26/09/22 - 29/09/22

 Week 4 of Milly's acting journey:

 

On Monday 26th September, we spent the entire morning with Tom, who runs the HE course, and he helped us begin our rehearsals for our Stockton Globe Christmas performance. As part of our performance, we are doing The Muppet's Christmas Carol and performing two songs, It Feels Like Christmas and Scrooge which is the song we focused on during our session. We began with some vocal warm ups, which included singing up and down in octaves, singing different songs in groups at different times like the grand old duke of York and she'll be coming round the mountain when she comes with actions thanks to the degree students who taught us them. We then went straight into the song, singing lines one at the time so that we would learn it and memorise it better. Tom made sure we knew how to sing each line as well, for example, some lines we had to sing them angrily like we were fed up whereas some lines were sang quite operatic and gentle, which showed a major change in the emotion of the song. We then went into moving around and positioning our song into a dance, beginning by standing in lines only moving our heads when following Scrooge whilst the soloists sang what they needed to sing. It then went into dispersing into small groups, and acting friendly, full of joy whilst Scrooge was barging past everyone ruining the fun and happiness. Leaving the session, we had done a lot of choreography that used our acting ability as well as our vocal skills. I love to sing, so showcasing a little bit of my hobby and talent was really fun. We had worked our way through half of the song, meaning next time we see Tom, we can carry on and add more choreography to the song. He also wanted us to learn the song to the best of our ability, ready for our next session and at least once, go through it as a full group so that it was still fresh in our heads.

On Tuesday 27th, we had Kane where we continued with vocal work, but this time we tried it ourselves working in small groups and filming an audio only scene. I went into a group with Adam, Millie and Freya, and created a piece focusing on an engagement gone wrong, set in a restaurant which conveys a range of emotions; it was in public so they couldn't be too loud, the person being engaged too conveys confusion, guilt and begins by having no understanding of what's happening, the person getting down on one knee showcases nervousness, excitement, also confusion and of course anger which slowly turns into sadness and acceptance. We all tried to show these emotions to the best of our ability and more, and were happy with our final audio clip. After that, we were joined by the Year 2's and focused on monologue work. Kane went through a power point highlighting the do's and dont's of monologues, and how to do your very best performing one, whether that's by researching the character who you'll become or even watching someone else's perform it and see their perspective of the monologue to generate your own ideas. He then told us about an upcoming assignment, to perform a chosen monologue of our choice to the group on the 18th October, and a tad like our CopyCat scene, make it as close as we can to the original scene's emotions portrayed. I went on to do some researching after Kane's lesson with Sienna and LaToya, and I'm thinking of doing the La La Land scene where Mia admits how she feels that her dream of being an actress may never come true. I've already given it a go and I'm feeling quite confident with my decision.  https://youtu.be/BSYQD1BBx7I = My monologue scene from 1:08.

On Wednesday 28th, we spent the entire morning with the 2nd Years where continued with last weeks lonely hearts column improvisation work. I find improv quite scary as I feel like some ideas or things I say wont work within a scene, but I tell myself that i'll never know unless I try, so I enjoy doing this exercise as it's testing my understanding of improvisation and making me try what I'm so fearful of doing in case i'll be judged for what I add to the scene. Knowing I'm in a group with others who just want to support and encourage others, and are here for the same reasons as myself, always puts me at ease and I know i wont be judged for my ideas and what I put forward. This week, we performed a whole group improv scene, in which our characters from last week had all been invited to a single's quiz night in order to mingle and meet new people which mean't we were in character introducing ourselves to other people's characters. Before this however, we also had to bring in a prop, that symbolised our character and gave a little insight to who they are. I brought in as Heidi, a pink flower that is used as a pin and for your hair, but instead said it was from my garden as I wanted to show everyone my love for nature and the countryside. I enjoyed this, as you saw what everyone else brought in and how not only yourself but how other's depicted their given circumstance of their character. We had time to chat to different people and then went into groups with those around us or perhaps who we were having a good conversation with, so I was speaking to Alan and Sienna so went into a group with them, and also Jack and Adam who were talking to one another. The quiz commenced and we had to answer in character, and at the end we realised the quiz was pointless as it was to see what we thought of our characters and how we thought they would answer random questions, like "What is your favourite food?" etc. The lesson ended with pairing up with a person we felt more connected to where I went with Alan, on more of a friendship basis as myself and Sienna both wanted Adam, but Sienna in character was quite controlling and brass so "stole" him from me, leaving me with Alan in the end. Our homework was to give our partner a gift, after speaking to their character for a whole lesson, hopefully having an understanding of a gift that they would like.

On Thursday 29th, we like usual were with the film students and after getting the green light from Kelly, continued our work on our CopyCat scene which for us was Ella Enchanted. As a group, we went into the LRC and looked at the script thoroughly. We all surrounded one of the booths and got the scene on YouTube to analyse various things, like how people's lines were spoken, the character's individual lines and any body language techniques used that were key to replicating the original scene. We printed out the scripts, and added a fancy cover poster to the beginning of the script to make it look professional. We then proceeded to highlight our lines and create a key for everyone else's lines so that if someone had forgotten their line, or didn't know who was saying the next line, one of us could look at the script and see depending on the colour used who says the line. As well, if someone forgets their script, they can share someone else's with them, however I hope that doesn't happen but understand it's a backup plan. Before leaving the film students, in our group we went through the script twice to have a feel for what the scene was to be like and to allow everyone to say their lines with a type of emotion and feel ready for the real thing. It was then just the Year 1's where we continued with our duologues but instead merged with another group to add some depth and it turned it into a real scene rather than dialogue between two people. We were joined by Gracie, Emily and Alan, where they had a scene where they both played dealers trading valuables, and we each watched each other's scenes giving three things they could do to improve their scene before we began inserting ourselves within each other's duologues. The thing was however, was that the characters who were coming into our scene weren't allowed to say anything which mean't they stayed background characters. In our scene, Gracie and Emily played fellow actors pretending to recite monologues next to Adam before he came over and spoke to me, and Adam played the ice-cream man, that Adam references to when asking me if I wanted to go get an ice-cream. We then went over their scene, where me and Adam were by-passers and gave them both an ugly look to almost say we were suspicious of them. Since Emily was apart of another group that weren't unfortunately in, she played a patrolling police officer, who would again just keep her eye on Gracie and Alan's characters.