Unfortunately Cory didn’t show up this time. I was pretty bummed, because we had such a great, productive time before. There were still quite a few students there though. It was productive in the sense that we got to see and help other people. My partner and I were also able to cut the mountains out for our story. We tested them out against the shadow curtain as well and they appeared to work. We’ll have to pass them by Cory for the final go ahead though.
I really think he’ll be ready to work and wrap up a lot of the aspects of the project this time. Now that the rest of the class is really cooking along I think he’ll be even more inspired. It’s difficult to put into words how great this opportunity is for them as a whole. It is really the, “parallel play” idea put into action. While I’m not sure if any of the different groups are working directly together, the screen itself is such an enormous element that everyone can’t help but see everyone else working on their project when they test it out on the screen. Surprisingly, Cory has YET to see the screen unfurled at all. I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of it and probably be pretty inspired. He always tests everything we do against the wall, but the screen is a whole different story. Hopefully he’ll be here this week.
Our sixth meeting was very eventful. Tenagne, Mikaela, and I got to use the screen to test out some of our props and practice parts of our scene. This took longer than I expected it would, since we still need to finish writing our dialogue and script for the scene. I think all three of us enjoyed playing around with the already-made props we found in the closet—they motivated us to think of creative ways to use them by noticing their physical qualities. We found a lantern with red glass that glows when the flashlight shines through, and a vase that looks like it glitters when light hits it. The three of us discussed how we could use those cool effects during our scene, and I think it is coming along great.
As opposed to last time, all three of us wrote down the dialogue as we created it in order to practice our writing skills. Tenagne was eager to participate with us, but needed a little reassurance as we were writing lines down. I’m not sure what the best ways are to help improve penmanship, so it will be a learning experience for the both of us.
Our plan for the next meeting is to make up a specific schedule to plan out our time better, and try to make it a very productive class since we only have a few meetings left. We still need to make some props and costumes, as well as practice our scenes before we have to perform it. I’m very excited to see how it will turn out!
This past class was Ethan’s first day back to arts-2-gether. After talking to both Angel and Ethan our groups decided to work together for the remainder of the semester. Since Ethan is interested in drawing cities and buildings we decided to incorporate an underwater city into the story. While Ethan and his partners worked on creating props for the city, Angel and I ventured outside into the hallway to develop dialogue for the performance. Angel decided that he wanted to narrate the story. Everyone else will take on the voice of another character within the story.
Once Ethan finished making his city props he came out to the hallway to work with Angel. Together we call worked on dialogue and further developed the story. To incorporate the underwater city (Gateway to Atlantis) we made an extension to the story. The janitor who put the chemicals in the fish bowl is now flushing the fish down the drain. From here the three fish travel into Gateway of Atlantis. After meeting the other fish in the city, Gateway of Atlantis is suddenly drained of its water. Luckily the three fish are able to escape.
Unfortunately Angel was very tired so we were having difficulties engaging him in the activity. I went to ask Alice for help. She suggested experimenting with the shadows and lights to help promote dialogue. Ethan, Angel, and I went behind the screen and started experimenting with our fish props. They seemed to really enjoy making the shadows. Hopefully next class we can finish the dialogue and begin to practice our story in shadow form.
Before meeting with Neil and my partner I brainstormed some ideas on how to go about keeping the focus on the task at hand. I thought it would be a good idea for us to be conscious of the date of presentation and to have clearly defined tasks for each of us. When we sat down to begin our work I asked Neil what we should be doing and also mentioned the time line we have for completing the work. Neil responded well to focusing on the project but determining what should be done and how it should it be done proved challenging. I decided to lead by example with as little imposition on his creativity as possible by suggesting ideas, and sketching on the card board while questioning Neil if he approved or if it should be done differently (in other words I was “negotiating fit”). This method worked momentarily, but soon after encountering small difficulties Neil became discouraged. After a while he asked “can you just do the windows for me, you are better at it than I am”. I responded with “yes, absolutely”. I was worried what would happen after accepting this role, but it was worth a try. Fortunately, it worked out well, Neil immediately began working on the task of an introductory and ending credits. His intentions were to cut out the negative spaces as letters on a large piece of cardboard. Being aware of how incredibly tedious this process was I suggested we find a way to paint the letters on to a clear surface. He liked the idea so we ventured off together to the art supply room. After a few minutes of rummaging, we found some pieces of Plexiglas. We obtained approval from Dr. Wexler to use the materials and spent a few minutes determining what tools and types of paint to use. Finally, we set Neil up with his workspace. At this point I was quite pleased because Neil was clearly excited and had intentions of keeping the signs after their completion. There was finally a clear sense of productivity to our group, and best of all, Neil jumped head first into directing his creation. He ordered me to continue working on the cardboard, and gave specific directions to complete the task. Success! If we can get Neil to continue to “take the reins” then we can offer him a truly unique creative experience.
Judy came today! She came in with two flowers, one for Tanya, and the other for me. She was so psyched to go to the theatre. We left the class and met the two theatre students and walked to Parker Theatre. Judy and all of us reviewed the script we previously made and began to act it out. One of the theatre students found a mermaid tail for Judy to put on while pretending to be Sparkle Arielle. She loved it! Judy got right into character and remembered her first scene. She assigned us all to play along and be characters such as Ursela, the Prince, two eels and her father. When we made suggestions to her script she always kept an opened mind and listened to them. Overall, we must have videoed 6 scenes! Judy was on a role! She had so much fun using certain props around the room. She really took advantage of using the whole room and all of its contents. She went from the dinner scene at the table to the ocean on the couch and using the blocks as the shore. She had such a great imagination and always remained opened. She didn’t want to leave when it was time to go! We assured here that we would be back at the theatre next time. I think that Judy had a great time with all of us. The two theatre students were a big help and have some great ideas to help Judy with her story. They were also asking her great questions about the characters to get her thinking about the emotions that they might be going through in specific scenes. I really feel like Judy has grown so much from the beginning of this experience.
This week we continued with out prop making, and also got to playing a bit with the flashlight casting shadows. From last week, we had a few props finished. We worked this time around on making the larger rifle out of cardboard, the gravestone, and the zombie head (which would be removed by a bird in the play). Jahred worked on the rifle, very meticulously just as he did last week when drawing and cutting out the tank. He made sure to accurately copy the scale of each part of the rifle, including even the tiny holes! His attention to detail was impressive. It was great to see him continuously engaged. Since we’ve moved past the storyboarding sit-down part, he’s stayed pretty focused. His sense of humor has really come out as well, he’s been quite the source of humor over these past few weeks with his dry sense of sarcasm. He’s also very caring and concerned that Katie and I don’t hurt ourselves with things like cutting! And he’s always very helpful, volunteering to carry or acquire whatever material is needed. He’s been great to work with. While Jahred was working on the rifle, Katie worked on the gravestone, which we decided to make out of blue cellophane, that way it would cast a colored shadow. We taped wires to the edges to give it some structural support. I worked on making the zombie head, based off of Jahred’s design. We took some red cellophane and used that for the zombie’s eye sockets, mouth, and bloody neck. It was fun, and the props came out looking great. After we had everything cut out, we grabbed a flashlight and tested them out. Jahred worked the props while Katie and I worked with the camera and flashlight. We even grabbed a skeleton from the supply closet to experiment with in shadow, which Jahred really enjoyed. We may use it in our shadow play, as an added character or maybe as the landscape.
Last class we worked with Tanagne on the actual shadow aspect of the play. We tried out a few planes that Alice had brought in and tested them against the curtain with the flashlights to see what kind of shadows they would create. We experimented with twirling the plane to make it look like it was spiraling downward.
When Tanagne came in the curtain was put down and we showed her some of the properties that the shadows would have when we manipulated them with the flashlight. We got some props from one of the closets in Smiley and we found a lantern, a skull, and a bunch of shiny vases. We experimented with the flashlight and some cardboard to make it look like walls are closing in.
We also wanted to try to finish up our dialogue so we can start rehearsing and also to start making our props and costumes. Laura and I wanted to help Tanagne practice her writing and her motor skills. We all spoke about what should happen next in the scene as we all wrote some more of our dialogue. For next week we’re planning on finishing our dialogue and begin working on our props.
We spent the class, finishing up on Audie's cardboard characters. We also spent some time discussing the story line and voices. Audie seemed interested in the end result, and occassionally seems hesitant when voicing the characters comes into conversation. However, he warms up to the idea really easily.
I think we've made a lot of progress in the shadow play, since we finished every character and am now ready to start practicing with flashlights and coming up with their narration and voices. Next week we planned to work more on the voices.
Ethan, being back for the first time in a couple weeks, decided to work with in a group with Angel. Since we had our play worked out already, we sat in the hall to brainstorm a way to get Ethan's input. Ethan likes to draw cities, so we came up with the idea to extend Angels story and include Ethan's cities. At the end of Angels story, the fish now get flushed down the toilet and end up in an underwater city where they meet a bunch of other fish. Even though Ethan was not around for a couple of weeks, I thought this was a good way to incorporate both of their ideas and create an equal amount of input. We ended up making a good amount of progress, coming up with names for the characters, finishing up with props and completing the story all together. To me, Angel seemed to be a little bit distracted, but I think that was because we had already finished the story and then since Ethan come into the group, we needed to expand it more. So I feel that Angel felt bored going backwards on our progress. Angel also told us that we was very tired because he had to quickly do all of his homework. In the end, once we combined the 2 stories, I think both of the boys were happy and equally interested and excited to work on it. Next time we plan to finish up props all together and hopefully work on some dialogue.
Corey was not here for this session and it was the first time he was absent this semester other than his spring break, so Joe and I had to try and work around it and we decided to work on some of the props that were talked about with Corey last time. So far for Corey’s sketch he wanted to have a bird break out of his cage, and soar in to the sky amongst the clouds. Then the bird would fly to the mountains and seek shelter in a cave. He wanted to have sound effects and use different props for his shadow play, so the time before we made kind of a mobile of fluffy cotton clouds that looked really cool when the flashlight was shone on them. Corey got really excited about that. So for this session, Joe and I tried to move forward and make the mountains. We took some cardboard and drew out a mountain range and cut it out with an exacto knife. For the remainder of the class we just spent time wandering around seeing what other groups were working on. I recorded video for people and tried to help with whatever needed to be done. It wasn’t a super productive day because we could only do so much without Corey there. Hopefully next week will be better. Next time we will want to try and work on the story more with Corey and finish making props. At some point we will have to start putting everything together and running his shadow play behind the curtain.
Last week was fun and exciting. I finished cutting out Ethan’s cityscape while Meghan lead the rest of the group through acting warm-ups. Angel and Ethan got a real kick out of those playful, movement oriented warm-ups.
Ethan’s cityscape looked absolutely beautiful in silhouette form; the characters they made cast excellent shadows as well. I’m happy that Ethan and Angel are so enthusiastic to play with the movement of the shadows; for this reason, we YouTubed different ocean and aquatic noises to further the atmosphere and locomotion of our film. I think they voted down the waves crashing, and whale songs, and agreed on a track that was more instrumental, but still sounded deep and aquatic, like heard from a submarine.
What I really want to see today is Ethan and Angel practicing dialog. I feel comfortable with both improvising-playfully-make-it-up-as-we-go-along while still fallowing the story board style, or with a more formal “script.” So this is the challenge to tackle for today.
Unfortunately Cory didn’t show up this time. I was pretty bummed, because we had such a great, productive time before. There were still quite a few students there though. It was productive in the sense that we got to see and help other people. My partner and I were also able to cut the mountains out for our story. We tested them out against the shadow curtain as well and they appeared to work. We’ll have to pass them by Cory for the final go ahead though.
ReplyDeleteI really think he’ll be ready to work and wrap up a lot of the aspects of the project this time. Now that the rest of the class is really cooking along I think he’ll be even more inspired. It’s difficult to put into words how great this opportunity is for them as a whole. It is really the, “parallel play” idea put into action. While I’m not sure if any of the different groups are working directly together, the screen itself is such an enormous element that everyone can’t help but see everyone else working on their project when they test it out on the screen. Surprisingly, Cory has YET to see the screen unfurled at all. I’m sure he’ll get a kick out of it and probably be pretty inspired. He always tests everything we do against the wall, but the screen is a whole different story. Hopefully he’ll be here this week.
Our sixth meeting was very eventful. Tenagne, Mikaela, and I got to use the screen to test out some of our props and practice parts of our scene. This took longer than I expected it would, since we still need to finish writing our dialogue and script for the scene. I think all three of us enjoyed playing around with the already-made props we found in the closet—they motivated us to think of creative ways to use them by noticing their physical qualities. We found a lantern with red glass that glows when the flashlight shines through, and a vase that looks like it glitters when light hits it. The three of us discussed how we could use those cool effects during our scene, and I think it is coming along great.
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to last time, all three of us wrote down the dialogue as we created it in order to practice our writing skills. Tenagne was eager to participate with us, but needed a little reassurance as we were writing lines down. I’m not sure what the best ways are to help improve penmanship, so it will be a learning experience for the both of us.
Our plan for the next meeting is to make up a specific schedule to plan out our time better, and try to make it a very productive class since we only have a few meetings left. We still need to make some props and costumes, as well as practice our scenes before we have to perform it. I’m very excited to see how it will turn out!
This past class was Ethan’s first day back to arts-2-gether. After talking to both Angel and Ethan our groups decided to work together for the remainder of the semester. Since Ethan is interested in drawing cities and buildings we decided to incorporate an underwater city into the story. While Ethan and his partners worked on creating props for the city, Angel and I ventured outside into the hallway to develop dialogue for the performance. Angel decided that he wanted to narrate the story. Everyone else will take on the voice of another character within the story.
ReplyDeleteOnce Ethan finished making his city props he came out to the hallway to work with Angel. Together we call worked on dialogue and further developed the story. To incorporate the underwater city (Gateway to Atlantis) we made an extension to the story. The janitor who put the chemicals in the fish bowl is now flushing the fish down the drain. From here the three fish travel into Gateway of Atlantis. After meeting the other fish in the city, Gateway of Atlantis is suddenly drained of its water. Luckily the three fish are able to escape.
Unfortunately Angel was very tired so we were having difficulties engaging him in the activity. I went to ask Alice for help. She suggested experimenting with the shadows and lights to help promote dialogue. Ethan, Angel, and I went behind the screen and started experimenting with our fish props. They seemed to really enjoy making the shadows. Hopefully next class we can finish the dialogue and begin to practice our story in shadow form.
Before meeting with Neil and my partner I brainstormed some ideas on how to go about keeping the focus on the task at hand. I thought it would be a good idea for us to be conscious of the date of presentation and to have clearly defined tasks for each of us. When we sat down to begin our work I asked Neil what we should be doing and also mentioned the time line we have for completing the work. Neil responded well to focusing on the project but determining what should be done and how it should it be done proved challenging. I decided to lead by example with as little imposition on his creativity as possible by suggesting ideas, and sketching on the card board while questioning Neil if he approved or if it should be done differently (in other words I was “negotiating fit”). This method worked momentarily, but soon after encountering small difficulties Neil became discouraged.
ReplyDeleteAfter a while he asked “can you just do the windows for me, you are better at it than I am”. I responded with “yes, absolutely”. I was worried what would happen after accepting this role, but it was worth a try. Fortunately, it worked out well, Neil immediately began working on the task of an introductory and ending credits. His intentions were to cut out the negative spaces as letters on a large piece of cardboard. Being aware of how incredibly tedious this process was I suggested we find a way to paint the letters on to a clear surface. He liked the idea so we ventured off together to the art supply room.
After a few minutes of rummaging, we found some pieces of Plexiglas. We obtained approval from Dr. Wexler to use the materials and spent a few minutes determining what tools and types of paint to use. Finally, we set Neil up with his workspace. At this point I was quite pleased because Neil was clearly excited and had intentions of keeping the signs after their completion. There was finally a clear sense of productivity to our group, and best of all, Neil jumped head first into directing his creation. He ordered me to continue working on the cardboard, and gave specific directions to complete the task. Success! If we can get Neil to continue to “take the reins” then we can offer him a truly unique creative experience.
Judy came today! She came in with two flowers, one for Tanya, and the other for me. She was so psyched to go to the theatre. We left the class and met the two theatre students and walked to Parker Theatre.
ReplyDeleteJudy and all of us reviewed the script we previously made and began to act it out. One of the theatre students found a mermaid tail for Judy to put on while pretending to be Sparkle Arielle. She loved it! Judy got right into character and remembered her first scene. She assigned us all to play along and be characters such as Ursela, the Prince, two eels and her father. When we made suggestions to her script she always kept an opened mind and listened to them.
Overall, we must have videoed 6 scenes! Judy was on a role! She had so much fun using certain props around the room. She really took advantage of using the whole room and all of its contents. She went from the dinner scene at the table to the ocean on the couch and using the blocks as the shore. She had such a great imagination and always remained opened. She didn’t want to leave when it was time to go! We assured here that we would be back at the theatre next time.
I think that Judy had a great time with all of us. The two theatre students were a big help and have some great ideas to help Judy with her story. They were also asking her great questions about the characters to get her thinking about the emotions that they might be going through in specific scenes. I really feel like Judy has grown so much from the beginning of this experience.
This week we continued with out prop making, and also got to playing a bit with the flashlight casting shadows. From last week, we had a few props finished. We worked this time around on making the larger rifle out of cardboard, the gravestone, and the zombie head (which would be removed by a bird in the play). Jahred worked on the rifle, very meticulously just as he did last week when drawing and cutting out the tank. He made sure to accurately copy the scale of each part of the rifle, including even the tiny holes! His attention to detail was impressive. It was great to see him continuously engaged. Since we’ve moved past the storyboarding sit-down part, he’s stayed pretty focused. His sense of humor has really come out as well, he’s been quite the source of humor over these past few weeks with his dry sense of sarcasm. He’s also very caring and concerned that Katie and I don’t hurt ourselves with things like cutting! And he’s always very helpful, volunteering to carry or acquire whatever material is needed. He’s been great to work with.
ReplyDeleteWhile Jahred was working on the rifle, Katie worked on the gravestone, which we decided to make out of blue cellophane, that way it would cast a colored shadow. We taped wires to the edges to give it some structural support. I worked on making the zombie head, based off of Jahred’s design. We took some red cellophane and used that for the zombie’s eye sockets, mouth, and bloody neck. It was fun, and the props came out looking great. After we had everything cut out, we grabbed a flashlight and tested them out. Jahred worked the props while Katie and I worked with the camera and flashlight. We even grabbed a skeleton from the supply closet to experiment with in shadow, which Jahred really enjoyed. We may use it in our shadow play, as an added character or maybe as the landscape.
Last class we worked with Tanagne on the actual shadow aspect of the play. We tried out a few planes that Alice had brought in and tested them against the curtain with the flashlights to see what kind of shadows they would create. We experimented with twirling the plane to make it look like it was spiraling downward.
ReplyDeleteWhen Tanagne came in the curtain was put down and we showed her some of the properties that the shadows would have when we manipulated them with the flashlight. We got some props from one of the closets in Smiley and we found a lantern, a skull, and a bunch of shiny vases. We experimented with the flashlight and some cardboard to make it look like walls are closing in.
We also wanted to try to finish up our dialogue so we can start rehearsing and also to start making our props and costumes. Laura and I wanted to help Tanagne practice her writing and her motor skills. We all spoke about what should happen next in the scene as we all wrote some more of our dialogue. For next week we’re planning on finishing our dialogue and begin working on our props.
We spent the class, finishing up on Audie's cardboard characters. We also spent some time discussing the story line and voices. Audie seemed interested in the end result, and occassionally seems hesitant when voicing the characters comes into conversation. However, he warms up to the idea really easily.
ReplyDeleteI think we've made a lot of progress in the shadow play, since we finished every character and am now ready to start practicing with flashlights and coming up with their narration and voices. Next week we planned to work more on the voices.
Ethan, being back for the first time in a couple weeks, decided to work with in a group with Angel. Since we had our play worked out already, we sat in the hall to brainstorm a way to get Ethan's input. Ethan likes to draw cities, so we came up with the idea to extend Angels story and include Ethan's cities. At the end of Angels story, the fish now get flushed down the toilet and end up in an underwater city where they meet a bunch of other fish. Even though Ethan was not around for a couple of weeks, I thought this was a good way to incorporate both of their ideas and create an equal amount of input. We ended up making a good amount of progress, coming up with names for the characters, finishing up with props and completing the story all together. To me, Angel seemed to be a little bit distracted, but I think that was because we had already finished the story and then since Ethan come into the group, we needed to expand it more. So I feel that Angel felt bored going backwards on our progress. Angel also told us that we was very tired because he had to quickly do all of his homework. In the end, once we combined the 2 stories, I think both of the boys were happy and equally interested and excited to work on it. Next time we plan to finish up props all together and hopefully work on some dialogue.
ReplyDeleteCorey was not here for this session and it was the first time he was absent this semester other than his spring break, so Joe and I had to try and work around it and we decided to work on some of the props that were talked about with Corey last time. So far for Corey’s sketch he wanted to have a bird break out of his cage, and soar in to the sky amongst the clouds. Then the bird would fly to the mountains and seek shelter in a cave. He wanted to have sound effects and use different props for his shadow play, so the time before we made kind of a mobile of fluffy cotton clouds that looked really cool when the flashlight was shone on them. Corey got really excited about that. So for this session, Joe and I tried to move forward and make the mountains. We took some cardboard and drew out a mountain range and cut it out with an exacto knife. For the remainder of the class we just spent time wandering around seeing what other groups were working on. I recorded video for people and tried to help with whatever needed to be done. It wasn’t a super productive day because we could only do so much without Corey there. Hopefully next week will be better. Next time we will want to try and work on the story more with Corey and finish making props. At some point we will have to start putting everything together and running his shadow play behind the curtain.
ReplyDeleteLeah Mattice
ReplyDeleteArts 2gether
5/1/12
Last week was fun and exciting. I finished cutting out Ethan’s cityscape while Meghan lead the rest of the group through acting warm-ups. Angel and Ethan got a real kick out of those playful, movement oriented warm-ups.
Ethan’s cityscape looked absolutely beautiful in silhouette form; the characters they made cast excellent shadows as well. I’m happy that Ethan and Angel are so enthusiastic to play with the movement of the shadows; for this reason, we YouTubed different ocean and aquatic noises to further the atmosphere and locomotion of our film. I think they voted down the waves crashing, and whale songs, and agreed on a track that was more instrumental, but still sounded deep and aquatic, like heard from a submarine.
What I really want to see today is Ethan and Angel practicing dialog. I feel comfortable with both improvising-playfully-make-it-up-as-we-go-along while still fallowing the story board style, or with a more formal “script.” So this is the challenge to tackle for today.