Unit 3 - Silent movie and the Dumb waiter
Unit 3 - Dumb Waiter and silent movie.
Dumb Waiter
My first lesson with Rob after the October half term was on Dumb waiter. Rob started us off with a quick warm up on tongue twisters so we can improve our vocal skills. After the warm up the class had to get into pairs and we were given the script to learn. My group was a group of 3 containing myself, Kechy and Kaliyah. The script had only two characters (Ben and Gus) therefore we discussed on roles and we decided that I should take on a whole role as Ben and Kechy and Kaliyah to share roles as Gus. I wanted to take both roles as Ben as i thought it would be a challenge for me to boost my confidence and flexibility on performing. When I left college that following day i went home and did some reaserch on my part as Ben and took notes on the video performance of the Dumb waiter. From the video I inherited the white British accent and the emotion of Ben in the first scene.
The Dumb waiter is about two hitman that are doing a job in Birmingham. They are held up in a basement room waiting for the phone call that tells them to execute the job. So meanwhile as they are waiting in this basement Gus is beginning to be restless and a little bored so he uses his boredom as a way to get under Ben's skin and irritate him. Through the many moments of Gus and ben having arguments and conversating, Ben creates a sense of hatred and a malevolent behaviour towards Gus to the point where he wants to kill him.
Through my time rehearsing and watching the dumb waiter videos on youtube, I came to the conclusion that Ben is more imperious out of the two criminals
The following week in class me and my group sat down and took on Robs advice on the way we portrayed the scene. He told us to firstly work on how we would use our voices to portray our roles and to always think of why we are saying the lines in the way we are. In my case of being Ben I had to raise my voice and be huffing and puffing constantly to show that Ben was annoyed of Gus's voice. I also had to take pauses between my speech to tell the audience that Ben had something up his sleeve and is nervous of all of Gus's questions. Ben as a character is very condensing on his target and goals where he is also very lazy and doesn't move much in the first scene , on the other hand Gus is very active and talkative which annoys Ben a lot to the point where Ben starts raising his voice quite so often.
The Dumb waiter script was not too much of a challenge as I would've imagined it to be and this is because of Rob giving each pair one page to study and memorise the lines. I believe this was a good move as it made me get the hang of following the script and improving my listening skills towards my partners. This made me feel more secure about my role as I felt that I am doing the right things to perpare myself for the performance.
Evolution
During my performance I felt out of place and believed i should've taken some more time to get my act together. I enterd the stage and sat down on the chair and immediately tried to get into my character. I did this observing everything in my sight from the prop gun to the newspaper. When khaliya got on stage as Gus I kept huffing, puffing trying to make it obvious to the audience that Ben was getting annoyed of Gus's movements and hyper activity . By the time that Kechy transitioned with Khaliya I finally got into my act as Ben I started to remember my lines a little better as I had gotten a little overwhelmed because of the large crowd and everyone's eyes being on me. I also believe that the reason of my boost in confidence midway through the act was because of me and Kechy's chemistry in acting and our personal friendship. My target for the next performance is to create a better connection with the pupils in my class that I feel disconnected with.
Silent Movie
In the beginning of the silent movie project Rob introduced me to some footage of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He wanted us to get a taste of what silent movie is and what it's about so we can end up creating our own silent movie. After many example I ended up teaming with two people to create a silent movie. We tried many themes like old cowboy western, Victorian and modern times but we were not that good at it.
After a couple of weeks due to the dumb waiter taking a lot of time and effort to accomplish we ended up doing a directed production by Rob where we would sit in front of a green screen and were told to act something out . This was unexpected and done in a rush also due to the amount of time we had to book the class room.
Rob gave us a tea pot and cups to work with. He turned a tea party into a comedic show where me and kechy would be fighting over tea and using our actions and gestures to show what emotion we were feeling in front of a camera.
Dumb Waiter
My first lesson with Rob after the October half term was on Dumb waiter. Rob started us off with a quick warm up on tongue twisters so we can improve our vocal skills. After the warm up the class had to get into pairs and we were given the script to learn. My group was a group of 3 containing myself, Kechy and Kaliyah. The script had only two characters (Ben and Gus) therefore we discussed on roles and we decided that I should take on a whole role as Ben and Kechy and Kaliyah to share roles as Gus. I wanted to take both roles as Ben as i thought it would be a challenge for me to boost my confidence and flexibility on performing. When I left college that following day i went home and did some reaserch on my part as Ben and took notes on the video performance of the Dumb waiter. From the video I inherited the white British accent and the emotion of Ben in the first scene.
The Dumb waiter is about two hitman that are doing a job in Birmingham. They are held up in a basement room waiting for the phone call that tells them to execute the job. So meanwhile as they are waiting in this basement Gus is beginning to be restless and a little bored so he uses his boredom as a way to get under Ben's skin and irritate him. Through the many moments of Gus and ben having arguments and conversating, Ben creates a sense of hatred and a malevolent behaviour towards Gus to the point where he wants to kill him.
Through my time rehearsing and watching the dumb waiter videos on youtube, I came to the conclusion that Ben is more imperious out of the two criminals
The following week in class me and my group sat down and took on Robs advice on the way we portrayed the scene. He told us to firstly work on how we would use our voices to portray our roles and to always think of why we are saying the lines in the way we are. In my case of being Ben I had to raise my voice and be huffing and puffing constantly to show that Ben was annoyed of Gus's voice. I also had to take pauses between my speech to tell the audience that Ben had something up his sleeve and is nervous of all of Gus's questions. Ben as a character is very condensing on his target and goals where he is also very lazy and doesn't move much in the first scene , on the other hand Gus is very active and talkative which annoys Ben a lot to the point where Ben starts raising his voice quite so often.
The Dumb waiter script was not too much of a challenge as I would've imagined it to be and this is because of Rob giving each pair one page to study and memorise the lines. I believe this was a good move as it made me get the hang of following the script and improving my listening skills towards my partners. This made me feel more secure about my role as I felt that I am doing the right things to perpare myself for the performance.
Evolution
During my performance I felt out of place and believed i should've taken some more time to get my act together. I enterd the stage and sat down on the chair and immediately tried to get into my character. I did this observing everything in my sight from the prop gun to the newspaper. When khaliya got on stage as Gus I kept huffing, puffing trying to make it obvious to the audience that Ben was getting annoyed of Gus's movements and hyper activity . By the time that Kechy transitioned with Khaliya I finally got into my act as Ben I started to remember my lines a little better as I had gotten a little overwhelmed because of the large crowd and everyone's eyes being on me. I also believe that the reason of my boost in confidence midway through the act was because of me and Kechy's chemistry in acting and our personal friendship. My target for the next performance is to create a better connection with the pupils in my class that I feel disconnected with.
Silent Movie
In the beginning of the silent movie project Rob introduced me to some footage of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He wanted us to get a taste of what silent movie is and what it's about so we can end up creating our own silent movie. After many example I ended up teaming with two people to create a silent movie. We tried many themes like old cowboy western, Victorian and modern times but we were not that good at it.
After a couple of weeks due to the dumb waiter taking a lot of time and effort to accomplish we ended up doing a directed production by Rob where we would sit in front of a green screen and were told to act something out . This was unexpected and done in a rush also due to the amount of time we had to book the class room.
Rob gave us a tea pot and cups to work with. He turned a tea party into a comedic show where me and kechy would be fighting over tea and using our actions and gestures to show what emotion we were feeling in front of a camera.
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