Production Blog

Day One 

Monday 15^th of March was the start our second week back at college. We were ready to begin cracking on with rehearsals and put this piece together. Of course, before we set foot into college, we had to do a Covid test. After this we actually had a zoom call with Arts Ed, which is an amazing drama school that wanted to talk about what they could offer us for the future and the courses they provide.  They talked about everything from what they do; to how to join and even went over the financial help that is on offer. I really enjoyed the talk, and it did encourage me to have a further look into Arts Ed as a possibility in the future.

 Following on from this we did some warmup games to allow the class to become more energised in order to perform. We played splat, which is a classic and fun game. The entire class gathers into a circle and one person goes in the middle. The person in the middle has to say somebody’s name, that person has to duck down and the two people on their left and right have to try and shoot each other by turning to each other saying “splat” the quickest. Another warmup we played was wink murder, again we all had to get in a circle and one person would leave the room to be the detective, another person in the circle would be the murderer or the person winking at people. Every time they winked at somebody, they would have to do a dramatic death. As this an acting course and we need to highlight our skills even in games.

The rest of the day we looked at Scene 8 of the play ‘Connections’.  This scene is in which the characters started to notice the crack in the middle of the city and everyone in the city is walking past it and reacting to the crack in different ways. There are a lot of characters in this scene from news reporters to youtubers and some people trying to actually make money from this crack by offering tours and t-shirts. It is a really hectic scene, full of different characters, personalities, and reactions to what is happening. I find it to be a really funny scene. However, I found it to be difficult to try and rehearse, this is because when we first started to put it together people didn’t know what they were doing and weren’t listing properly to the directions given by Kelly and Kane. We had to keep stopping to really try and brighten the spirits of some of the cast, as they were not committing to the performance a 100%. Nevertheless, by the end of the day, we had made good progress.

Day Two

The following day at college we started to really pick up the pace of our work. Firstly, we started off with what I consider to be my big scene, which is Scene One where I am a campaigner for the new electing mayor, Bobby Brunt. My friend Daniel and I were cast as the two campaigners, for our scene we are in a busy city centre full of people walking up, down, and around. It is our job to hand flyers out in order to help Bobby Brunt become mayor. Our characters are constantly running up to people, trying to persuade them to vote. My character is very focused, he’s the one that really wants to do a good job, on the off chance he will climb higher up in the ranks of Bobby’s campaign. He is not necessarily obsessed with Bobby themselves or their view, but is more focused on trying to further his own goals, namely to earn more money. This is how I see my character in this performance.

Kelly had us start off by standing centre stage, we would have some people in our calls working as extras for this scene. They would be walking past, and we would be trying to hand them flyers. Then after this we have a short scene with two of the main characters Maru and Fin, these two are best friends and they don’t like our plan to build new homes on a park. An argument ensues with us explaining how it is better, but we also don’t really care what these kids think as they are only children. We are the adults, who are better than them. We are businessmen, we need to spread the word about Bobby Brunt and that is our goal.

Day Three

Wednesday rolled around and we began rehearsing. Before this though we did some more games to warm up and enter into an acting mind set. After the games, we were with Tom and he was directing the prologue. The prologue contains singing and dancing and it is very different to the rest of the play. Tom started off by showing the class what he wanted to do during this scene; how everything was laid out and the movement of the dancing. The prologue seems to be more of a musical theatre style piece. However, it was very fun to do, it was great to work with Tom and see his ideas come to life.  

Day Four

On Thursday we actually started to film. However, it was only the family scenes, which I was not a part of. Those who weren’t in these scenes continued to rehearse the parts of the play that contains the rest of the cast, like Scenes 8 and 9. We seemed to be repeating these two scenes a lot, but they are some very important scenes and they needed to be ironed out. In fact they are quite crucial as they contain all of the class, so everyone need to be aware of what they are doing. They needed to be ready to perform and film, we couldn't waste valuable time in which we were meant to be filming.

Day Five

The next day we started out by filming Scene 8. This involved picking the right location to film a big public scene. In the end we decided upon a nice spot near the Stockton River, it was very spacious and didn’t have a lot of noise from the nearby traffic. We found this to be one of our biggest problems picking a location at the time. The college itself is in a town centre, due to this there is a lot of traffic and this can cause problems with the audio of our filming. Scene 8 had everyone in the cast on at some point, so it was very important that everyone knew exactly what they were doing and when. Upon filming the scene needed to flow like clockwork and for the most part it did. Everyone knew their lines and where to be. I felt we had been through this scene at this point more times than I ever thought we would, but after all that hard work the scene came out amazingly and everyone did a fantastic job.

Following on from this we filmed Scenes 9 and 10, which as the final scenes of the play these again were extremely important. They have everyone involved and they are the climax of the play. The context behind these scenes is that it is the final showdown between Bobby and Maru, we have a massive crowd behind Bobby supporting him as he promises to stop all these cracks from destroying the world and Maru trying to calm the hysteria. This scene was extremely fun to film, I was one of Bobby Brunt’s campaigners, therefore I had to calm down the crowds as they were marching and make sure the continued trusting Bobby. On this day we had to do a lot of different takes, there were so many different moments to capture from different angles to complete the scene. We needed to showcase the changing of emotions towards Bobby Brunt, how the crowd comes to realise Bobby's true nature, took awhile to accomplish.

Day Six

The final day of filming was the biggest day for me. It was the day to film my main scene. This was it my time to shine, my part that I had put everything into. We started off by finding a suitable location that looked as realistic as possible and set up shop. We had the film crew with us and some extras to help with our scenes. The day was looking really promising, I was ready I had learned my lines, and I knew that I was ready to perform. In spite of this, the pressure started to get to my head and when we were filming I managed to forget my lines halfway through the scene. I knew them but as I was performing my mind just stopped. I was so embarrassed. I was worried that the rest of the cast was thinking that I was under prepared and didn’t know my lines. Even though I knew I did. Personally this was a difficult moment for me. But I had to pick myself back up and continue, despite the pressure on me. My goal was to simply perform and hopefully perform well. I acted to what I thought was a very good standard and after those little mistakes I did really well. Daniel and I bounced off each other exceedingly well and over our many projects together I find we make a great acting duo. In the end we all had an outstanding time and went back to college, that was a rap for me with “Like there is no tomorrow”.