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!

Wedneday 19th May 2010

Today was another productive day (we seem to be having a lot of them lately). Ben was really good today, organising his group and getting them to do the work - Miss Hoad was really proud of him.

We started by reviewing our company names and logos and created our own headed paper, which was a fairly simple process, but Ryan seemed to spend most of the day on this task, creating his own version of it (which was crappier than the chosen version that we had been using all day). We then thought about some questions for our Theatre in Education project and started to answer those questions in an essay like thing.

Once we had completed our essay's we all completed a questionnaire on safe internet use, that Miss Hoad had found on the 'Think U Know' website. We then used Miss White's Year 7 class to complete the questionnaire too, as they are our target audience and we will be presenting our final Theatre in Education performance piece. We split the class in two and each company took one half and talked with each other about Cyber Safety. Once back in our diploma room E1 I analysed the results for our company and although we did it most of us were surprise to hear that most of them had a Facebook account since Year 5, even though you are supposed to be 13 years old to sign up. And a few of them had actually met up with people that they had met over the internet, which shocked us.

We briefly looked at the websites: www.thinkuknow.co.uk/

and http://clickcleverclicksafe.direct.gov.uk/index.html

and we also watched the video 'Matt Thought He Knew'.

We used the information from the year seven's and discussed as a group what cyber safety means to us. Using the information from both the year seven's and us we began planning our Theatre in Education performance pieces.

We filmed our discussions and planning and will use the footage in our documentaries for our RECORD unit, that we will begin creating after our performance on 30th June 2010.

Next week we have a visit from Annabel, from the Ashcroft Arts Centre to talk about Theatre in Education. Hopefully, she'll be of help (fingers crossed).

Wednesday 12th May 2010

Today we started the day with our FS Maths exam, that Miss Hoad had forgotten about so our day plans were in desperate need of change.

Once our exam was finished and we had calmed down we started of with our presentations on 'Documentary' that we had prepared last week. We then had a visit from Mr Stapleton from Brune Park who was checking up on us and Miss Hoad's teaching. Our presentations were coming along fairly well but I still need to slow down my voice and stop talking at 70mph. Miss Hoad has made us stop our flaws in presentations by making us more aware of our physical presence when doing it; the giggling, the hands-in-pockets, the eye contact, the rushing...

We then moved on to creating names and logos for our production companies. The other group is called 'Constellation' and ours is called 'Elastic Bandits'. Our logo is based around a superhero teddy bear who is flying with a cape on in front of the world, this is held together with elastic bands. We discussed the meanings behind our name with Miss Hoad and explained to her about the hidden meaning of our name, that it was funny and cheeky but with a serious undertone.

We then began to start thinking about our documentaries and began to give our roles to people within our group. I then had to leave at lunch to run a drama workshop at Wicor Primary School with some year 4 students for my Bronze Arts Award portfolio. It went really well, and there are some really good actors/actresses in that group.

At the end of the day Ryan apparently demonstrated to everyone else how to use the tripods and camcorders that we will be using a lot over the upcoming weeks.

Wednesday 5th May 2010

Today we started to research documentaries. We began the day mind mapping what we know about the conventions of the documentary genre. We watched and analysed some short documentaries on 4Docs. We looked at the website and all analysed one of the documentaries.

We all started to create our individual presentations about Documentary for the LO1/Investigation section for our RECORD Unit.

Here is a link for 4Docs website:

http://www.4docs.org.uk/films/tag/all

London Media Trip (25th - 27th March)

Thurs 25th March - 7am

At 7am on Thursday the media students attending the London Media Trip left Portchester Community School, made our way to Brune Park, then to Brookfield to pick up the other students, and teachers, that were attending the trip also. Once all were collected we headed off to London.

We arrived at our hotel on time and left our bags in an empty room, as our rooms were not ready yet. Once leaving our belongings, apart from our travel bags, in the room we got back on the coach and made our way around busy London to get to the BBFC. We a little bit late, due to our drivers not particularly knowing where they were going so we got a little lost.

When we finally arrived at the BBFC the man running the presentations was not the very happy, as they presentations had been set up for a certain time and the people he had assigned to run both rooms were not free when we got there, due to other work that had to be completed. When we got there we realised that not everyone would be able to fit into the presentation room so some had to head off to Covent Garden for some impromptu shopping.

Those of us that could get into the room were very interested to hear about the different things that influence the way that they classify certain films. We were shown various different clips from different films and, based on the information that we had been taught in the beginning of the workshop, we voted on the rating of the film... most of the time we disagreed with the actual rating of the film. For some reason the guy thought that we were 17 so some of the clips annoyed the teachers/supervisors, due to the content.

We left the BBFC and made our way to Covent Garden to meet up with the others who, unfortunately, couldn't join us for the presentation. We had a little bit of time to do some shopping and hang out with our new friends. We then made our way to Pizza Hut (which was underground), but they didn't have any disabled access so George had to go somewhere else, but Pizza Hut was very nice for us.

We then made our way to the Lyceum Theatre to see The Lion King, which was absolutely amazing! The performance included puppetry, shadow puppets, fantastic musical numbers that everyone knew the words to and sung along to and slight audience involvement, when the actors would come into the audience and fly their awesome puppets around in the air.

Friday 26th March

After last nights mishaps Miss Hoad phoned ahead to the London Film Academy to see if they had disabled access. On the way there they phoned back and informed her that they didn't so George went to Ascent 142, who are involved in film and TV post production.

To begin with we split into two groups and went to two different workshops, that later on we would also experience. We went to the cinematography and lighting workshop, whilst the other group had a workshop about airbrush make up. In the cinematography and lighting workshop we were able to sit under different lighting and see the difference on the camera. The man that led this workshop had worked with such greats as Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich and Johnny Depp. I really enjoyed talking with him as I am a huge fan of all of these actors.

In the airbrush make up workshop, that we did after lunch, some of us were able to get it done on us using stencils, eyeshadow, pieces of lace and the airbrush tool.

Planet Hollywood

Dinner was very noisy at Planet Hollywood, with people shouting and screaming when the camera went across them and their image appeared on the large flat screens that were scattered around the restaurant. Despite the craziness the food was fairly nice, but didn't sit well in most of our stomachs, making a few of us ill that night.

London Eye

Due to eating at Planet Hollywood only minutes before I felt too ill to go on the London Eye, so Miss Hoad and I stayed on the ground as the rest of the group went on the tall structure.

Saturday 27th March

Movieum - London Film Museum

We went to the Movieum, that was right next to the London Eye this morning after Olivia (my room mate) and I had woken up late and rushed around to pack our bags to put on the coach. It was a pretty hectic morning but it all calmed down as the day went on on our last day in London. They had a great selection of props from many famous films, such as The Borrowers and Alice in Wonderland, that we all got to take lots of pictures of. Here are some pictures of things that we saw at the museum:

BFi IMAX - Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland was completely amazing! It was a really good choice of film to see at Britain's Largest Largest Screen. The screen itself was immense and the film was even better. I was sat in Row N and the view was very good, compared to those sat in the first few rows, where the 3D made them feel slightly sick.

We then got back on the coach after the film and made our way back home (:

Wednesday 9th June 2010

Today we had more freedom than most days... which was bad, but good in the end result. We're at the point where we need to organise and rehearse our Theatre in Education performance piece and we also need to film for our documentary that we are going to attempt to put together in three weeks time (PANIC!).

Our company, Elastic Bandits, divided up the work and got on with our individual tasks. Nikki and Ryan managed to work together (shock horror) and set up the dummy facebook pages we need for our performance, but to do this they had to stay away from the rest of the class, to avoid getting distracted and off task. Nikki also managed to design costumes for the three actors in our group, which will be taken into account for next week when we show Annabel, from Ashcroft Arts Centre, what we have done so far. Hannah, Nathan and Jacob worked well together by creating and rehearsing the first two scenes of our play and they all wrote their character profiles for the performance to help them go into depth of their characters and to add it to their blogs. Whilst they were doing this I completed all of the paperwork that needed to be done, such as the permission form to allow us to use the Dance Studio on 30th June during Period 5 and the day plan sheet that we would follow for the rest of the day. I also recorded Nikki drawing, Hannah, Jacob and Nathan acting and our group discussion at the beginning of the day. Although we all worked pretty good separately we need to come together and plan everything as a group!

Towards the end of the day we all came together as a whole class and assessed what we had achieved today, and it showed that we hadn't really done much, despite us thinking that we had.

Next week Annabel is coming in at 10am to see our Theatre in Education performances so far... hopefully it will be better than the jumbled mess that it was this week.

We've decided on what tasks we still have to do and they are:

• Ask Mrs Ball about using her class on 30th June during period 5
• Check that we can use the Dance Studio at that time
• Talk to the Site Management team about the seating in the Dance Studio
• Organise props and costumes that are needed
• Rehearse both performance pieces, including technology that is needed, that works

Wednesday 28th April: Workshop at Brune Park & Parents Evening

Today we went to Brune Park, after we finally managed to get a minibus and a driver to get us there. We had a workshop with Tina Gardiner and two of her degree students, PJ and Bobby, from the Guildford School of Acting (GSA). They started with some drama exercises, a few of which didn't go down very well (such as the exercise when they were to act like a fairy). We were soon put into groups and began the workshop that we were all there for.

In our groups we were to think of a short story, or freeze frame, to create to show to the rest of the group at the end of the day. After we had come up with our ideas each group had to nominate someone to collect props for their group from a huge pile of junk at the front of the very large hall. Ben was our nominee and he got so much random stuff that we had to somehow use in our amazing idea. Other groups were more successful at getting what they wanted than ours but we dealt with what we had.

At the end of the day we all had to perform our stories to the rest of the large group. There were junkies dying in alleyways, mermaids answering their 'shell' phones, immensely stupid astronauts getting their rockets repossessed, an intense self image performance, crazy people with telephones strapped to their heads who are convinced that the Germans are attacking and pirates on a sinking ship

Although the day began off rather rubbish, with everyone from Portchester Community School not wanting to go to Brune Park in the morning, it was a really good, creative day. We all enjoyed the workshop and want to do it again, but it's a shame that we didn't do it at the beginning of our Artefact Unit - hopefully next years Diploma group will be able to do it before instead of after their unit of work.

...

Later that evening we had parents evening and mine went fairly well, I just need to be more confident.

Wednesday 24th March

Today was our first meeting together after 2 weeks of work experience. We were a tad behind as we had not met up throughout work experience.

Our plan for the day was to pull the project together and to finish making the artefacts. We started the day by working out which parts of the project we had achieved and what we still had to do to make the work decent looking. There were quite a lot of print-outs and plastic wallets used up today and some of the projects were beginning to take shape - finally!

Common problems were:

• research copied and pasted from the internet with no thought given to what it meant for their artefacts
  
• research nothing to do with their artefact
• no planning of what they actually wanted to make
• no photo diary
  
• artefact not finished
• no evaluation of their work

The end of next wednesday is the final deadline of the project... hopefully it will all be done by then (fingers crossed).

Work Experience

Throughout work experience we didn't have to go to Diploma days over the two weeks, which then lead to us being two weeks behind on the Artefact Unit.

On Thursday 11th March most of us (except from Ben and Lewis due to work experience commitments and no Nikki or Nathan for unknown reasons) met at the Ashcroft Arts Centre to see a performance by the Spike Theatre Company, 'On Top of the World'. The show was amazing. It followed the journey of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay as they attempted to conquer Everest. The show was hilarious and very creative, as it involved the audience throughout the whole of the play. They used a variety of props to create the set, mainly involving ladders, but also using white clothes, elastic, ropes, cotton wool and bags. They used projections, puppetry and recorded voiceovers to make the show even more fun and it gave it an even more creative feel. One scene was especially funny, where two actors mimed the actions whilst the third actor made sound effects into a microphone. Sometimes he would make the sound effects out of time for a comedic effect.

It was really funny and I'd love to see it again.

Wednesday 3rd March - Paper Birds

Today was a weird, busy one. At 9am some year 9 students from Portsmouth schools, Priory and Mayfield, came over, for a Diploma taster day. Because they were in this morning we didn't have to come in to school until 11am. When we came in the year 9 students had created some good props and were really good at making things in such a good time. They spent the afternoon writing up a presentation on their process and production, whilst we were in the Gymnasium taking part in a workshop.

At 1pm the Brookfield crew arrived at our school and so did our workshop guest Ellen, who is a designer for the Paper Birds Theatre Company. She asked us to think about how we may create an atmosphere, character background or location with just props that can be easily moved on and off of the stage.

She then talked to us about the idea of creating a set in a suitcase, creating a character's whole world in just one small box. They would walk on to the stage with a suitcase, open it up and their world would be created. With this thought in our minds we had a go at creating some suitcases of our own that would create a set. We would first create a story line with four scenes and then we were to design four different suitcases that contained these worlds.

After we had all designed our suitcases we had to present our ideas to the rest of the group... we really need to work on our presentation skills but other than that our designs were good.

...

That evening we travelled by minibus, thanks to Miss Flux who drove us, to the Ashcroft Arts Centre in Fareham to see the Paper Birds production of 'In a Thousand Pieces'. The performance followed the story of three young eastern European girls who had been promised new, exciting lives in the UK but they are then sold into the sex trade. The story was very strong and was a very graphic piece of theatre. It was a real shock for us all as we didn't know what it was about before we went into the theatre. The way the play was performed was very interesting, as it involved 3 actresses playing the same character. A tape recorder of 'her voice' with recordings of her speaking was repeated throughout the play, giving it a real impact. It was really shocking.

Wednesday 24th February

Today we finally started to create our props. Miss Hoad had all of our orders in their boxes on the table and, as the first job of the day we unpacked the boxes and ticked off what we had received on the order sheet. Unfortunately, the felt did not come in the order (as they did not have the colours we needed) so we'll have to wait until next week until we can begin to use it.

After unpacking everything we set up our tables where we would work and began to fix up some paper mache. We put half into each of the two buckets and set one on our table and the second bucket on the main table. We blew up balloons for the bases of our masks and began to shred newspaper to put in the paste. We began to layer our balloons with the newspaper and once we were happy with our base layers we hung them from the ceiling on string and put sheets of paper between each balloon, to stop them from sticking together.

Once the balloons were finished with I went with Ben to the Technology block in school to cut the large dowel stick into small 24cm sections. Once they were cut we went back to E1 and cut out cardboard stars to stick on our smaller dowel sticks. We cut them with a scalpel, from Graphics, and stapled each corner together so the dowel stick wouldn't move in between the two cardboard stars. Once it was stapled I coated the cardboard with paper mache until it was fully covered and strengthened. Unfortunately the dowel stick kept falling out of in between the cardboard so I had to cover it with super glue (twice!) and hold it down to make sure it stuck. Once it was glued down I took it to the girls' bathroom to dry it under the hand dryer. Once it was dry I took it back to the classroom to paint it with gold paint. Whilst the paint was still wet I put a lot of gold glitter all over it, to cover the hold star on the wand. Once I shook off the excess glitter and pored it back into the tub I took the wand over to the heater and placed it there to dry the paint (we'd cover it with watered-down PVA glue to make sure that the glitter would not fall on the floor when used by classes in the future.

That was all that we could make today so instead of beginning to make something I got on with my blog.

Wednesday 10th February

Today we met with Tina Gardiner, the Head of Design at the Guildford School of Acting (GSA) to have a design workshop. She and the students from Brookfield were late so we didn't properly start until 10.ooam, half an hour later than we had originally wanted to start (at 9.30).

To start off the day we took part in some drama warm up exercises where we had to stand in a circle and move around to get us away from our friends and out of our comfort zones. Once we'd finished that game we played another which was called 'Zip, Zap, Boing, Pow' where we had to point left, and say 'zip', point right, and say 'zap', when you 'boing' it bounces back the 'zip' or 'zap' and when you say 'pow' you point at someone across the circle.

After finishing these games we moved onto our workshop and sat around in a horseshoe and watched Tina show us how acting is not particularly important when trying to set a feeling and to get the audience to feel something or find out where it was set and when. She did this by taking Jacob Rogers and a girl from Brookfield, sat them next to each other and played some music which made us think that they were in Italy, at night riding down the canals romantically, possibly? Tina showed us various different scenes, changing a slight thing every few scenes to see what was different to us and what it made us feel.

Tina thought that we should have a go at it ourselves by using the props she'd brought with her we were to create two scene, in groups of four, and get the audience to comment on what they thought had happened. I was in a group with Ben Knight, Sophie Foster and Nikki Mattravers and we created one romantic scene, with two lovers having dinner at home, our second scene showed the female lying dead on the floor and the man holding the candle stick, that had previously been on the coffee table with their dinner, in his hand and looking shocked. To create these scenes we used the following props:

- Coffee table

- Dress

- Two bowls filled with spaghetti and two spoons

- Candle

- Sofa

- Two champagne glasses

We also used music to set the scene and create an overall atmosphere about the scenes. For the romantic scene we used the song 'Cosmic Love' by Florence and the Machine, and for the death scene we used the song 'Blinding', which is also by Florence and the Machine.

Once each group had shown their two scenes Tina got out a set model, which was a 1:25 scale model of the stage that they have at GSA. She told us about most of the roles that take part in the theatre (director, stage manager, deputy stage manager, designer...) and talked about her role as a designer. She showed us the props that she had designed for the scale model and put them on the miniature stage. She explained everything thoroughly.

She also showed us lighting and one of her filters, a red one which would be placed over the light to show that a murder had taken place, or some other form of bloodshed (such as a war).

Overall the meeting we had with Tina was very inspirational and very enjoyable. Once it had finished we made our way back down to our Diploma room (E1) and wrote our blogs about last week and the morning we had just had. Once we had finished our blogs we were to move onto continuing our mood boards (which are still far from complete!!).

Wednesday 3rd February

Today we had two hours to get our presentations ready, even though they should have been finished last wednesday. After break we had to present our projects to our client, Miss Page (Deputy Head in English) who came to our Diploma room so that each group could present their project and what they had done to complete their research.

Most groups were ready on time, ours on the other hand was battled against the clock. All of the groups needed to rehearse because most things went wrong, but ours seemed to go pretty smoothly. I think we all learnt something about how to present projects in a mature, professional way.

Once the presentations were over and it was decided that our presentation was the best overall (A Midsummer Night's Dream) we spent the the following three hours planning our props and creating mood boards

...

Next week we, and the students from Brookfield, are meeting with Tina Gardiner, the Head of Design at the Guildford School of Acting. Looking forward to hearing some great stuff from her and finally finding out what the whole meet-up is about (we've only been told that we need a blackout room, or something along those lines. So it's all a mystery).

Wednesday 27th January

Today we had to prepare for our presentations for next week. We were to research information on the play, what we were making and how, researching about props and how they are used.

I made a list of the props that we needed to make and printed off three copies (one for everyone in our group) and began to help Ben Knight write out a list of materials that we would need to order to make our props.

Once we finished making the list of materials we moved on to creating our presentation on powerpoint. We decided that we would talk about the key themes in the play, what we planned to make, and how. We thought that this would help our client - Miss Page - understand the basics of our project and have a thorough insight into what we were planning to do so she could question anything that she thought was bad or needed to be changed or altered.

At lunch 5 of the boys left for a rugby match against a school from Isle of Wight, causing Miss Hoad's plans to get slightly altered.

Whilst we were all getting on with our presentations Cloudia Belcher booked the group (except from Ben Knight and me) to see 'Traces', a modern acrobatics circus infused with dance, which is showing at The Mayflower Theatre. She called the box office and had a nice long chat with the woman on the phone. She arrange the seats, completed the risk assessment, the off-site activities form, researched the travel options and emailed the letter to the main office to be printed on headed paper. Everyone's looking forward to seeing it (:

Wednesday 20th January

Today was a peculiar day as a large majority of us had a GCSE Science: Physics exam at 8.50 so we had to have our usual morning talk without them, which Miss Hoad then repeated to them when they returned to the classroom once the test had finished.

We were given a sheet which we were to write our day plan on (which wasn't completely followed as the day stretched on). Once we had finished talking as a group we went onto the Apple Macs and created our new blogs on 'Blogger' which we found was much easier to use and much more efficient than the previously used software 'Wix' that everyone had been using beforehand.

In the second hour of the day we met up with Mrs Murphy and Mrs Harris, from Administration, Mr Sutton who is in charge of Adult Education, the Nursery and Health & Safety and Mr Beadell who is in charge of the Performing Arts project that I mentioned in my previous blog. Because we were all working sufficiently on our blogs and because Miss Hoad was having doubts about the scale of the Performing Arts Festival project she had the meeting with all four of the guests, instead of all of the Diploma students and her.

After break we moved onto our second task of the day, which would last up until lunch time, to do research on our artefact unit. We were to research the use of theatrical props, how objects are made and what different resources are used. eg. masquerade masks for Romeo and Juliet... made out of cardboard or plastic? These are the sort of decisions we must consider. We also needed to create a photo diary of the process of making our props and costumes, for evidence and a record on what we have done.

In the last half hour of the day Nikki began to sort out the make-up for our Genie of the Lamp (played by Michael Liggit), for Wishy Washy (played by Lewis Benfield) and for our drag queen, Widow Twanky (played by Ben Knight) before we rummaged through the bin bags that contained all of the costumes and dressed them in their correct costume. Once Ben Knight was dressed and his make-up and wig were perfected we took photos of him for our photo diary which will hopefully be in my next post.

Once the bell rang for the end of the school day our Abanaza (played by Alex Cusack) and Won Ton (played by Luke Davis) came into the classroom and we sorted out their costumes and make up (making them look BEAUTIFUL!!). Once everyone was ready we made our way down to the school hall to film the scenes which included Abanaza, Wishy Washy, Won Ton and Widow Twanky (although Widow Twanky was unneeded throughout the half hour of filming that we managed to get done, but she... or he? looked stunning anyway!).

Artefact: New Beginnings :)

13th January 2010

Today we were originally going to travel to the Ashcroft Arts Centre to take part in a workshop with the Head of Design from Guildford School of Acting, but unfortunately the weather stopped us getting there and, starting an hour late, we had a normal diploma day.

We took the opportunity to start our new Artefact Unit where we would be researching and creating props and costumes for the English department in our school to help make the studying of Shakespeare, for KS3 students, a little more... fun.

We were given a detailed brief to start the day and went through it slowly and carefully to ensure that everyone understood it thoroughly. Once that task was completed we sorted out the groups and to do that we put all of our names into a coconut bowl and Miss Hoad drew the names out, putting three students into each of the four groups, to see if we could work with different people - rather than the comfortable groups that we fit into on every task. The groups are;

Romeo and Juliet - Jake, Nikki and Sophie

Macbeth - Ryan, Michael and Hugh

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Ben, Heather and Cloudia

The Tempest - Hannah, Lewis and Nathan

For period three and four we researched our allocated plays by visiting the English department book cupboard (which later led to Miss Hoad getting in trouble for taking us in there) and to the LRC to find resources about Shakespearian theatre and prop making. Once we got back to our classroom we broke off into our groups and began to think about props and costumes that could be made, such as; wings, crowns and tiaras, costumes, scenery... Once we had thought about our props and costumes we met with Miss Page, Deputy Subject Leader for English, to discuss our basic ideas for our assigned play to see if she approved of the ideas and to see if she had any others in mind. She seemed very interested in our ideas and suggested a few ideas to help us improve our designs and final products.

In the afternoon Mr Beadell met with us to discuss a separate project that I had had a meeting with him about. The school was thinking of changing the annual Performing Arts Festival that is hosted by the school. They would change it to Sunday 18th July for the local community to take part, involving workshops and performances for them to take part in. They wanted the Diploma students to organise the whole day.

It seemed like a massive project.

We decided that next week we will meet with Mrs Harris and Mrs Murphy from the Administration Office and Mr Sutton, who is responsible for the Adult Education, Nursery and Health & Safety, so that we can talk with them about the day.