Task 1- Research-
We Will Rock You is set in the distant future where the whole world has been programmed to think, dress and look the same. The Planet Earth has been renamed Planet Mall to match the theme of futureisic world. I like the idea of this because it will show the audience where our world is heading if we continue to prioritise phones and the internet, which is actually a serious message when you look into it. All instruments are banned, and there is not a single instrument left on planet Mall (so they think) and all the GaGa Kids are forced to listen to the same electronic music. Galeliao is intrudenced as a 'mental' patient at a hospital because he is hearing song lyrics in his head and doesn't know what to do with them, he seems to sing lines of songs which aren't made electronically and this gets him in trouble which put him in hospital in the first place. There he meets Scaramouche who is also in trouble for dressing differently, and having her own thoughts and fashion. This makes them both hated in their different groups because the are different which leads them to the song 'I want to break Free'. As the story progresses we see the manipulator and the 'bad' character of the show- Killer Queen and she is introduced in the song 'Killer Queen' which is performed by the people who work at global soft, and the audience immediately recognise the bad character.
-Meet the bohemians
-Meat and Brit
-Brit Dies
-Find the Guitar
-Try to find Webely Stadiam
-Suceed in ending Globalsoft
I think an obvious theme in We Will Rock You is Love. This is because out of every person on Planet Mall, Scaramouch and Galeliao found each other, and had the same opinions on music and the way the Planet is controlled by Globalsoft. The storyline evolves around these two characters and their battle to play an instrument, which have all been banned and demolished.
Thursday, 29 September 2016
Tuesday, 27 September 2016
16/09/16 Dance Lesson Analysis
In our first dance lesson back we started looking at ways to manipulate movement and emotions based on themes. To begin the lesson we did a warm up which consisted of jogging on the spot and jumps to work on our stamina and to prevent injury.
We then started to develop a motif with simple arm movements with a few steps and lunges. I enjoyed learning this motif because it was easy to pick up and it represented a lot of the theme through the movement and gestures. Our theme of this motif was media and advertising exaggerating the real truth and telling lies, confusing people and causing upset. One movement that I feel stuck out in this routine was when we took two small quick steps forward bringing our feet together, whilst moving our arms one at a time past our mouths and towards the front, with our palms of our hands flexed. I felt that this really resembled the lies being told, and that we shouldn't always believe what people are saying is necessarily true.
We were then put into groups of two, and were asked to develop this motif using choreographic devices such as retrograde, fragmentation and repetition. I thought that to develop the motif further we would leave the action, space and dynamics how they were so that we could focus on choreographing the motif, and this meant that we could develop it after we are familiar with the movement. I worked with Amber for this part of the lesson, and I felt that we did well in our choreographing, as we were able to manipulate the routine and improve it, along with adding movements onto the end of it. We started by using fragmentation on the routine so that we could create a motif that was our own in terms of choreography and we could become familiar with it. We then retrograded what we had come up with, and added repetition to emphasise certain movements to link to the theme. I felt that this was effective because it made it clear what the theme was, and we made the simple motif look more complicated and appealing.
We then started to experiment with feelings and emotions, about how the media makes people think and feel. For example its common to get an article in a newspaper or magazine about a rumour of a celebrity with no real evidence, however the media insist on it being true to allow people to become intrigued to read it, however it will make the celebrity feel upset or embarrassed, so we started to play around with the idea of people not wanting to hear what they were saying, so to show this in our choreography me and amber came up with a lunge to the side, and I push my arm towards amber, and she covers her ears to represent the fact that I am forcing her to listen, but she doesn't want to, and then we repeated this in the other direction, and instead we did it the other way round so amber put her arm out and I covered my ears. I think this helped portray emotion and it linked to the them because of the use of movement. We then started to think on ways to develop the movement of how we move our arms and hands past our mouths as I feel this movement is the most effective in the piece. We first performed the movement together to show the realism of how people believe in the media and what they insist is the truth, and how the words spread through so many people, but when we repeated it later in the motif I started to perform the movement but Amber grabbed my arms from behind and forced them to stop. I really liked this because it isn't too clear who is most controlling, the media or the public, but it shows that if the media tell a story or a lie or exaggerate then some people won't believe it, or if the public try and speak out, or a celebrity tries to say that media are lying, the media will stop them.
-Group choreography with Amber, Holly, Sam
-Video Evidence
Overall I enjoyed this lesson because I was able to develop and manipulate two motifs, and make them look effective. I feel as though the dancing went well and our ability to make the theme clear to the audience. To improve I would like to work on facial expressions to portray different emotions for the duet with Amber. For example, I seemed to keep an angry facial expression throughout the performance to represent the lies being told and the mysterious feel it gave us, however I think that a scared or worried facial expression would work with some movements such as the covering our ears and mouths, as this shows that sometimes we aren't shown the full truth and are not often told the truth.
We then started to develop a motif with simple arm movements with a few steps and lunges. I enjoyed learning this motif because it was easy to pick up and it represented a lot of the theme through the movement and gestures. Our theme of this motif was media and advertising exaggerating the real truth and telling lies, confusing people and causing upset. One movement that I feel stuck out in this routine was when we took two small quick steps forward bringing our feet together, whilst moving our arms one at a time past our mouths and towards the front, with our palms of our hands flexed. I felt that this really resembled the lies being told, and that we shouldn't always believe what people are saying is necessarily true.
We were then put into groups of two, and were asked to develop this motif using choreographic devices such as retrograde, fragmentation and repetition. I thought that to develop the motif further we would leave the action, space and dynamics how they were so that we could focus on choreographing the motif, and this meant that we could develop it after we are familiar with the movement. I worked with Amber for this part of the lesson, and I felt that we did well in our choreographing, as we were able to manipulate the routine and improve it, along with adding movements onto the end of it. We started by using fragmentation on the routine so that we could create a motif that was our own in terms of choreography and we could become familiar with it. We then retrograded what we had come up with, and added repetition to emphasise certain movements to link to the theme. I felt that this was effective because it made it clear what the theme was, and we made the simple motif look more complicated and appealing.
We then started to experiment with feelings and emotions, about how the media makes people think and feel. For example its common to get an article in a newspaper or magazine about a rumour of a celebrity with no real evidence, however the media insist on it being true to allow people to become intrigued to read it, however it will make the celebrity feel upset or embarrassed, so we started to play around with the idea of people not wanting to hear what they were saying, so to show this in our choreography me and amber came up with a lunge to the side, and I push my arm towards amber, and she covers her ears to represent the fact that I am forcing her to listen, but she doesn't want to, and then we repeated this in the other direction, and instead we did it the other way round so amber put her arm out and I covered my ears. I think this helped portray emotion and it linked to the them because of the use of movement. We then started to think on ways to develop the movement of how we move our arms and hands past our mouths as I feel this movement is the most effective in the piece. We first performed the movement together to show the realism of how people believe in the media and what they insist is the truth, and how the words spread through so many people, but when we repeated it later in the motif I started to perform the movement but Amber grabbed my arms from behind and forced them to stop. I really liked this because it isn't too clear who is most controlling, the media or the public, but it shows that if the media tell a story or a lie or exaggerate then some people won't believe it, or if the public try and speak out, or a celebrity tries to say that media are lying, the media will stop them.
-Group choreography with Amber, Holly, Sam
-Video Evidence
Overall I enjoyed this lesson because I was able to develop and manipulate two motifs, and make them look effective. I feel as though the dancing went well and our ability to make the theme clear to the audience. To improve I would like to work on facial expressions to portray different emotions for the duet with Amber. For example, I seemed to keep an angry facial expression throughout the performance to represent the lies being told and the mysterious feel it gave us, however I think that a scared or worried facial expression would work with some movements such as the covering our ears and mouths, as this shows that sometimes we aren't shown the full truth and are not often told the truth.
Monday, 26 September 2016
15/09/16 Lesson Analysis
On 15/09/16 we had our first Musical Theatre lesson of the year and instantly began preparing for our upcoming performance of 'We Will Rock You'. I did research into the show over the summer so that I could come back to lessons prepared and ready to learn the songs and blocking after auditions. This helped because we began the lesson with singing, to get us into the gist of the musicals tone and the contrasting songs. Before we started singing we did a warm up to make sure we were ready to sing the songs to the best of our ability and we had warmed up our vocal chords and diaphragm to prevent straining our voices through the use of scales in legato and staccato. This was useful because the first song we sang is the first ensemble number in the show- Radio GaGa. I found this song interesting because of the adaptations in the lyrics to make the song fit into the initial theme of the musical, by changing the idea of talking to a 'radio' to 'global soft' which the audience will learn is representing what I can best describe as the worlds 'government' type of corporation. The character who runs global soft has (over time) worked on brainwashing the world so that they all think the same, dress the same and listen to the same electronic music, whilst musical instruments are banned. This character is Killer Queen, and she is the 'bad' character of the show. The characters who sing this song are the GaGa kids, who are the same age generation as Scaramouch and Galileo, only they have been controlled by the globalsoft and think that they have to do what they say. The vocal warm up helped because this song is challenging in terms of range, for example there are moments in the verses where we have to sing low notes, and moments in the choruses where you have to 'belt' notes in order to make it sound effective.
When we sang this song for the second time, I decided to experiment with harmonies to give ideas into the way this song is performed. I feel that this was successful because the harmonies went well with the song and more people began joining me towards the end. The part where I feel that the harmonies best fit is at the end of the chorus when the GaGa kids sing 'all your world loves you' in which I sang a few chords above everyone else. The reason as to why I felt it worked best here is because it emphasises this part of the song, therefore makes the audience hear the lyrics more and it shows how everyone loves global soft and they are calling online their leader, and that the whole world loves it. We discussed chords and harmonies before singing this song the second time and we were shown on the piano the spacing between the notes, for example a C chord has C, E, G, and C an octave above, and these notes would work for a harmony. This is how I got the confidence to experiment with the harmonies which turned out to be successful.
The second song we did was 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'. I feel as though I wasn't as familiar with this song because this is one I hadn't looked at as much as Radio Gaga over the summer, however I still really enjoyed learning it. This song is performed by two characters, Brit and Meat however we sang it as an ensemble to get ourselves more familiar with the musical and learn how to sing as a group. I thought that this song was very up beat because it was faster and had more pauses in the lyrics than radio gaga, and soon realised that it was a rock song like most of the Queen songs featured in this musical, but thought that it would be effective for the characters to perform a jive dance to it because of the beat and the swing to it. I enjoyed this song however I feel as though I could have worked harder to improvise harmonies and get to learn the tune better.
We then sat as a group and discussed how we were going to decide on costume design for the characters we would be given after we audition. I think it is important to design our costume with a reason as to why the costume will look like it does for example style/ colour etc. I imagined Scaramouch wearing purple because this is a very 'rock' colour and it will go with the theme that she is rebellious, I also think that Killer Queen would suit red because it could represent the fact that she is powerful and in authority. I feel as though the Gaga Girls would suit no colour at all, so wearing black with perhaps a glimpse of stereotypical girl colour pink, to represent the fact that they are all the same and are programmed to look and think the same, which is the reason they don't like scaramouch.
The convocation about Costume design lead us onto the subject about what we were wearing casually that day, why we were wearing it and what it represented. We discussed the ideas of the fact that what we wear represents the different aspects to our individual personalities, confidence and overall differences as people. This is contrasting to the show, as people have to look the same in order to 'fit in' with the entire world, whereas in a modern day society we can dress and look however we want and not many people would judge or find it a problem. I found the subject of how long it takes people to get ready for different things an interesting discussion because I personally don't take that much thought and effort into the way I look and dress, whereas other people took a long time and put a lot of thought into it, however we are all still in the same college, the same class, and taking the same course in contrast to the show where everyone is the same. This helped me to develop ideas for my probable of cast characterisation of looking and thinking the same as everyone, and being programmed and brain washed into believing what a society was and what it is now.
Overal I found our first lesson successful because I was able to analyse songs and improvise different harmonies, and this means that I am more prepared for the musical and research into it. I also gained an idea of what characters I wanted to audition for and why. I wanted to audition for Scaramouch because I had an idea of what I could portray, what I could bring to the character and already had some initial ideas for costume.
When we sang this song for the second time, I decided to experiment with harmonies to give ideas into the way this song is performed. I feel that this was successful because the harmonies went well with the song and more people began joining me towards the end. The part where I feel that the harmonies best fit is at the end of the chorus when the GaGa kids sing 'all your world loves you' in which I sang a few chords above everyone else. The reason as to why I felt it worked best here is because it emphasises this part of the song, therefore makes the audience hear the lyrics more and it shows how everyone loves global soft and they are calling online their leader, and that the whole world loves it. We discussed chords and harmonies before singing this song the second time and we were shown on the piano the spacing between the notes, for example a C chord has C, E, G, and C an octave above, and these notes would work for a harmony. This is how I got the confidence to experiment with the harmonies which turned out to be successful.
The second song we did was 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love'. I feel as though I wasn't as familiar with this song because this is one I hadn't looked at as much as Radio Gaga over the summer, however I still really enjoyed learning it. This song is performed by two characters, Brit and Meat however we sang it as an ensemble to get ourselves more familiar with the musical and learn how to sing as a group. I thought that this song was very up beat because it was faster and had more pauses in the lyrics than radio gaga, and soon realised that it was a rock song like most of the Queen songs featured in this musical, but thought that it would be effective for the characters to perform a jive dance to it because of the beat and the swing to it. I enjoyed this song however I feel as though I could have worked harder to improvise harmonies and get to learn the tune better.
We then sat as a group and discussed how we were going to decide on costume design for the characters we would be given after we audition. I think it is important to design our costume with a reason as to why the costume will look like it does for example style/ colour etc. I imagined Scaramouch wearing purple because this is a very 'rock' colour and it will go with the theme that she is rebellious, I also think that Killer Queen would suit red because it could represent the fact that she is powerful and in authority. I feel as though the Gaga Girls would suit no colour at all, so wearing black with perhaps a glimpse of stereotypical girl colour pink, to represent the fact that they are all the same and are programmed to look and think the same, which is the reason they don't like scaramouch.
The convocation about Costume design lead us onto the subject about what we were wearing casually that day, why we were wearing it and what it represented. We discussed the ideas of the fact that what we wear represents the different aspects to our individual personalities, confidence and overall differences as people. This is contrasting to the show, as people have to look the same in order to 'fit in' with the entire world, whereas in a modern day society we can dress and look however we want and not many people would judge or find it a problem. I found the subject of how long it takes people to get ready for different things an interesting discussion because I personally don't take that much thought and effort into the way I look and dress, whereas other people took a long time and put a lot of thought into it, however we are all still in the same college, the same class, and taking the same course in contrast to the show where everyone is the same. This helped me to develop ideas for my probable of cast characterisation of looking and thinking the same as everyone, and being programmed and brain washed into believing what a society was and what it is now.
Overal I found our first lesson successful because I was able to analyse songs and improvise different harmonies, and this means that I am more prepared for the musical and research into it. I also gained an idea of what characters I wanted to audition for and why. I wanted to audition for Scaramouch because I had an idea of what I could portray, what I could bring to the character and already had some initial ideas for costume.
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