Month: April 2017

Silent Film on the Contemporary Stage

Jason Lodge Assistant Stage Manager

The shows contemporary staging was the factor that needed to be pushed the most throughout the performance process. Therefore be we as a company these delusions should be the opening to our performance which would mask the true meaning behind the performance, essentially tricking the audience to the meaning of the performance. However, The company began to steer away from the idea of using Phony sounds and soundscapes as the group decision was made these were not as effective as we once though, as well as the group believed the budget would not be able to cover the expenses of the props needed to produce the sound.

Instead, we decided that the first delusion would disguise our show, would be Jay’s Silent Movie.  The performance consisted of mime comedy displaying Michael (Jay’s Character)  as the hero, saving the girl and beating the villain. Thus required research into silent film, to create the correct theme. Research suggested that the performance musically wise required rhythm and a iconic piano, to help set the slap stick mood of the performance, which was the avenue in which we wanted to perform (Anderson, 1988, 1-5).  Moving from Anderson’s comments the play, I began to study the Styles of music which often feature in silent movies.

Taking influence from Safety Last! (1923) The style story bases itself around three major factors; love, comedy and danger, all which require distinctive sounds to allow audiences to feel the correct emotion behind the performance. The Example below shows the how music can add tension towards a scene, instantly changing the meaning or narrative behind the section of  film.

(ict4eso,2012).

Thus, comparing the style of silent film we wanted to create,  i looked a Music of the silent film era, however, during this time, recorded audio from singers was becoming a frequent trend, which posed a problem for our film as i believed this would draw away from the rustic feel if we wanted to created.

To challenge this by finding a piece of music which would allow that lighthearted nature if this move to be present. Finally, i decided on the desired track we wished for the performance, Scott Joplin’s Sunflower slow drag (1901).

(Brooklynskipper87,2011).

This piece of music, created the right energy and pace to the section as well as being a song which would be easily looped, so the repetition  would be allow the actors as much time as required, furthermore, having a singular song would not take away from the aesthetic of the piece as i believed a change in song may distort the rhythm.

 

 

Works cited

Anderson, G.B., 1988. Music for Silent Films: 1894-1929. A Guide.

Brooklynskipper87 (2011) Scott Joplin – Sunflower Slow Drag.

Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTwcCHyO3lw [accessed 8 April 2017]

ict4eso (2012) Safety Last! Famous Scene.  

Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFBYJNAapyk [accessed 8 April 2017 ].

A More Direct Direction

Emma Jane Haigh Costume Designer , ,

After much careful consideration and many group discussions over breakfast, the name of our show has finally been decided!

Kalopsia. noun. The delusion of things being more beautiful than they are.

Although we have come to a decision with the show name, we have been struggling to make sense of the direction of the show’s content and meaning. We all loved the idea of love as the centre of our show but we have been finding it difficult to sculpt it into something visually interesting to watch. After a discussion between our Director and Stage Manager, we came up with a completely new concept which fit with the connotations attached to our show title. We have carefully considered the concept of people’s delusions being more beautiful than their situation in the real world. After a group meeting about the new idea, we all feel much more confident about the direction of the show.

The Office…

The show is going to be set in a modern day office. There are targets to meet, fierce competition, a handyman and a stressed-out boss.

The Delusions…

Each of the characters have their own internal goals, thoughts or dreams. The idea is to sprinkle these delusions throughout the piece.

We want the show to follow a traditional narrative with the delusion sections shown through contemporary means.

 

Considering Costume

With a concrete show idea in place, I feel that I am in a good place to keep thinking about the costume we will need for the show. With each character needing office wear and a costume change for their delusion, I will need to think about a few things:

  • How will the character change into their delusion costume and can this be done on stage?
  • How much of a costume change does there need to be and does the entire costume need to change to show the switch from real life to delusion?
  • Where am I going to source these costumes from?

We decided from the beginning that we don’t want to hide anything from our audience. I will think carefully about how to make the costume changes as simple as possible. I hope  our transitions will have the potential to be done in plain sight of the audience; for this to happen I will need to make the delusion costumes minimal with a high-impact.

Changing how we look at sound, an introduction of our soundscape

Link Jason Lodge Assistant Stage Manager ,

The first step had been decided, we knew we wanted to place our first delusion within the 1920’s. So to tackle this as sound designer i began to research music of the 1920’s era. However, i had to bare in mind that our group also wanted to explore what other contemporary methods we could use to create an aesthetic for Beginning delusion. Firstly, the group discussed using manufactured sounds such as Foley Sound. Foley sound is the art form where everyday objects are used to produce sounds, which could be manipulated to produce different sounds, for example within phony sound, by using a two halves of a coconut shell, being beat in a certain rhythm could give a similar sound to horse’s trotting (Ramael, 2012, 263).

After investigating Foley sound our group decided to see what we could do to incorporate the style into our production. The company agreed we should devise a sequence with involves characters carrying out certain actions that the rest of the company could use foley objects to created the actions sounds.  As the sound designer for the show, i began to try and find influence to how this art form and how it is produced correctly. After researching foley sound on the internet during the rehearsal whilst the rest of the company worked on blocking,  I was able to find a video that could help our group gain a deeper understanding of how to produce decent foley sound.

(The Columbian, 2016)

After finding this video by The Colombian (2016) I was able to show the show the rest of the group ideas and techniques that Foley artists use. Knowing that everyone was now aware of the process of how to produce foley sounds, our group started to experiment within different sounds which would be used within the performance. We began by trying to figure out what we could use which we had present, however, this was very minimal in regards to what we need to produce the styles of sounds we needed, such as old telephones, briefcases unlocking etc. So to counterbalance this our group decided to make the remaining unpractical sounds sounds with our voices, to essentially fill in the gaps whilst we sourced the props.

This lead to another issue, it was the cost effectiveness for using foley sound, understandably we would only be able to rehearse when we had all the necessary props, yet, with our budget at the time our group didn’t know if this was cost effect as if the company made a wrong purchase it would lower the budget further, another issue stemmed from this. Our groups current plan involved several actors on stage at one time which not leave enough stage hands, to create the sound necessary or be able to create multiple sounds for multiple people.  So we thought of a more cost effective and practical method to making sound, this led to the suggestion from Dwain, the Director of the company, of using a soundscape from the actors on stage.

From this we would be able to act out the scene, without any extra costs regarding props needed to produce sound. So exploring on from this idea, each actor on stage made on specific sound which would be able to identify their character as well as identify there job role within the office. each individual came up with a range of various sounds to accompany their character all allowing them to  be identified easily, for example it was obvious that holly, was playing the receptionist through her sound effect of a phone ringing followed by a “hello”. From this as sound designer it was my job to decide how these sounds could fit together to make some sort of sound collage of the office.

This process began with each individual showing me their sound, by studying each sound i was able to see the amount of beats that they had within their sound rhythm, as well as their sound style. This allowed me to create a order which focused all sounds, however, to help the office aesthetic our group was trying to create, i decided to make each individual join in at a specific time, building the noise and sound on stage mirroring the sounds and hectic vibe of an office. over the next few weeks, our group will look into improving the soundscape as well as putting it on its feet.

 

 

Works Cited

The Columbian, (2016). Foley artist shows how sounds effects are made. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0pOLukIB4s [Accessed 9 Apr. 2017].

Remael, A., 2012. For the use of sound. Film sound analysis for audio-description: some key issues. MonTI. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, 4, 255-276. 

 

 

 

U-Turn?

Dwain Brown Director

Is making a complete U-Turn the right decision? We’ve come to an impasse during the production of our show. It’s not quite working, we can’t see the show moving forward and it just isn’t right for us. The major issue is our topic, love is too large of a topic and is hard to narrow down a specific show. We as a group had to come to a decision, do we continue with the show in its current state and attempt to fix what we already have?

We decided, there was no point continuing with a show that wasn’t right for us.

Now we had nothing, and as lead writer and director I had to create a new show from scratch. Something I was incredibly worried about, we’d already been working on the current show for about a month.

I met up with Stage Manager, Dan and we worked on a brand-new show.

I didn’t want to scrap everything we already had, our first scene was an episode set during the 1950’s about an electrician, an assistant and a boss within an office. I stuck with the idea of an office and looked at television programmes such as ‘The Office’ and ‘The Thick of It’ a realistic office where crazy things often happened. However rather than having the things that were out of there actually happen, I decided on making them delusions. We had the title ‘Kalopsia’ already, meaning The delusion of things being more beautiful than they are. Which helped create this new pathway of a structured narrative that allowed us to create ‘episodes’ or delusions in our case that could play with form and visuals.

When looking at this new show, we also had to considered who we are as a company and what we intended to do. The Pin Hinge Collective what to pin together a variety of audiences, the world of contemporary theatre doesn’t speak to the masses or certainly doesn’t appeal to them. We thought about this when looking at ACE (Arts Council England) who intend on making ‘Great Art and Culture for Everyone’. That key ‘Everyone’ is exactly who we intend our show to focuses towards. We wanted to work on the contemporary episodic nature that many theatre companies seem to use, but then pin it all together with a structured narrative that the ‘Dinner and a Show’ audience is appealed to. We hope that our production can bring a show that appeals to more than one kind of group.