When we reran the monologue in groups we had to make certain decisions about the prisoner that would affect the running of the story. We decided that the prisoner was being held against his will in a military testing base. Before being taken there, he was being held on a life sentence at a maximum-security prison after being wrongly accused of murdering his family. The photograph that the prisoner had referred to was the last picture taken of his family before they were killed. We started this scene with the prisoner’s monologue with a few additions to what he said to give the character more depth. We then used a split scene to show who was holding him and why he was there. We also used a flashback to show what the photo was. The effective parts of the scene were the split screen because it gave the basic outline of what had happened to the prisoner from an objective point of view; and the monologue because the prisoners emotions were conveyed through his voice and body language.
For the freeze-frame of the photo, we showed the family of the prisoner to build character depth and to explain why he was in prison. We made it effective by showing how the family then showing the prisoner in his dark depressing cell. We started off by showing what happened when the photo was being taken then we flashed forward to the prisoner where we used voices in the head to show the prisoners emotions. We then showed the prisoners captors taking the photo from him to add to the emotion and unhappiness in the scene.
I wrote the monologue alone with the teacher asking questions whilst I was in role as the prisoner. I wrote down that the prisoner was angry, sad and confused and also what he could see and what was in the photo. In our group we showed everyone as a different part of the prisoner’s mind explaining what they felt and what they knew, slowly piecing together what had happened. We used a separate person as the prisoner to arbitrate and make sense of what was said. We put the prisoner on a higher level to show dominance. It was effective because it clearly showed how the prisoner felt.
When we showed the prisoner waking up from a drugged sleep, we used voiceover, mime and flashback to show it effectively. We used voiceover to describe the events being mimed. The mime built tension and also gave depth to the voice over. The narrator and the prisoner were linked by both appearing to feel pain at the same time at a certain point in the story. This scene showed how the prisoner was taken to the cell and it showed some of the things that had happened to him beforehand.
For the final scene, we showed the prisoner attempting escape from the military base. We used conscience and slow motion to show this scene effectively. The conscience section resolved one of the mysteries of the plot: whether or not the prisoner had murdered his family. The slow motion gave a dramatic death for the prisoner.
During this project, I have improved my listening as I have tried to encourage other people to talk more in the planning of a drama piece. My favourite part of this project was the final scene where we got to show how it all ended it was very enjoyable to produce.
