint of uncertainty, almost as if everything Alice is seeing is being questioned and it's all unfamiliar.

The other thing I learnt from not just the book reading but other shows like "Knowing Me, Knowing You" was to try and vary characters as much as possible. For this I only have two character voices and a third voice for my narration. My ideas for character voices are as follows; Alice will be a rather well spoken girl since in the story she is generally quite patient and well mannered despite everything that's happening around her so making her sound innocent and likeable. She will have a higher pitched voice since she is a young girl. The cat will have a much deeper voice and one that suggests he is very relaxed and laid back, almost like he's saying she shouldn't care where she is, she should just enjoy it. Because of this, his words will be spoken a lot slower where as Alice's will be generally fast paced to show the desperation and eagerness to get out of wherever she is. The narration should evoke the atmosphere so when I say something such as "But he only grinned wider", I feel it has to be said so it seems perplexing, and it's from Alice's emotional point of view. I feel if I can get that right then the surreal nature of this story will come across, if the delivery is fairly bland then the story as a whole will just be a bit more mundane so I really need to get that right. The key here is to create the full picture through variation.


14/1/17:

Today I gave all of my ideas a go, recording it into my phone and listening to it back and in terms of my goal of varying them, I think I did a decent job. I feel that if I took out the "Said Alice" etc then it would still be easy to tell who is talking and I even noticed I was putting in the emotional tones for the characters even though they were not listed in the text. For example when Alice says "But I don't want to be among mad people" I made it sound as though she got frustrated by the fact she was getting nowhere, not rude, just frustrated. So today I showed a good deal of variation, whether or not it would be good in terms of volume and clarity, I'm not overly sure since I wasn't testing that out.

28/1/17:

As I mentioned before I didn't try and test the volume levels of the performance so I performed it and instead of listening to it on my phone, I imported it to my computer and listened to it through my speakers. The notes I made for myself were that I need to project a little more, although I put that down to being in my home while recording and don't like others hearing me rehearse. My clarity was fine and I could understand the recording very well. I think with this I'll probably stand fairly close to the microphone since nothing requires me to be loud, In fact, it more demands that I be quieter, more subtle and possibly mysterious so this will require some close delivery, not too close like I'm whispering but about 7 or 8 inches from the microphone to really get full clarity.




Contemporary Monologue:

I had a few options to choose from but wanted something I'd never done before. Also a goal for me with this entire assignment was to try and show range/versatility in my voice. So something I wanted to experiment with was the use of accents and I had two monologues that I thought would be suitable. My initial choice was Mickey's speech from "Blood Brothers" since the play takes place in Liverpool and I wanted to try that accent as well as the challenge of seeing if I could portray a child's playfulness, innocence and mischief purely through the voice. This was my speech for a while and it was even used for our microphone technique session. However I changed it because it was a comedic piece and all my pieces are fairly light-hearted or comedic at this point and it lacked some variation in that department. So I wanted to go with something else that had a focus on accent and was a bit more dramatic.

The one I changed it to was the Atticus Finch courtroom monologue from "To Kill a Mockingbird", I had already done this and when I thought about it, it seemed incredibly fitting for a radio piece. It's main focus is emotion and vocal tones, even in the film version there is very little movement besides pacing and the occasional hand gesture so those things can be easily removed and it would still have the same effect.

The main feature about this one I must take note of is pace. This is meant to be a very tense, suspenseful scene. The character is a lawyer sticking up for a black man during a time of prejudice and he feels this speech in the courtroom is his best chance to get his point across so he uses it to his fullest.  When he makes a point, he let's a pause happen to potentially give the people he's talking to time to think, even if it's only 2 or 3 seconds. I feel I have to use this at points in the speech such as after he says "She tempted a negro" or "The only good hand he possesses, his right". This will bring that aspect of him across, like he's trying to persuade them, where as if I cut the dramatic pauses out then it would go by much faster and nothing would sink in.

I said it's run on emotion and that emotion is restrained anger, since he's in a courtroom he can't show full on anger otherwise his reputation and authority could be jeopardised. He believes the man he's defending is actually innocent and the fact that the towns racial hatred is clouding their judgement is getting to him. I'm going to have to try and bring this across with specific moments in my voice. A line that comes to mid is "Rigid and time honoured code of our society", that line means he thinks there's no reason for this law to be around other than for the sake of traditionalism. At that point I could make that moment a bit angrier or have a slightly more aggressive tone. This will add variation but also having fluctuating moments in anger and moments of restraint so it will be engaging and keep the listeners attention by changing things up during the 2 and a half minute speech.


22/1/17:

I gave it a run through on my phone today and I have confidence in this as a radio piece. The way I think I should perform it is to stand about a meter or so away from the microphone and then project my lines as if I were in a courtroom, this means the microphone would pick me up very clearly but would have no distortion or popping sounds what so ever. This also makes it easy to edit since the only thing that may be required in post production is the slightest of echos to suggest the size of the room which of course cannot be replicated in a studio. The volume in my piece fluctuates slightly so during those moments where I have to speak a little quieter I will simply take a small step forward to accommodate the volume change.




Advert:

I was initially going to go with the Tesco's one but decided I couldn't when the list of item I'd have to say fast is obscured in the latter half by another person so this meant I couldn't get a proper script for it. So the advert I have decided to go with is a Thorpe Park advert. This one starts with a man at the park telling the listener how good it is and where to book tickets. The main chunk of the advert however is a humorously presented list of reasons as to why you should not attend the park. Even though most of them are conditions and health states, it finishes it off with a comment about everyone else just being scaredy cats. It uses a sort of reverse psychology/taunt to tempt people into coming along. It is as I said though in a fairly humorous manner and not overly serious.

The reason I've chosen it is because the ad's focus is on fast, clear delivery which is something I have never done in this kind of context before. I have proven that outside of acting I can manage fast, articulate delivery although that's more to do with singing or rapping and that's with things that never had a comedic edge to them or any lighthearted mannerisms. I've proven in the past that I can pull of some good comedic timing and with this piece I see the potential to show it in a different light.

I feel for the sake of comparison it would be best to find an advert that delivers the offer or message in a way that's either significantly slower or significantly faster. After looking at a few, I realised one that has a focus on normal or slower pacing would give a better contrast. I mentioned the advert for "AA fuel assist" and the people in the ad talk normally although still with clarity but the last person (The narrator) has more time to get all his sounds out clearly where as I have to rush mine. The other people in the ad talk in a persuasive manner and I feel that would also be good for my guy in the first part of the ad. I listened to quite a few but they all had similar good points, the main one I noticed (And one of the most important) was clarity.

Now a lot of these fast terms and conditions bits on adverts are generally sped up although still fast and crystal clear when originally delivered but I wanted to see if I can do it without the need to edit it. I know of people that can do it and it even some people such as a YouTuber called Caddicarus that sometimes requires his voice to be slowed down. I've demonstrated that I can do this type of thing before but this might be a little more demanding since it's a fair bit longer than anything I've said this quickly.

11/1/17:

Today We had to perform our pieces into a microphone for the first time as a rehearsal in order to practice our microphone technique. I performed my advert since it's the one I feel is up to a decent standard at the moment. When doing it I made sure to stand a good distance away from the microphone when delivering my loud, enthusiastic part but then step further forward and tilt my head to the side a bit when saying the bulk of my advert since it's much quieter. I decided to step forward quickly since the two voices in the advert have to contrast in tone and volume so the faster I can make that happen, the more intentionally jarring it should be and therefore a little funnier. With all these projects I do want to try and make it so there's less work for the editor and less time can be wasted to fully utilising these abilities and correct timing that can be done.

My feedback for performing was pretty positive. The thing I was very happy to hear was that I did have a great degree of clarity although I personally thought that I could have gone a little further, there were a couple words that sort of blended together even though the overall performance was pretty good. I wasn't properly warmed up at the time although when I had to perform it again, later that day it did have full clarity.

Most people found it to actually be very funny as well which means I'm achieving the contrast I wanted for it. There was one person who thought my voice in the first part of the advert didn't work although they never gave a reason and everyone thought it was pretty good. I like it mainly because of the aforementioned contrast that it provides, one moment the voice is happy inviting and very enthusiastic where as the other is very serious, yet humorous and is drastically faster.

Some constructive feedback I got was that I need to place a breath in there so I don't sound out of breathy by the end of it. I had already considered the idea of putting a comical, over the top, deep breath in there since it does get used in other ads such as the Tesco's one I mentioned before, however I really feel it would be funnier and more impressive and effective if I did it in one breath. I know I can do it, I just need to find the right warm, ups to get me to do it.

One thing I need to mention is the need o stay hydrated. I often forget to do this for rehearsals and it's a huge flaw of mine and it did happen today. For the first read again that's where my flaws came through and this was a major factor. You don't want the voice to sound warn out or tired which it can do if not hydrated and it can be distracting when heard.


17/2/17:

Today we had to demonstrate one of our pieces to the class using a microphone plugged into speakers but this time we actually got to show Sally. This time however we were all behind a screen so we could not see each other and only had the actors voices to go off of. I again demonstrated my advert since I feel it's still the one I feel was the most prepared.

The feedback for it was overall very positive. I was told I have some great clarity especially considering it's all very fast and has to be done in one breath. My volume was also very good and my clarity was spot on this time although I still had that annoying issue where half way through, I need to take a breath. I again got the note that I should add a breath in but to be honest I really don't like that idea because it does takes away from the impressive nature and it's just not very representative of that advert trope. Terms and conditions readers never take a breath so to do it would not be accurate and would it would just seem lazy. People say it's OK to add it in for comedy but it's really not that funny, someone who is being very serious saying these reasons as to why you shouldn't come is much funnier than referencing it and being overly self aware. I have practiced it and done it in one breath so I'm going to try my best to do it again in the recording

The feedback I got today suggested that my voice for the beginning part fits very well since it's meant to be very enthusiastic and it seemed a bit infectious, some people did genuinely enjoy it. This was good to hear since it got criticism last time although people have either warmed to it or always liked it. Some people were even quoting it afterwards so I must've done something well.

Audio Performance Blog 1: Analysis

Introduction:

These blogs will detail the research, development, rehearsal and analysis of my audio performance pieces. We have been tasked with developing and performing a big ensemble radio play and also have 3 individual pieces to do with solo performance. This blog is about all of the analysed projects to do with audio performance in preparation for both assignments as well as any additional information and techniques/ideas I find. It will detail what I learn from listening to them, whether they be good or bad, both are beneficial for identifying key elements and faults with a performance so I can learn from them.



5/1/17:

Today was a session about exploring basic microphone technique. This session I found to be quite useful since I'm very inexperienced when it comes to vocal performance and have never had to to it as a genuine performance.

The rules we went over were as follows:

- Make sure that you don't have a tight or tense posture since it will affect your breath control, your volume and can limit how much you're able to say. So it is best to stay as relaxed as possible and keep your body loose unless your performance demands such a tense voice for a scene.

- Never sit down. It's always best to stand up otherwise this is very restricting as well.

- Always breathe through your mouth as well as your nose so that you don't get the "t" when opening your mouth next to the microphone. It also allows you to take more breath in a lot faster so you can hopefully keep the pacing consistent or to what is intended.

- If you have to get very close to the microphone then it's recommended to slant you head slightly so that the audio isn't affected by your breathing or "P", "T" and "H" sounds hitting the microphone. Even if you have a pop filter over the mic it's still a method to prevent any possibility of the distortion happening.

- Make sure to use distance correctly. This means that the distance you're standing from the microphone has to correlate with the volume of your performance. This important for the sake of clarity, if the distance is wrong it'll be either too quite, too loud and distorted or just have a lack of clarity.

The main bulk of the session was experimenting with these ideas. We had to choose one of pieces (I went with my "Blood Brothers" monologue) and then record a segment of it with variations in how we deliver it. When trying them out I was trying to test out how the breath capacity/control is affected and see in what way it affects the clarity of the final audio only result. The first one I tried after doing the straight forward read was to stand with my arms firmly by my side as if I'm in a crowed corridor. That resulted in my recording sounding quieter and a little more breathy compared to the first one. Then I laid down on my stomach and said the lines and this one sounded way too breathy and as if I had very little air in me to say the whole line at a good volume due to my diaphragm being pushed inwards a bit, restricting it.

We also tried just varying the distance from the microphone to see what kind of effects we get. We ran through segments of our speeches several times with variations in distance from the microphone. As you'd think, this affected the clarity of the recording and showed us the importance of the correlation between distance and volume. If you deliver normally but are too far away then it will sound too quite and muffled but if you're too close and too loud then it will sound hugely distorted and very unnatural.

These are the key rules in audio performance and I will be analysing.



Projects Analysed: 



Radio Dramas:

The first one I looked at for a radio drama was the horror play "The Woman in Black". With in a minute of watching it I noticed something to do with the character Isabelle. When she said her first two lines as she was entering the room there was a jarring increase in volume and I can put this down to 2 things. Either while recording, she was stationary and her audio was just mixed incorrectly or she used the technique of standing away and stepped towards the microphone too quickly, resulting in the sound change happening to fast. There was no natural flow to how the volume increased with the situation presented and it me aware of what I was doing, listening to a play. Call this a nit pick but it was fairly jarring and goes against the idea of this play since it's a horror and has a focus on establishing atmosphere and a probably the most important part of setting up said atmosphere (Whether it be radio, TV, film or game) is to have good sound design/mixing, anything that's quite off can break the immersion. So a way to resolve this is to either stay still and just hope the editor is good at mixing the audio correctly or really make sure if your steps forward are paced well according to your demand. Other than that nitpick though the sequence I listened to was very well done, the actors were crystal clear, really energised and the rest of the sound design such as the ticking clock in the background did wonders for the atmosphere.

I also looked at "Cock" by Mike Bartlett. I feel finding faults in something is the best way to learn from it, and with this, I can't say that I noticed any in terms of it's acting and production quality. The audio was very well mixed and both lead actors were giving very clear, very natural performances and due to this, a lot of the lines were engaging to listen. This all applies to the segments I listened to, if there were any faults I didn't find them or notice them. So really I feel that if I just listened to this in preparation, I wouldn't have learnt much since it's done well. There isn't any behind the scenes material for it so I can't analyse but just going by this, it seems to match up with all the rules I've listed and in terms of acting is done very effectively.



Radio Comedy/Sketches:

I looked Three example for this and they are pieces I'm fairly familiar with. They are "Knowing me Knowing you with Alan Partridge" (Which is featured in our ensemble play), and sketches from "That Mitchell and Webb Sound" and "Monty Python".

I looked at the "Argument Clinic" sketch from "Monty Python". I looked at both the radio studio recorded version and the television version to compare their differences. The main difference I noticed between them was definitely how they're paced, The radio sketch is 3 and a half minutes where as the TV sketch is 4 and a half minutes despite having the exact same script. The actors are generally talking much faster and have very few gaps between their sentences. While I feel it's debatable if that is beneficial for radio as a whole, it definitely fits this style here since it's meant to be an energetic, wacky and ridiculous program. All visual elements are gone so they must be worked around. Some shows can incorporate pauses extremely well which I'll mention with the next program, but it seems as though it can't have too much silence otherwise the pacing will seem much slower due to nothing else to focus on during that moment. It also helps with adapting it since in the show they may have a visible reaction which cannot be shown on, so cutting that aspect out keeps the focus on the dialogue and results in a very frantic and well put together sketch. This sketch also has no canned laughter/audience track so the gaps would be all the more noticeable if they paced them out more.

Something else I noticed was the energy levels and volume of the overall performances. The most notable example of that is when Graham Chapman has to shout at Michael Palin, it seems more restrained, almost like he's holding it back or makes it seems as though he's really in his face, which he isn't. It seems as though he's too close too the microphone and knows it, so is holding himself back a bit. I feel this bit isn't as funny as the TV version since in that he goes all out in that and it seems more surprising when he shouts, putting us into Michael Palin's place of being overwhelmed and surprised. However I do feel that the moment where he whispered to himself sounded better the radio version because in the TV when he did it, it was too loud and didn't create enough of a contrast where as this one did and since he's required to get up close to a microphone here it's easier to accomplish. So an advantage to take from this medium is that you have a greater deal of control over volume so it's best put to use and I will be taking care to think about how loud I need to be.


I also looked at two episodes of "Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge". They use the same cast for every episode so I wanted to look and see how they make key distinctions between the characters they play. The two actors I focused on were Patrick Marber and Rebecca Front since I felt they were the best at doing that. Their main differences between characters in episodes are the use of accent, tone, varying speech speed and inflections. In one episode their characters can be a very energetic, fast talking American where as in the next, they could be slow speaking, monotone, miserable, English person. This shows the importance of versatility. Since you're on radio, no one can see you so it's all the more harder to be recognised so it's best to take advantage of that and change it up. If all the guests sounded the same then all the episodes would give off the same vibe and it would be rubbish if it didn't also have great writing but thankfully they don't and they give some varied, brilliant performances.

It's important to also distinguish between specific emotions. These guys do it very well, you can clearly tell when they're frustrated compared to when they're angry just by the subtitles of there volume and pace.

Different to "Monty Python", this show actually has a laughter track in it, so any moment after a character has said something there could be some realistic pacing with the speech since there was the something to fill in the gaps. I don't know whether the audience is actually there, my bet is that it isn't and that the laughter is actually canned. With that in mind, it means you are allowed to pace things a little more naturally and even have awkward moments. It works very well to consider the pacing of the speech in this manner to bring across the moment properly. In the script for our ensemble play, it seems as though it'll have quite a few variations of pacing for particular moments, I'll get into that when I read it again and develop it but it's made me realise that I'll have to consider each moment and wonder what the writers intention for the scene is to give off the right mood.

Of all the radio pieces I've listened to for this, this was the one that was the easiest to listen to. I'm a fan of the TV show that spawned from this and it honestly felt the same, even without the visuals, it was just like I had the show on and just looked away from the screen. The combination of all it's elements such as changing their characters effectively, having fantastic pacing/timing with all of their lines and pauses resulted in it being very funny and constantly engaging to listen to.



Cartoons/Animated films:

For this I looked at a recording session for the cartoon "Family Guy". It's a cartoon I loved that's filled with some very and talented voice actors so I wanted to see how they act around a microphone. This was easy to come by since there is a lot of behind the scenes footage. The first thing I noticed them doing was to actually act out what they're doing physically. The best examples were of Alex Borstein and Seth Macfarlane. Alex voices Lois and Loretta in the same scene and you can see when she changes her body language when switching characters. She speaks more softly and is generally more relaxed when doing Lois's nasally but is more upright with her head pushed backwards and upwards and stern when having to do Loretta's more husky, gravelly voice. Any emotion they have, they physically display it and differentiate themselves very well. There is a part where Mike Henry has to be angry and he does three takes, the first two lack energy and are OK at best but then he steps back a little bit and increases his volume and emotional intensity which gives a much better take. When one of them is acting scared or surprised they change their body language to accommodate. So I feel it's pretty important to act out your emotion despite that no one will see it, because it does have a drastic effect on your voice so the intent will be understood if done correctly. The action does influence the voice.

One thing I noticed watching this was that if there is a scene with multiple people that has to be relatively fast paced or involves a lot of overlapping, then it is far better doing it all at once rather than one at a time. If it's done one at a time then it has to be edited together and that's makes the performances difficult to manage when recording them since you don't know how they'll turn out. There is an argument/misunderstanding scene in the making of and the way everyone works off each other and their reactions to each other and overall frantic nature of the scene is so much better and far funnier than just recreating it one at a time. Even though I've used a comedy to put this point across, the principle applies to dramatic scene as well, any meaningful interaction works best when you have the other actors right there with you. Quite a few cartoon do do it where the actors take it in turns to do the dialogue and it can sound very different and takes the natural feel away from it. "Family Guy" doesn't do this for the most part and any frantic scene is often hilarious due to the actor's chemistry and how they never try to out do each other.

I also looked at an infamously bad cartoon called "The Christmas Tree", a low budget Christmas special from 1991. It is very bad and it's faults are as follows;  

All the audio sounds a tad to quite and not as clear as it needs to be. The audio mixing/performances as a whole are very inconsistent since some people are actually a lot quieter than others  which resulting in having to pay close attention to some people just mumbling to get an ideas of what they're saying, where as the others will at least be mildly clear but still rubbish and lack any energy at all.

By far the biggest flaw with the acting in this cartoon is the lack of emotion, these people more or less all sound the same, it's all so dull and lifeless, especially the character Ray who sounds like his actor is bored and just wants to get out of there. His actor really seems like he's just reading the lines and nothing else at all, it's completely monotone. They all have no energy and in the very few moments where it seems like they try, it seems misplaced. There's a part where one of the characters is talking and she finishes her sentence and then says "and another thing" to make another point but there is literally nothing in between the two sentences and it's incredibly jarring, especially seeing as she gets a tad angrier in that sentence (Or at least trying to) which just adds to add how out and organised everything is since she has no reason to. I honestly don't know if that moment was poor editing or if she rushed the line but either way it's not very good.

That same moment also is a good example of how pacing ignored in this whole special, all the actors are either too slow or jarringly fast. All this just adds up to something that can even be unintentionally funny and overall a mess of performances and results in nothing be engaging, especially since barely anything is delivered properly and they may only get one aspect of the performance down from time to time.



Video Games:

I looked at three video games for this although I wanted to stick to ones that were not motion captured meaning they were just recording audio, not acting on a camera with a digital model added later. I'll be looking at one excellently acted game and two appallingly acted games, those being "Bioshock Infinite", Resident Evil" and "Ride to Hell - Retribution" respectively.

Bioshock Infinite: I have played this game before and think it's a great example of voice acting so I watched to a rehearsal session of Troy Baker and Courtnee Draper recording for a scene in the game. They record their audio together since they are very rarely apart form each other in the story and the session I watched shows a scene where the Character Elizabeth has to get upset. Courtnee Draper found it hard to get the right tone for the moment so the director and fellow actors decided to give her some build up to the moment by shouting and belittling her to "Get her to an emotional place" and it worked marvellously. While I seriously doubt that would ever happen in our recording sessions, it just shows the sheer dedication of this team and the importance they put on the genuine, raw emotions of the characters they were portraying. It shows how beneficial it is to embody your character as much as you can and not just stand there saying the dialogue how you think it would be said. If it is as genuine as possible for the actor, then it'll most likely be genuine for the audience. I'm not saying that an actor must traumatise themselves to get the right reaction but just do what they can to get the emotion right. No matter what part I get I will always keep this in mind, they've shown what it can do and I need to do the same.


Ride to hell - Retribution: Due to this games terrible reputation, no behind the scenes material for it exists as of yet, however that doesn't matter since all you have to do is listen and the many flaws with the acting become apparent. The acting is far too quite at points and lacks any real emotion. There is one point in the game where the main character Jake let's out a huge scream of anger and frustration but it sounds like someone doing an impression of a scream but staying restrained intentionally. It really sounds restrained and put on. Any line that's said has no energy to it and results in everything sounding the same with no variation, so nothing sounds engaging. For example there's a scene where two characters are riding on motorbikes but their dialogue is delivered in the exactly the same as it did in the previous scene, nothing really changes. So techniques to definitely learn from this are to make sure there is plenty of variation in your voice and be able to adapt your voice to fit the current scenario. Also it showed me that even though you are only using your voice, energy is key and if there's a lack of it, it really makes everything sound dull and almost like you don't care. If it seems as though you don't care about it then that gives the audience very little reason to do so as well.


Resident Evil: This game came out at the point where video game voice acting was becoming that of a higher standard and this was really bad even for it's time. Now unlike "Ride to Hell" these people at least sound like they're trying to put some energy in and trying to project. However it still sounds terrible due to the fact it doesn't sound natural. Everything sounds forced and every vocal inflection and rhythm completely mismatches the tone of their lines. I mentioned that moment in "The Woman in Black" that really took me out of it but with this you can't really get into it at all. That moment was just one moment and it was not the fault of the acting, where as this achieves the same thing far more drastically; it ruins the atmosphere. This is a horror game and it is genuinely laughable. So from this it shows the importance of volume, proper vocal inflections and the correct rhythm. I have to make sure the tone of my voice matches the tone of the dialogue I'm saying, otherwise it will sound really off.



Adverts:

I looked a Tesco advert first. This was one that has a focus on fast, articulate delivery. This again made me think of clarity, but more specifically about articulation. A key factor of audio performance is that there is no visual aid, in a film if a word is a bit muffled you may be able to make it out from the actors lip movements, however with this there's really no chance, so being as clear as possible is ideal. This advert contains a list of products said very fast so if the articulation is off or sounds like all the words are blending together it would be a problem for both the listener and the seller since the consumer would be unaware of the products on offer and the seller would lose out because of it. Although that aside, it would also make it far less impressive and it would lose it's humour a little bit, it may even give off a lazy vibe. viewers/listeners are fairly critical of what they see or listen to and if it gives off a lazy vibe then they have less reason to care. Thankfully the actor in this did it very well so it retained the humorous side as well keeping the wow factor of how fast he was doing it, so it kept my attention.

The other advert I listened to was an AA advert and the delivery in that was a lot slower. Everything they said was clear and delivered with the correct emotion which in this case was frustration. It's almost like it's setting up someone to come in and help them and really gives off the right tone of the advert with a hint of persuasiveness which is key to any advert to try and entice the listener.



Audio books:

For this I wanted to listen to the same audio book but read by two different people. I knew that the "Harry Potter" audio books have been read by both Stephen Fry and Jim Dale so I listened to samples of the books to compare their delivery. They both had their strengths and weaknesses.

In terms of vocal variation between characters, they're both equal in quality. The make distinctions between them such as varying pitch and pace but they even add subtleties to them giving them a more gravely voice if they older and small details like that. I would say they could go a bit further and if the text they have to read saying "Said Harry" or any text that signifies who's talking it would be more difficult but when it's mixed with that it works perfectly well.

Fry on the other hand is stronger at keeping his entire delivery in tone with each individual moment, he seems to do a much better job bringing across the intention of the text. For example when he says the words "There was a huge motorbike", he elongates the word "Huge" to help with suggesting scale or to create a better picture. During a part where he had to express a characters frustration his tone would shift to something made it seem like it was from Dudley's point of view or make it sound like what Dudley missed (In this case 5 TV programs) was actually important. If this detail were in the film it would be shown visually by his frustration or adapted so an extra line of dialogue would be put in. Here however they don't have to do that so it doesn't seem forced and can flow more naturally with the good writing and great variation of delivery. Dale however doesn't do this as much, it's still there but there's less of it which unfortunately results in something slightly less engaging and more one note

Both of them overall are engaging despite having a couple of minor faults but show some very good qualities.


Now I've looked at a fair few project and their strengths and weaknesses I feel I can keep these in mind as something to work off of when I'm rehearsing for all my pieces and plays.





Links:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvM4Z_AAGp8&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVyOCssIXgQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58hITE_Gubc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y&t=11s

https://soundcloud.com/delilahdevinkaufman/bbc-radio-3-presents-mike

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxPzm_FS1yE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlFtMxG6mnY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLvBRCyNHJs

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/top-10-radio-ads-2015/1376405

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=229Goiczqgk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZM6oZmO1Y&t=1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8q84QEMwkE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwb5Tdrpj2w