DIGITAL SPECIAL EFFECTS

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AMA ADDISON

STRUCTURED RECORD

DRAMA

Question 1

In what way was the stimulus material developed through the drama process?

In the beginning we wanted our audience to feel relaxed and felt that music will be the best way to achieve this effectively. We used to pieces of music produced in the olden days, one was called ‘Fings aint what they use to be’ by Max Bygrave and ‘I don’t want to set the world on fire’ by Inkspots. We felt that this music will help us set the type of mood we want our audience to feel.

 Our teacher brought in our first stimulus which was the film called ‘The cream cracker under the settee’ starring Doris who talked about her past life and present life and pointed out issues which effected her life as an elderly person. We wanted to portray some of these issues into our play and therefore looked deeply into these issues of old age, analyzed and discussed the different ways elderly people may feel at this present moment or may have in the past. These in addition help us deepen the drama because we came across some of the emotional feelings elderly people feel or may have felt. This is where we decided it would be best to focus our play on one character and portray her emotional feelings. We wanted to show the different stages of our characters life until she was classified as an old woman.

We wrote down all the issues mentioned and talked about in the film called the cream cracker under the settee. However these issues were too many and so we chose specific ones that we thought were more familiar and would interest our target audience. For example weakness, death, loneliness, vulnerability, old age etc. We each chose one topic in which focus and research upon. My topic in which to research was death and how it affects old age people. We then brought together each individuals research piece and discussed ways in which to portray these issues in our play. In the play we also wanted to demonstrate elderly people’s thoughts on society and the effect media have on them. In order to do this we had to talk to the elderly people personally. So we went to the Darby and Joan club which was down the street from my school where we got the chance to interview a number of elderly people and also observed their physicality and how they communicate amongst themselves. By talking to them helped give us an idea of how they felt about society today compared to society they lived in, in the past during World War 2.

We felt that we needed to deepen our story so we decided to look for a newspaper articles which talked about one elderly women and her past and present life which will give us a case study to focus on. However we want a tragic and sad story with death as a way of freedom. Each member brought in a newspaper article which they found on the internet or in news papers and Jodie talk about a real life story she experience. Her story was about an old man and lived in the same flat above her. The old man died in his house on his chair and remained there for a couple of weeks until his body started to decompose giving off a really bad smell. The fact that the old man laid there dead for several days without anybody knowing about it showed that he was alone and had no family to care for him. This showed that loneliness is an important issue for elderly people. I also found an article on the internet through the Guardian website which talked about a woman called Alien who was sentenced to death in Florida due to the murder of a number of men. However Alien claims she did it in self defense because the men attempted to rape her. This showed the elderly people are afraid of being attacked and also of death which helped us come to conclusion that elderly people constantly life in fear for example, the fear of new media technology, of changes in society, of death etc. Therefore we decided that fear is something we had to show in our play because it is a big issue and is apart of elderly peoples life. Our initial idea was to use one newspaper article and to base our character on it. However we found this difficult and time consuming which is why we decided to have a discussion about each article and picked out some parts that talked about the issues we want to show in our play and also discussed ways to portraying these.

We decided that our character should be born in the 1930 during the time of World War 2. We needed to get an idea of how people lived during this time especially women and how they were effected. To do this we went to the Imperial War Museum to gather information about people during this time.

Question 2

Explain how the research material was gathered and used in the process?

Newspapers- We decided to base our play on one character who was an old woman called Jane and born in the 1930’s. We wanted to perform the different stages of her life from the time when she was born until her present stage where she is now classified as an old person. In order to do this we needed a real life story which will give us a case study to focus on. Each member of my group looked through a number of newspapers in hope to find an article about an old woman’s tragic life with death as the solution to her miserable life. Our research was then brought into class presented and discussed. We then chose sections of some articles that we felt would be useful to use in our play. We decided to use some of the article headlines later in our play. We wanted to mention some of the shocking and disturbing headlines at some point in our play to the audience which will tell them that the play is about old age so in the mirror scene, Joyce mentioned some of the shocking headlines to the audience. For example, ’87 year old was stabbed 8 times’. After saying this, the rest of us will pretend to be stabbed and drop to the ground whilst struggling to breath. This is how we wanted to show the realism of this headline.

Book- We researched a practitioner called Antonin Artaud from the A level book called Drama and Theatre Studies which helped us devise our play based on his theory and thoughts. The book gave us a brief biography of his life and talked about the role of the actors and audiences and their relationship based on his believes. There was a great deal of information in this book and they used and illustrated in the scenes during the rehearsals. For example he believed that the actors should representatives of emotional states and so in the mirror scene we represented Joyce’s fear of old age and the media.  

Film- After watching ‘The cream cracker under the settee’ and wrote down all the issues and topics raised during the film, each individual of my group had a specific topic in which to research on. My topic was death and how it affected their lives. We all used the internet for the research. One website talked about a real life case where an elderly was forced to commit suicide because they felt that there was no need to live any longer as they had no one to take care of them and love them. Each member talked about what they found and we had a class discussion where we talked about ways in which to use this information in our piece. We decided to incorporate some of this information into where we want to educate our audience. One of the many issues that elderly people face were mentioned by each member of my group in the beginning of our play whilst doing a movement that relates and demonstrates what we are saying for example weak, old age and death. We each repeated our word to show that it is constantly faced by elderly people. We also watched another film called Enter Achilles watch was performed by the DV8 group. This was a silent film with a lot of repetitive gestures and movements. We used this repetitive idea in the rape scene where Amalia was repeatedly moved Jodie’s hand away from her mouth.

Music- We tried to use the music to reflect a general mood in the atmosphere. The music ‘Things aint what they use to be’ by Max Bygrave is a fast pace song, light and playful. This was chosen to help bring our character back to her teenage life and to show how our character feels. Through the dance and facial expressions, we showed that our character was happy at that time of her life. The other called ‘I don’t want to set the world on fire’ by Inkspot a slow, loud but threatening song. We chose this song to also bring back our character to her teenage life but the stringed dolled dance was done to show the different type of behaviors in the past society and also to bring a scene of comedy into our play.

Using the information obtained from the internet, newspapers, books and films we felt there was a sufficient amount of research and thoughts for us to develop our character.

 Question 3

How did the group plan for a range of responses from the audience?

We wanted a range of Metaphysical responses from the audience throughout the play which we thought would be accomplished by using the Artaud theory.

We wanted a calm introduction to our play which would hopefully make the audience feel more entertained and relaxed and felt that music and dance would do just that. We performed two dances with some comedy elements which would hopefully entertain the audience. Our first dance was an olden day routine and casual danced coordinated by a member of my group who was in charge of this section. Our second dance was like a stringed doll dance or robot dance. This was done to show the comedy elements we wanted to portray in the dance which will therefore hopefully amuse and entertain our audience. In this dance we tried to show the different kind of people’s behaviors and social classes in the old age society. However between these two dances we wanted the audience to feel a bit uncomfortable and that is why we chose to perform the birth scene in between these dances. We made labor sounds and noises as Jodie was pretending to give birth to a baby. Hopefully this will make our audience feel odd and uncomfortable. In the sex scene we wanted to audience to feel disgusted. Through the Artaud theory we did a lot of physical touching and also performed a more sexual ritual dance where I made some sexual movements by rolling over Amalia and her rolling over me whilst the others repeated the words ‘roll it push it’ which adds to the idea that there was something sexual happening.

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We painted our faces white with red lipstick and red nail polish. We each wore black clothing with some red color clothing. Some members of my group wore a red top and others wore a red belt or scurf around their waist. The red symbolized violence, passion, love, blood and death. The red symbolized every emotional or physical feeling that is within the play.

We aim to educate our audience throughout our play by mentioning some facts about the issues that concern old age whilst performing. Joyce talked directly to the audiences by mentioning some of the article headlines we ...

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