9/01/23 - 12/01/23

 Week 15 of Milly's acting journey

On Monday 9th, we spent the entire morning doing character research on the character we wanted to explore more and possibly be in our Connection's piece. I went over to the Stefi group since she was the character I felt gravitated towards and wanted to delve a bit deeper into her character. I was in a group with Millie, Charley and Pheebs and we all got given a large piece of paper to separate into fact and opinion. Upon reading the script, we found lots of facts in relation to Stefi, like how she has a brother called Zafer and she is the one that reveals to the crew about Tom's return. We had to look closer into our opinions of Stefi in which I found that she's quite abrasive and that due to her brother's illness, she feels invisible and almost shoved to the back in her family. It's obvious she doesn't blame this on Zafer, but instead uses her hurt and anger in protecting him. I believe it's her father Mr. Amree that she is more annoyed at and since he's mentioned a lot in the script, that he plays a bigger part in the story than it seems. Together as a group we had lots of great interpretations of her character and how we viewed her which was great to see since there were some similarities and differences to how we would act it. Later on in the lesson, Kelly put some questions on the board that we should be asking our character constantly to stir up some more ideas into our head. Some of the questions were like 'What is your character's biggest fear?' which I answered Zafer passing away since she constantly links back to him and how he needs support and help. Another question was 'How does your character display affection?' and I thought she perhaps offers a hug but nothing else. Since she is quite conservative and kept to herself, I feel that she would only display affection if it was through sympathy or it was obviously needed. This lesson was extremely necessary as it showed us more about our characters and it made becoming the character a lot simpler. 

On Tuesday 10th, we spent the morning with Kane and looked into camera work during auditions. I appreciate lessons like this as it gives us a glimpse into real life after education. Kane set up a camera and explained through the help of us how a set up for self tapes should look like, in which Delroy helped with as the person doing a self tape. One of the first things we learnt is that a plain background, preferably black or white so that it's like a clean canvas, is vital so that the person watching isn't distracted by other things and can just focus on the actor. Another thing we learnt is that the positioning of the camera is important since you don't want it too close or too far, but just perfect to show the actor's face and part of their upper body. This is because when acting on screen, your emotions and reactions need to be subtle yet clear so a casting director would watch only the actor's face since it really is the reason a person would obtain a role. I learnt a lot in this lesson that I will take away when recording a self tape. The rest of the lesson we spent going over character research and paired up with someone who wanted to be the same character as you, in which me and Millie worked together on looking into Stefi and who she really is. 

On Wednesday 11th, we continued with our character research and shared our answers to the questions we answered on Monday and Kelly told us about what she had inferred and what was facts. The lesson followed the same structure as Monday's lesson so keeping it up helped me maintain my knowledge on Stefi even more. 

On Thursday 12th, it was actually my 17th birthday and we had the Higher Education's show 'Education, Education, Education' to go and watch. It was insanely funny and very cleverly worked together, each teacher had a different personality and no-one disappeared into the back. It made my birthday that extra bit special and what's better than seeing a show on your birthday. Spending half of the day with my friends at college was great and it was a nice send of into the weekend.