Evaluation

After weeks of creating and rehearsing we have finished and performed our final devising piece. In the end, we created a ‘mission impossible’ style piece with added drama and twists. In our dystopian world where everyone is watched and controlled by the elusive Jamie, a group of rebels work to take her down, but it ends with a twist and Jamie is revealed as the leader of the rebels, Sam. After a mass shooting Ruby ends up killing Sam and becomes the new controller of the people, but with no rules except live life to the full.

I found it difficult at the start of this project. As devising is not something I am used to I didn't really know where to begin thinking of ideas, other than looking at the song ‘Chasing Pavements’ and the music video that we were shown in class. However after discussing various ideas with my group and thinking more into what else the title could mean, instead of thinking literally, I began to have more ideas about completely different things we could do. The first idea we started devising for, the horror based game, started off well but as we tried to come up with what to do next we realised any idea we had was very similar to a film, and so we decided to scrap that idea. I think this is a good example of how we worked well as a group to make decisions and get on with the task without wasting time.

During the process I thought we were quite organised with planning what was to go into the piece and what would happen in the story. A down side to this is we did spend quite some time just planning which took away from time when we could have been creating, which I think would have helped with developing ideas and seeing what worked and what needed changing. Another thing that held us back was, as a group, we were rather inclined to getting distracted and not getting as much done in lessons as we could have done. In the future to prevent this it would be a good idea to create a rehearsal schedule so we did not have time to get distracted.

Another thing we could have improved is the amount of fighting within our piece. After running the whole play and performing to our audience it became apparent that there was a lot of stage combat, some of which was not needed and seemed to just be there for the sake of more action, but it did not necessarily add the atmosphere of the piece. Also some of the stage combat was not very stylish or accurate so did not look as good as it could have, we should have worked more to make it look realistic. This would have made the sections of fighting better to watch and reduced any comical parts within it.

My favorite parts of our performance were the movement parts as they were the smoothest parts in my opinion and fitted the best with our style as there was no cheesiness or comedy involved. We were good at creating these movement pieces and with the different talents in our group it was easy to pick good music and create the movement to go with it. With our more dance based movement piece I think people could have practiced more to get it perfect, especially those who are not that confident with dance as I think some timing issues detracted a bit from the effect of it.

The ending of our story was very important and so we spent quite a lot of time on it. I was very happy with our final ending. We experimented with about three different endings and after deciding an idea was either too cheesy or just not very good we quickly got onto the next idea. Again this shows how we worked well as a team coming up with different options and ideas when something was not working, and not wasting time dwelling on an idea but getting on with creating a better one. Our final ending worked well to bring the whole story to an exciting and surprising end, and hopefully shocked the audience, keeping their attention to the end of the performance.

Some of the feedback from our audience was that they did not feel a connection to the characters, so when they were killed at the end of the piece they did not feel any empathy and so it was not as effective as it could have been. I think if we had had more time and the performance was longer, we could have gone into more detail for each character and developed them as people, making the audience connect to them, but this would have added substantially to the length of the piece. The short monologues we had in the night scene of our piece were the start of character development, but I feel we could have incorporated these throughout the play rather than all at the same point as it was rather basic and a bit boring as a scene, I think most of the audience stopped paying attention as the back stories also became quite similar.

From the start of creating our piece we knew the costumes and kind of props we wanted. I think this helped when we were creating as we could imagine what it would look like and we could choreograph around the props that we knew we were going to have. Carl did a really good job with the guns, I feel they really added to the futuristic feel of our piece and helped make the time when it was set clear, as well as them being effective and simple to look at, adding a bit of depth to the piece as most of our costumes were black so the silver added some dimension, but still in keeping with the dark style.

During the rehearsal process our group did not use the actual performance space to rehearse in until the week of the performance. This made it quite hard when it came to the real performance as we had not had time in the space to practice entrances or exits. As a result the transitions between scenes were not as clean as they could have been and the performance was not as professional as it could have been. In the future I think we should make more of an effort to have the performance space so we can used to it and use the whole of it as much as we can. Also our lighting did not work as it was supposed to, due to unclear lighting cues. To prevent this we will have to have more of the group checking the lighting and not assuming that the person doing it actually knows how to create them.

Overall I think we needed to develop our piece more, working more on the characters rather than the actual story. I feel we needed to take more risks and not just stick to what we know works; this would have added more excitement and differentiation to our piece. We stuck to techniques we are used to using, like movement and physical theatre, but I think we should have thought more outside of the box and come up with even more ideas to make our piece different. Saying that I think we worked really well as a group at sharing and compromising on ideas, trying to incorporate everyone’s input, and so there were no arguments or disagreements within our group which helped us perform more as an ensemble than as separate performers.

Writing in role

Ruby -

Final plot

This is a picture of the final plot, as you can see it has developed quite a lot since the original plan we did. As we started creating and blocking the scenes we realised little scenes we needed to add in to make the story make sense and make it easier for the audience to follow. I think writing it out like this was a massive help as we could see what we had actually made and change the order of any extra scenes we had thought of to add to the story. I think we should've done this sooner as we got a bit lost with what we needed to create a couple of weeks ago and so lost some productivity, but other than that I think we were quite organised with our planning of our performance. It would have also helped us to sort out entances and exits which were unplanned and so messy in our performance. 

Our style

In this lesson we discussed what the 'style' of our piece was. These are the words we came up with;

dark - it is not a very happy piece, the fact that most people die at the end definitely supports this

serious - there are barely any comical moments in this, it is supposed to be a serious piece

complicated - there are many different parts to our story, with things to work out and lots of back stories

unpredictable - there are surprises and unexpected occurences 

harsh - it doesn't end how you would like it to, not a happy endingas such

tense - fights break out at the smallest disagreement, showing the tension in this world

futuristic - it is set in a future world, the whole Jamie thing is very futuristic

non-cheesy - we wanted to steer completely away from cheesiness as we thought it would take away from the seriosuness of the piece

We found it quite hard to always stick to our theme, especially when doing things like the date scenes which were bound to become cheesy, which we did not want. I think writing down our theme really helped us to try and stick to what we wanted from our piece, and help it to be good. 

Torture scene

This week we started work on the end part of our performance. In this section Jeremy, who has recently been thrown out of the group, comes across James and, still thinking he is Jamie, starts to attack him. The rest of the boys eventually enter and join in this torture, eventually leading to James' death which sparks the ending of the play.  

When trying to come up with different ways to make the torture scene look realistic I thought of using belts to create a dramatic effect. By folding the belt over and 'slapping' it together it looks like you are whipping the person and it makes a pretty impressive noise, getting rid of the need of sound effects which could be timed wrongly and take away from the seriousness of the piece. In the end they just went for normal stage combat which did not always look real. I think they should've taken at least something from my idea and used some different techniques to create a more impressive torture scene and not just repeat the stage combat we had used previously in the performance. 

Ruby - character details

Ruby is quite a reserved character when it comes to showing her emotions. I thnk she is a very strong young woman and has had to almost disconnect herself from her emotional side after what she had to endure working for Jamie. She worked as a sniper for Jamie taking out anyone that was considered to be either a threat to Jamie's safe way of life or if they had disobeyed any of the rules. Ruby was trained to take them out quickly and quietly so was very well trained with a gun, making her an asset when joining the rebels. After being assigned her parents to assinate, for reasons unknown to her, I think she realised what she was actually part of and startyed to doubt Jamie's intentions, which made her decision to leave Jamie's team easier. 

Once part of the rebel team she became very close with Sam, the leader, and the rest of the team, especailly Spencer which we see a glimpse of in their date scene. I think she becomes more caring and compasionate, even though she may not show it. After the ordeal she went through with working for Jamie, she is really against killing when it is unnecessary so when Jeremy goes too far and kills the civilian Ruby gets upset and so goes to Spencer for comfort. At the end of the play when Sam kills everyone including Spencer, Ruby feels so distraught and betrayed by her I think a part of her old non-caring self comes out as she kills Jeremy and Sam. Hoping to leave all of this behind her she then becomes leader herself, trying to create a happy society where people are free to live how they want with none of the strict rules that Jamie had. 

Training with Carl into fight

In order to bring about the idea that James could be Jamie, which sets off the whole end of the story, we needed to create a conversation about the conspiracy. Instead of having just a boring conversation I thought we could fit it into the theme by adding in a training session between two of the group and then more of the team start to appear and join in talking about James. To build and show the tension groweing between the group becuase of the Jamie-James thing the training session turns into a heated argument between Jeremy and Ruby, which then gives Sam a reason to threaten Jeremy with a warning. 

Too create our training sequence Carl and I created a short 'fighting' sequence that we could repeat while talking. The orignal sequence we created was quite long and so hard to remember while also trying come up with dialogue, so we shortened it to a really simple phrase of movement. 

I think this worked well in creating tension between the group and making the situation with James apparent to the audience. We could've developed the scene more by adapting the fight between Ruby and Jeremy to just be an argument, I felt like there didn't need to be a fight there as we already had quite a lot within the rest of the performance. 

Final scene - shooting

We played around a lot with the ending, recreating it a couple of times because we thought it was too cheesy and so didn't fit with the style of our piece. Trying to make it not cheesy was quite difficult as everyone had to die and trying to make deaths non-comical is quite difficult. 

Final ending - 

In the end we decided to have Sam walk in on the boys trying to hide the body of James, who they had just killed. Knowing they would get into trouble with Sam they were trying to hide it before she found out but they couldn't. As they try to defend themselves with the excuse that "he was Jamie" Sam laughs at them. This is when it clicks with Dom's character that infact Sam is Jamie. Sam says "I wish you hadn't have said that" and then the masacre begins. To make the shooting more serious and not comical we have chosen to use a strobe and do it in slow motion, which I think makes it look more slick and fitting to the piece. When Sam goes to kill Jeremy however she falters because of her feelings for him, this gives Ruby chance to take Sam's gun and kill Jeremy herself in anger over Spencer's death. Ruby then stabs Sam once, then again saying "rule number 4, never fall in love". 

I really like the way we ended it as it is dramatic and I think fits with our complicated style and theme. One thing that I think really couldv'e improved the clarity of the end is Dom's line, when he realises Sam is Jamie, he was supposed to say straight out "you're Jamie aren't you?", but he didn't whoch I think made it unclear to the audience why Sam actually shot the team as some did not realise that she was Jamie. 

Date scene

We decided as a group it would be better for each couple to plan their own date scenes to save time in rehearsal and so it would be easier to fit them into the piece. Kai and I spent a while trying to think of a natural and non-cheesy way to bring up or suggest their feelings for each other. 

I came up with the idea to use Ruby's emotions as a way to get them together in a natural and unforced way. The day before the date scene Jeremy kills someone. That night when they all go to bed Ruby can't sleep because of the days events and so gets up to get a drink, Spencer is also awake and asks for a drink. When she comes back they sit together and start talking about things at which Ruby starts to get upset and so he comforts her. When he offers her his bed she asks him to stay and so they fall asleep together and it is a cute but not too cheesy ending. 

I think we could've worked more to develop this scene but on the other hand I like the length of it as I feel if we added too much more to the scene it may be too much and not fit in with the style of the piece, which was not lovey-dovey. We found it quite hard to come up with ideas that would work for a date scene as in the futuristic world we are in there are not many things we could do, so keeping it simple was the best option. Also Kai and I are not particularly romantic so it was hard to try and create a situation that fitted with what we wanted to portray. 

Cut night scene

Today we worked on a scene where everyone is asleep but Jeremy and Spencer, they then proceed to talk about their 'love lives' and how they are both dating a mystery girl, who is Sam but they do not know. Then when they are asleep Sam and Ruby also have a conversation about similar things, where Sam admits to be with someone and Ruby admits to liking someone that she admits is in the group. This adds tension to the piece as a love triangle is created, which could complicate the groups friendship and loyalties.

After looking at this scene again we have decided that it is not needed. It does not fit with the style of the piece and is irrelevant now as we have adapted the plot slightly, making it simpler and less confusing.

Night scene - monologues

We have decided to include a scene where each individual can stand up and explain why they have joined the rebel group and what they had to do with Jamie. I think this is necessary to add to the story of Jamie and what she is really like, it also helps to give the characters a bit of a back story and some kind of identity. I think I need to work more on developing my character which will then help me with my monologue and help me when acting as her.

Ruby's back story:
I was high in command when I worked for Jamie, I was a bodyguard or as some people might say, an assassin. I liked my job, I felt like I was helping to make the world safe again and help everyone to recover back to normality, I didn't feel any attachment to the people I was killing because I did't know them, I just knew they had done something bad and so deserved to be punished. I agreed with Jamie on this until I was designated my parents. I did try to reason with Jamie but he refused my plea and said if I didn't do it I would be shot instead for disobeying him. With no choice but to run I took my family to a safe house and joined the rebel group.

Mission 2 - dance/movement

To add some more content to our performance we decided we needed another mission as we seemed to have a strong start and end but not a lot in the middle. We decided that the best way to create a mission was with movement as it would be too 'film like' or cheesy if we acted it out.

We chose the song Supermassive Black Hole by Muse, I really like this song as it starts of quite dynamice which fits with the idea of us breaking in to somehwere and gaining access to everything. Once me and Freya have entered together after doing a short simple entrance we call on the boys who roll and slide in in a 'cool' way, as you would expect in a secret agent kind of film. 

This start really makes it clear what is happening without using any dialogue which I like as it is something different and interesting to watch. After everyone is on Kai and Toby do a repeated fight sequence to imitate them fighting guards and such to get to where we need to be, meanwhile the rest of us are at the back of the room doing a simple repeated sequence that shows us shooting the cameras that we needed to take out but in an unspecific way.

In the next chorus of the song we all come together and do a short sequence in slow motion, with the light on strobe, to create a very effective shooting and fighting part of the mission that is very simple but looks good from the audience. Freya and I choreographed this so it was simple and so everyone in our group could do it easily. 

(video of dance bit)

For the final section of the movement piece I thought it would be nice to have more of a dance as we had a lot of just movement. I created a fairly short pfrase simple steps that flow like a dance that the rest of the group would be able to pick up after some practise. I then came up with the idea of repeating this phrase in cannon to again add depth to the mission and add more techniques, so we had two people going at the same time, then the next two, then the next two. 

(video of complete piece)

I really enjoyed creating this as it played to my strengths and I felt I could help to add to our piece and make it better with more than just ideas. I it couldv'e been improved by tweeking Toby and Kai's section as well as the simple movement we were doing at the back at the time as it became a bit boring after it had been repeated twice. Overall though I think this will help to portray our story while keeping in with our style we have decided on.

First movement piece - Training

Once Ashley's character has been cleared of being who he says he is we create an 'initiation' that he has to go through so we can find his skill if he has one. We started this by having each of our specialties as like a different training station tht Ashley had to go to and participate in the activity. After creating our basic dialogue and trying to make it flow with him going between us.

In the next lesson we decided to add music to the action sequence to make it more interesting as it is a bit boring just with dialogue. We have made it into just a movement piece using just movement to portray our skill, which I think works much better than the dialogue. So Ashley starts with Carl, being pushed to the floor and doing some fitness things before smoothly moving on to Kai and doing things with a gun, and so it goes on with Ashley easily moving from person to person. At the end of the movement Ashley is pushed to the middle of a semi-circle that we form emphasising the fact that he doesn't fit in with our team, he is then kicked to his knees as Freya enters to tell him to leave. I think this all works much better as it is more interesting for the audience to watch and breaks up some of the dialogue within our performance. To keep improving it we need to perfect the movements are make sure it all flows really well so it looks impressive to the audience. 

Opening

We have created our opening sequence to our performance, we commence in a mission that goes slightly wrong at the end. We decided to use a kind of sound scape to start it, gradually adding in people to build the atmosphere and tension. There is some stage combat included when Toby is caught and the mission is compromised. I think this is an effective and exciting way to start our performance and introduce them to the the beginning of our story. This is a bit of a different way to start a show as we, the performers, will emerge from the audience adding an element of surprise, and it also introduces them into the action packed style of our piece. I think we have worked well this week to create and work on this start without going off task unlike previous times when we have becomne distracted. I think we need to keep working on the slickness of the movement especially Toby and Ashley's stage combat as it does not look very good at the minute, but I think will be good when we get everything together.

Research

After watching the music video for 'Chasing Pavements' my initial idea was something to do with a car crash. Developing the idea I thought that we could create a piece about the family left behind and the different emotions they feel, encorperating the idea that they are 'chasing' happiness but they will not be completely happy because of their loss. 

Another idea that we developed as a group was chasing some kind of prize. We decided on a theme of horror, using the film 'Would you rather' as a stimulus. 

1. 'Iris (Brittany Snow) and seven other desperate people become trapped in Shepard's (Jeffrey Combs) mansion. Shepard forces them to play a sadistic game for a large sum of money -- but the dilemmas become increasingly deadly.'

   
   

   

   
   

Creating the opening scene was quite difficullt; trying to make it scary and not comical seemed to be quite difficult. To add suspense and tension I suggested we should do a scene where the room is plunged into darknes and there are shouts and bangs from the performers to scare the audience, this was an effective idea but it seemed hard to create a lot of substance to go within the piece without killing of the charcaters too quickly. Also as we tried to think of ideas we kept getting drawn back to similar themes from various horror films so it was hard to come up with something completely original.

After more brainstorming we came up with the idea of an undercover group of people trying to over throw the controller of their community. This came from the idea of working towards something that in the end will be futile, their freedom from conformity, like chasing pavements which would be never ending.

This is our initial mind map and ideas for our futuristic idea.

We have written out the basic plot of our performance. Jamie is the person controlling everything, but nobody knows who Jamie is. Our piece is based on the rebel group who are trying to overrule Jamie and find out who she is. Our initial ending was it turns Jamie is infact the leader of the rebels and so she kills her squad. But we have now decided that Jamie's best friend is going to kill Jamie after her betrayl and then takeover Jamie's rule of the city.

This is a list of the characters we have in our performance and who is playing each of them so we could start dividing our story. 

We have written out the plot of story again in more detail so we know what scenes we need to create and so we know what is going to happen in our story, although this could still be updated and change slightly.

We have started planning the monologue the Carl will say to open our performance, this is what we are going to include. It will be helpful to set the dystopian feel of our performance and make it clear to everyone what it is about and where it is set. 

I think we need to really work on creating the scenes to go within the piece and start working to create an effective and exciting opening. We are working well so far together, and have been very organised in my opinion and made a good start to our project so I don't think we need to improve anything yet. 

Chasing Pavements

Our main stimulus we have been given is the song Chasing Pavements by Adele. We watched the music video to start the lesson and give us inspiration for ideas.
As a starting point I looked up the lyrics to the song to understand it's meaning:
I've made up my mind,
Don't need to think it over
If I'm wrong, I am right
Don't need to look no further,
This ain't lust
I know this is love

But if I tell the world
I'll never say enough
'cause it was not said to you
And that's exactly what I need to do
If I end up with you

[Chorus:]
Should I give up?
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
Or would it be a waste
Even if I knew my place?
Should I leave it there?
Should I give up?
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?

I build myself up
And fly around in circles
Waitin' as my heart drops
And my back begins to tingle
Finally, could this be it

[Chorus:]
Or should I give up?
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
Or would it be a waste
Even if I knew my place?
Should I leave it there?

Should I give up?
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?

Should I give up?
Or should I just keep on chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
Or would it be a waste
Even if I knew my place?
Should I leave it there?

Should I give up?
Or should I just keep on chasin' pavements?
Should I just keep on chasin' pavements?
Ohh oh

[Chorus:]
should I give up?
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?
Or would it be a waste
Even if I knew my place?
Should I leave it there?

should I give up?
Or should I just keep chasin' pavements
Even if it leads nowhere?

In the first lesson we split into two groups and experimented with a ideas, creating a short piece. As a group we decided to go with comedy, and went with 'chasing' a prize which turned into a TV show. We use inspiration from the TV programme "Mock the Week" to create a section of the show, where we were given a category such as "things a teacher wouldn't say" and then say something funny. I think this short piece was okay but it became difficult to come up with ideas to put into it and making sure everything was funny. Also not everyone in the group necessarily liked or was confident with comedy so it was hard to keep enthusiasm within the group, bringing the productivity down.