Wednesday 24th November 2010 - Festival

Today we went to Brune Park at 9AM to join with the other Diploma students to begin brainstorming and planning our festival project (a Comedy Festival at Brune Park on Wednesday 23rd March 2011).

We first went to their new Diploma room and met with Annabel Cook who explained the issues and the core information needed to plan a festival like this. She told us about past experiences of hers when planning events like this and problems that may, and will, come in our way during the planning process and in the final result. For example, the fact that this will be held in a school, which makes the performance less likely to be viewed as 'professional' and the main audience would be our friends and families.

Once Annabel had left we broke into small groups and mind-mapped 'realistic' ideas for the festival and then pitched our group ideas to the rest of the group. We then took part in a drama thing to make us break down the barrier between the people in the whole group. We had to walk around and follow people from different schools around, choose someone from another school and tell them two true things about us and one fake thing.

We then mind-mapped needed job roles in groups of mixed schools and went around the groups with all of our ideas.

We then designed a logo and a name for the festival and suggested ideas of the teachers to do as a finale at the end of the festival to finish the unit. I looked at the sound system and behind the stage to see what the space and equipment that we were available to was like and what we had to deal with.

Campaign: Wednesday 10th November 2010

Over the past few weeks we've been working on our Scene, Performance and Record Units, making sure that we got them all completed and ready to be sent off before the Christmas holidays. Today we properly started the Campaign Unit, where we're going to organise and put on a comedy festival at Brune Park Community College on Wednesday 23rd March 2011. We began the day by talking about Guerilla Advertising, which is when advertisement is done out of the ordinary to make people remember what happens in it and what they are advertising. It is sneakily and creatively done for these purposes. Most, if not all, viral ads are guerilla advertisements. Popular examples of guerilla marketing are T-Mobile, Nike, and Nokia N96 advertisements. T-Mobile is the most popular of all. It features people randomly dancing to a mash-up of songs in a Liverpool train station. As the dance progresses and more and more people join in and it shows shots of people getting out their phones and calling people about it and filming it. This video amazed millions and had everyone talking.

Guerilla marking is basically to use the minimum budget and to get the maximum impact from it. Quite a lot of guerilla marketing campaigns use static stickers that they place everywhere: on cars, shop windows, people, the floor, and posters.

We watched various videos on YouTube and discussed how they used simple things to make a giant impact.

Today we got into groups of three and planned ways that we would like to use Guerilla advertising. We came up with the idea of putting hundreds of static stickers around school on the walls and in classrooms and putting up posters to advertise. Other groups had ideas like: having a Father Christmas run through the end of term assembly to advertise, t-shirts for our diploma group that we would wear each Wednesday from January until Wednesday 23rd March 2011. We also had the idea of a chalked red nose in the precinct or in school, a red exercise ball that we could play giant football with to create a viral ad, we also thought about doing some 'Jackass' style stunts for a viral ad, and some morph suits, snow writing with red food colouring, run around the school field in red pants, practical jokes, parody songs, karaoke in the Quad, fitness session, clown in the Quad, viral ad - "Red Nose Bomb", and dancing in the hall at lunch.

Wednesday 14th July 2010: Portsmouth Live TV

Today was an odd one.

We started the day working on our Record Unit. We began making our documentary, as my group had planned thoroughly at the end of last Wednesday. Jacob and I wrote up a list of social networking sites to get screenshots of their login pages for the beginning of our documentary. We had to log onto Miss Hoad's user to put it in a file on the Curriculum for both Jacob and Ryan to access on their users.

At 12pm Mr Castle drove the minibus to take us to Portsmouth Live TV. We had a quick lunch in Subway and ran through the pouring down rain to get into the Portsmouth Live TV building.

Once everyone was in the small building the Project Manager, Neville Stiles explained to us what the company was, what they did and just general information about the company itself. They currently only exist online and broadcast programs about the local area to the local area. They started in 2009 and cover the whole PO postcode area. They get most of their income through advertising and everything made by them is with excellent quality things but on a very cheap scale, making it easier to create more than other companies like theirs. In the future, they hope to the branch out to create a Brighton Live TV, Southampton Live TV, Bournemouth Live TV, etc.

After talking with Neville Stiles we spoke with the Managing Director, Thomas Haas, who has worked with BBC and Living TV and also as a war photographer and camera man.

He explained to us that they use 'Final Cut Pro' for editing their work and that they use Ofcom guidelines, even though there is no requirement of online television to do so.

He explained how they have set up their broadcasting and their own software. He spoke about all of the technical stuff that was a little farfetched for me on some parts.

I found it a really interesting visit, despite a few little parts being a tad boring, and I may try doing some work experience with them over the summer. :]

Wednesday 7th July 2010

We started with the group evaluations for our pieces of Theatre in Education. We focused most of our thoughts on the negatives, which Miss Hoad didn't like, so she made us divide a page into things that had gone well or badly. We then discovered that although there were quite a few bad things in the performance there were also quite a few good things, such as the planning, narration, the acting (which was also a bad point as Nikki came out of character a lot), and the improvisation. I then went through the evaluations that the Year 7 students had completed and I was really surprised when I found that over 70% of them rated the performance good. They also gave us some really helpful suggestions about things that need improvement.

We then had to each write our own evaluation on our performance, including data about the responses from the Year 7's.

Until lunchtime we were all putting our Performance portfolios together; improving TiE reasearch, annotating scripts, notes and props, printing out blogs, etc.

After lunch we started to think about the Record Unit documentaries. We divided the two theatre company groups into four smaller groups, which would be more manageable and would give everyone something to do. The groups are:

Elastic Bandits:

Group 1 - Heather, Nathan, Ryan and Jake

Group 2 - Hannah and Nikki

Constellation:

Group 1 - Ben, Cloudia and Hugh

Group 2 - Michael, Lewis and Sophie

We seperated into our small groups and began planning how we would like our documentary too look. We thought about narration, scripts, who would do what and the basic gist of it.

We're going to be rushed next week as we are going to Portsmouth Live TV from 12 - 3 and we have two weeks to finish our documentaries. I'm coming in at 8am next week, along with some other people to try and get as much done as possible.

Wednesday 30th June 2010 - Doomsday!

There was a lot to do today... and most people only just seemed to realise that. We started off the day by going over the Performance Unit folders to see what needs to be added, as that project needs to be finished and wrapped up as soon as possible. We then started with our Theatre in Education people. I had so much paperwork to do, like finishing off my scripts, the groups scripts, talking to Mrs Ball about the class, organising everything to take down there, photocopying, rehearsals, and so much more!

Nathan made the 'bully' comments for the year seven's to read out during the performance.

Hannah and Nikki practiced the fight scene (not enough as it turned out when I watched it just before the actual performance)

Nikki also spent a lot of time online, printed a picture of her and Jake off to make a photoframe prop for Jacob's bedroom.

Ryan worked on the backdrop and music

Jake practiced the fight scene and... wandered around trying to find something to do all day.

When it actually came to performance time we had a lot of technical trouble, with the backdrop and the music not working, which in result made the impact of some of our most important scenes less dramatic. We were forced to just continue on with the performance, which made us remember about what Annabel had said to us a few weeks ago when she first came in "don't rely on technology so much like all TiE groups who will likely be traveling from school to school only being able to use what they take with them". Ryan, the tech guy of the group, was really annoyed at the lack of tech and felt that he had let the group down (and Nikki's hateful comments weren't helpful either). The performance itself went really well, even without the technology. The year seven's liked the 'bullying' scene and the 'fight' scene and I felt that I did really well to introduce the piece and who we are. I also allocated some of the year seven's to be 'bullies' and called them down from the audience and motivated them to do what I wanted them to do well I thought. They responded well to my questions, although they were quite personal questions, such as 'Have you ever been bullied or been a bully?'. Afterward I thought that I could have gotten them to be more open by answering the question myself to break down the awkward barrier between us all. They were quite a difficult group to work with - most of which were bullies but they didn't realise it and we noticed it a lot from where we were standing. Following the performance, the questions and the evaluation sheets Mrs Ball kept the year seven's in the Dance Studio so that they could have a discussion about the issues within the group.

Next week we have to put together our Perforamance Unit folders, print out the blogs, analyse the evaluations... AND make a start on our Record Unit. According to Miss Hoad we will be storyboarding and planning and hopefully have everything uploaded to the Curriculum area so that we can make our own documentary.

The week after we're heading off to Portsmouth Live TV for half the day, which we're all a bit worried about as it will take a huge chunk out of our work time on our documentaries.

Wednesday 23rd June 2010

Today we took up Annabel's offer to let us go to the Ashcroft Arts Centre and use their Dance Studio for rehearsal. We had a little bit of a problem with the minibuses so we ended up having to get the bus to Fareham. It was £46.80 for the 12 of us as we all had to go as adults, even though Miss Hoad had her teachers badge with her to prove that we were all students... but the annoying bus driver didn't believe us.

We divided the space into two and we each set up our props, including tables, chairs, things from our bags, cameras and computers. We had some good and bad rehearsal time - when we first got there no-one was really in the mood for doing anything so I had to try and motivate my group into doing the work, as I don't want this performance to fail. We rehearsed the play numerous times and, much to their annoyance, made Nikki and Hannah rehearse the fight scene over and over and over again.

I think that I've really come out of my shell in this unit and took charge of the group, even though they really haven't wanted to work I've tried to push them and when they can't be pushed into doing the work I've just got on with my own, and more paperwork to make everything more clear for me, the rest of the group and anyone else who would loo

k at my folder. I really hope that our performance doesn't crash as burn after all the hard work that we've put into it.

Next week we really need to get everything ready for the performances, as we're performing next week! There is still lots and lots of work that needs to be done, but hopefully it will all work.

I really want this performance to go well (fingers crossed)!

Wednesday 16th June 2010

We started off the day differently this week, by seeing who was up-t0-date with their blogs... Ben and Sophie were the only two to complete their blogging about the week before. Miss Hoad decided to get us all motivated for blogging next week by giving out sweets to those who had done their work.

Miss Hoad explained to us briefly about what our blogs are to include, with things like:

• what I have done today
• what I have learned
• strengths and weaknesses
• what I (and my group) need to do next

Today we really needed to crack down and rehearse our performance pieces. We had Annabel coming in at 10am to view our work so far and to help with what we had and what we should do next.

After each group had performed we all explained what was and wasn't successful about our work. After break Annabel gave each group half an hour of help, suggesting things that we could change, or get rid of.

Both groups used technology and we realised that we were all relying on it way more than neccessary. It was easier to let go of the technology... for most people.

Annabel found our first scene

very powerful but then felt that the intensity dragged and got lost very quickly when it moved into the second scene. She suggested, and made, the play more physical, with stylised theatre and audience interaction. She taught Hannah and Nikki a choreographed fight scene that we added "Foo Fighters - All My Life" to for more impact.

By the end of the day things were looking up, with our play finally coming together properly.

We now have two weeks (roughly 12 hours) left until we have to perform to a 'lucky' group of year seven's (:

Next week we have to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse!